By Jeremy Sharon, Jerusalem Post, May 17, 2012
As points of religious contention go, the current status of the Temple Mount is one of the most potentially explosive issues for competing faiths anywhere in the world.
For Jews, it is the holiest place on Earth, from where the world was created, the site of the Binding of Isaac and the location of the First and Second Temples.
For Muslims too, al-Haram al-Sharif (noble sanctuary), has become a crucial place of worship and pilgrimage, where there stands a monumental shrine—the Dome of the Rock—and the al-Aqsa Mosque, a site of great importance in Islam.
This reality, combined with the Temple Mount’s physical location at the heart of contested territory, has given it a unique geopolitical combustibility not to be found anywhere else on the planet.
Ariel Sharon’s visit to the site in September 2000 prompted large-scale riots that eventually escalated into what became the second Palestinian intifada.
In 1969, a fire started in the al-Aqsa mosque by a mentally unstable Christian evangelical from Australia caused extensive damage and led to mass demonstrations in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. The event was also one of the motivating factors in the creation in 1969 of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an international body devoted to safeguarding Muslim interests.
But inter-religious and political concerns aside, there is another, less prominent but nevertheless bitter dispute currently being waged, this one between different Orthodox Jewish groups regarding the permissibility of going up to Judaism’s holiest site.
The divisions among different rabbinic leaders are sharp; some outlaw ascent to the Temple Mount in absolute terms on pain of spiritual excommunication; others see the refusal to go up and insist on the Jewish right to pray at the site as a deviation from Torah law.
And although access for Jewish Israelis (and foreign tourists) is currently subject to tightly restricted, time-limited slots, this has not impeded the prosecution of a tough war of words and a struggle over the contested battleground of what is and is not permitted according to Jewish law.
OUTSIDE of a religious desire to visit and pray on the Temple Mount is another driving factor for those who are so insistent on Jewish access to the site.
There is also something Messianic in the efforts of those who ardently seek to restore a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. The Temple Institute has devoted huge sums of money into constructing and producing the vessels, implements and garments required for the Temple, using the exact instructions set out in the Torah. Among the vessels constructed is a fully working golden menorah, which cost $2 million and is ready for use in the Temple.
Yisrael Ariel, the founder and director of the Temple Institute, who was among the soldiers who conquered the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, certainly felt at the time that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount was a harbinger of the very imminent arrival of the Messiah.
Dr. Motti Inbari, an expert in Jewish fundamentalism at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, cites an interview with Ariel in his book, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount. In the interview, conducted in the Or Hozer journal of yeshiva high schools, Ariel vividly describes his emotions and experiences upon the capture of the Temple Mount and states that he thought that “these are the days of the Messiah.”
Rabbi Richman and the institute insist that the Temple will not “descend from the heavens,” as some believe, but will have to be constructed by men here on earth, as evidenced by their efforts to reconstruct the Temple vessels.
Asked if it is time to re-build the Temple, he responds “We’re 2,000 years late in doing so.” He insists, however, that it is not the intention of the institute to start rolling out the tape measure on the Temple Mount and start building.
Other groups, such as the Temple Mount Faithful, led by Gershon Salomon, are clearer about their ultimate goals. This organization says unabashedly that its goals include “the building of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in our lifetime in accordance with the Word of God and all the Hebrew prophets” as well as “the liberation of the Temple Mount from Arab (Islamic) occupation.”
The homepage of the Temple Institute website currently bears a line from the well-known movie Field of Dreams: “if you build it, he will come.” The long-term goal, as stated on the website, is to do “all in our limited power to bring about the building of the Holy Temple in our time.”
Journalist and author Gershom Gorenberg, who wrote The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, sees a strong nexus between Jewish messianism and aspirations for the Temple Mount.
“The place has always elicited strong messianic symbolism and exerted a magnetic attraction for anyone awaiting the Messiah,” he told the Post. “For those who find it unbearable that we haven’t rebuilt the temple, there is an urge to bring about a redemption by human means, forcing God’s hand, as it were.”
For those opposed to increased Jewish activity at the Temple Mount, Gorenberg continues, although it’s generally wrapped in technical objections of a political or halachic nature, the subtext is that rebuilding the Temple is beyond the ability of human hands and effort and must await the arrival of the Messiah.
“In Jewish history, people who were certain they knew how to bring the Messiah ended up being disastrous for the Jewish people,” he concludes.
Regardless of the longer-term aspirations of the various groups, the current debate surrounding whether or not Jews can and should visit and pray at the Temple Mount will continue because of the activities of organizations like the Temple Institute.
According to the Chief Rabbinate, the reason they have recently re-iterated their ban on Jews going to the site is because of increased organized visitations, a growing phenomenon that it would like to stamp out.
But the political and spiritual desire among some who want to insist on their right to pray at Judaism’s holiest site is still very much alive. The nature of that desire highlights both the very deep-seated Jewish attachment to this revered place and the huge potential it has to spark intra-religious dispute along with political conflict.
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