By Camie Davis
It couldn’t have been easy for the Orthodox
rabbi who suddenly found himself living in the Bible-belt. He was from Jerusalem. But due to a rare disease that his
daughter had, he was in the southern United States with her as she received
special medical treatment.
Thankfully, after several months she vastly improved and they were able
to return to Israel. Not before, however,
my friends and I, who are Noahides, gleaned from him all we could about Israel
and about Torah.
When we found out he was from Jerusalem one of
the first questions we eagerly asked was, “How often do you visit the Temple
Mount?” He simply answered, “I
don’t.”
We were stunned. Our naïve bubble had burst. We wrongly assumed that a Jew, especially a religious Jew,
living in Jerusalem would visit the Temple Mount routinely. I sighed upon hearing his answer. And over a decade later I’m still
sighing over Jewish mentality regarding the Temple Mount.
Last year
10 million people, mostly Jews, visited the Kotel/Western Wall. How many Jews visited the Temple
Mount? Nine thousand. What keeps Jews standing with their faces
against a wall instead of ascending to the most important spot on earth? How often does a person get to go to the
very place that G-d described as “the place of My feet?”
Which
according to many of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, I just answered my own
questions. Because of the holiness
of the Temple Mount Jews should not visit it.
As Jewish desire
to visit the Temple Mount increases, the Chief Rabbinate declarations for Jews
to keep off the Mount also increases.
They declare that it is halachically forbidden to ascend the Mount. They warn that it is a spiritual risk
for Jews to walk on the Mount in case they tread somewhere impermissible,
therefore risking spiritual excommunication. Even though the Temple buildings occupied only 15% of the original Temple Mount, which
size has doubled over the centuries due to construction by different occupying
forces; hence, there is ample space for a Jew to safely walk on the Mount.
Although some
of the Chief Rabbinate acknowledge that great rabbis throughout history visited
the Temple Mount after the Second Temple’s destruction, they still believe that
letting the common Jew visit the Mount today would be logistically challenging,
i.e. Jews would have to be educated on proper halachic requirements and a
Jewish presence would change the political status quo. Rabbi Ratzon Arusi, a member of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate, said
that issuing a blanket permit for Jews to ascend would be “very problematic.”
Problematic? Let’s look at a few other situations
that might be considered problematic in Israel today:
·
Arab
propaganda is becoming the accepted narrative regarding no Jewish historical
ties to the Temple Mount.
·
An Arab mosque
continues to stand in the place where G-d asked the Jews to build Him a house.
·
Scaffolding
used during repairs in the Dome of the Rock was nonchalantly placed on the Even Shtiya,
the Foundation Stone of the universe.
·
Arabs play
soccer on the Temple Mount (after all they’ve got plenty of room since Jews are
discouraged from going up).
·
A Palestinian
flag was recently hoisted atop the Mount.
·
Over 10,000
rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza.
·
Jews have been
killed on a monthly by terrorists basis despite the “peace process.”
·
Iran is
planning to nuke Israel.
The funny thing is
that even I, a non-Jew, realize that the answer to every problem mentioned
above lies squarely on the Temple Mount.
Because that is the precise spot where the Temple will be rebuilt. Which will be the seminal event to
usher redemption into the entire world.
The real problem in
Israel today is not whether Jews are halachically permitted to ascend the
Temple Mount. Perhaps the problem
is that many of the religious leaders in Israel believe that the Temple will
fall out of the sky or be built by the Messiah. Therefore, why risk or bother to go up on the Mount when one
can sit back and wait for events to unfold. As Chief Rabbi Itzhak Nissim said after the liberation of the Temple
Mount in 1967, "We have entered the palace, and even reached the table but
we are not yet accepted before Him. We have done all that is in our powers to
do. All that is left to be done is in the hands of Heaven.” How ironic to say these words after
witnessing Heaven give Jerusalem back to the Jews via the blood, sweat and
tears of the IDF and Jewish people.
I don’t ask lightly,
but what if some of the Chief Rabbinate are wrong regarding the Temple
Mount? What if they are as wrong
today as the Chief Rabbinate were in 1967?
In an Arutz Sheva interview, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel bemoaned the fact that it was
the Chief Rabbinate in Israel who instructed Moshe Dayan to immediately give
control of the Temple Mount back to the Arabs. “He handed over the key [to the
Temple Mount], because he was the one who held it, but someone persuaded him to
do this," Rabbi Ariel said. The
article goes on to say that Rabbi Ariel learned this from a Bamishpacha magazine article, and then
verified the truth of the claim with hareidi former Knesset member Rabbi
Menachem Porush, who was quoted in the article. Rabbi Ariel stated, "According to what he [Porush] said,
the greatest hareidi rabbis, led by Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, went to Dayan and
told him to tell Levi Eshkol to give the Arabs the Temple Mount since, 'The
People of Israel have no interest in the Temple Mount.' They also said the UN
should be notified that we have no interest in the Temple Mount."
Why should the world
today think that Israel feels any differently from the sentiments expressed by those
rabbis in 1967? Recently, a
Palestinian flag was hoisted atop the Mount. The Israeli leadership shrugged its shoulders. Hence, so does the world. Only 9,000 Jews showed enough interest
in the Temple Mount to actually take the time to visit it last year. So why should Israeli politicians, or
politicians around the world for that matter, think that Jewish rights on the Temple
Mount are a priority?
Thankfully, there is
a growing outcry among Jews in Israel over discrimination of Jews who do ascend
the Temple Mount. But actions
speak louder than words. If Jews
really do care about the Mount, and I believe a great many do, then it is time
for them to put feet to their sentiments.
As Moshe Feiglin said in a 2012 Temple Mount Awareness Day interview,
“Every Jewish step on the Temple Mount will bring back sovereignty of the
Temple Mount to the Jewish people.”
It is time for a
grassroots movement among Jews to show Hashem and the world that they actually
do care deeply about the Temple Mount.
It is time to upset the status quo. It is time for Jews to leave the Western Wall, which is a
symbol of exile, and ascend the Temple Mount, a symbol of redemption, sovereignty,
and freedom.
Even some members of
the Israeli police have expressed that an increased presence of Jews on the
Temple Mount would create drastic changes. At a conference in Jerusalem in 2009 regarding
Jewish ties to the Temple Mount authorities said, “If only more Jews would visit the Temple Mount on a regular
basis, the entire balance of power would shift. There would be a paradigm
shift; the attitude of the government and the police would be different towards
the Jewish visitors on the Temple Mount. The Muslim terror would be abated.
Many Jewish people visiting the Temple Mount would be the cure to the overall
security situation.”
Yet, the
fact that very few Jews try to exercise their rights on the Temple Mount makes
it convenient for the Israeli police to dismiss the lawful rights of Jews and
instead indulge the demands of the Arabs.
The adage, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” rings true. The Arabs simply make more noise over
the Temple Mount than Jews do.
The
novelist Anthony Trollope once said, “My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”
If only Israel would grasp that concept. When Israel takes its own rights, sovereignty, and destiny
seriously the world will follow suit.
Yet, as
stated earlier, leading rabbis staunchly disagree with the idea that a Jewish
presence, much less a proactive Jewish presence, on the Temple Mount could lead
to anything positive. In 2009, the
late Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv emphasized that Jews should
not visit the Temple Mount because their visits could provoke bloodshed. "I have declared this in the past, and I repeat
once again my statement that beyond the halachic aspect, it is also a kind of
provocation of the world's nations that could lead to bloodshed, and this would
be one sin leading to another."
Again, I don’t ask
lightly, but what if he and rabbis like him were and are wrong regarding the
Temple Mount? How has “keeping the
peace” worked out for Israel so far?
No one truly knows how the fulfillment of the Prophets’ visions of peace
will come to pass. Will there be
bloodshed first? I don’t
know. But what I do know is that
the Torah and Tanach are filled with incidents of the Jewish people following
the commands of Hashem that led to bloodshed. Unfortunately, if the enemies of Israel will not relent what
rightfully belongs to Israel, including Israel’s right to exist, Biblical
history and modern history shows that it has to be taken by bearing arms. But what if bearing arms could be
avoided by Jewish feet ascending the Mount?
It’s somewhat incredulous
that some Jews have fallen into the belief that a Temple Mount left in the
hands of the nations will bring peace.
Who was chosen? Ishmael or
Isaac? Then why do the descendents
of Isaac continue to let the descendents of Ishmael influence and even dictate
decisions made regarding the Temple Mount?
The Temple Mount is the portal for redemption to enter the
world. The Jews were chosen to
usher in redemption. They were
given back the keys to the portal in 1967, but tragically shunned the
privilege.
However, there is a
growing number of Jews who feel the intensity of the Divine Spark within them
leading them to action. They are being
drawn to the Temple Mount. Should
the Chief Rabbinate continue to reign in this innate desire within these Jews? By trying to prohibit Jews from
ascending the Mount, they seem to be asking Jews to continue to sit back and
take the chance that things will take care of themselves when the Temple falls into
Israel’s lap. Answers rarely fall
into one’s lap. A person has to
become the answer.
The Torah has always
called Jews to action - into an active partnership with Hashem. And rabbis like Rabbi Yisrael Ariel and
Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute, along with other Jewish leaders
are putting feet to that call. The
Temple Institute is not a corner curio shop for tourists to visit and see how
things used to be. It is a living,
breathing call to action for Jews to fulfill their destiny. And it is the perfect place for Jews to
learn how to ascend the Mount according to halachic standards based on years of
Temple research.
In summation of
events surrounding the liberation of the Temple Mount and the Chief Rabbinate’s
reaction to it, Yoel Cohen of Jewish Political Studies Review said, “The capture of the Temple Mount presented two
possible scenarios: the reintroduction of Temple worship - bringing the biggest
revolution in Jewish religious life for 1900 years - or to seek to
‘incorporate’ the Temple Mount within existing patterns of Jewish religious
behavior.”
Hindsight reveals which
scenario the religious establishment chose. The current state of the world and of Israel begs the
question whether they chose correctly.
The world desperately
needs the Jews to fulfill their destiny of partnering with Hashem to bring
about redemption. I, along with
the nations, can only hope and pray that the Jews will rise to the
occasion. Literally. Arise and ascend the Temple Mount. Jewish footsteps on the Temple Mount
are equivalent to the footsteps of redemption.
