Building on an ideal

A report by Ir Amim highlights growing state support for Jewish activities on the Temple Mount, but does not properly explain why it is improper.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Conquering the Temple Mount 521 (photo credit: Bamahane/ Jerusalem Post archives)
Conquering the Temple Mount 521
(photo credit: Bamahane/ Jerusalem Post archives)
On May 26, the day before her wedding, MK Tzipi Hotovely (Bayit Yehudi) paid a visit to the Temple Mount to say a prayer. As with many other brides these past years, Hotovely couldn’t utter a word of her prayer due to the strict restrictions imposed on Jews visiting the holy site. But the trend is growing. Hotovely coordinated her visit with the chief of police, contending that it was purely for “personal reasons.” But she quickly added that going up to the Temple Mount was important for her on that specific day in her life, since “establishing a new home among the people of Israel is not only a private event, but it also has some public aspects, such as rebuilding one of Jerusalem’s ruins.”
The visit was guided by Nadav Shragai, a journalist and researcher who promotes studies on the site and its varying status. To the media, Hotovely added that “the restrictions imposed on Israelis, including public figures, are not appropriate.”
The increasing strength of the numerous movements dedicated to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem – beyond the various types and purposes of these movements – raises concern among many Jews and Muslims alike. The growing number of Jews who ascend the Temple Mount was the subject of a recent study released by Ir Amim, a left-wing NGO acting for an equitable and sustainable Jerusalem. Ir Amim’s partner in the study is another NGO, Keshev, dedicated to the protection of democracy in Israel.
The two presented their report at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Center last week, followed by a panel discussion moderated by scholars and members of the organizations’ boards, hosting one representative of the seekers of a renewed presence on the Temple Mount – also known by its Arabic name Al-Haram a-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). The 50 or so pages of the report, including outlines and photographs, ends with a series of recommendations, all addressed to the Israeli government, as to how to prevent the organizations and movements from taking any action that could endanger the status quo of the holy site.
The Ir Amim and Keshev representatives explained that they have decided not to deal with the Muslims’ activities on the Temple Mount, although they found a certain level of reciprocal feeling between the extremist activities by Jews and Muslims that even strengthen each other and thus increase the danger.
Based on the conclusions of the report, the most worrisome findings (according to Ir Amim and Keshev) are the links between many of the Temple Mount activities and various government offices. In the report, there is a detailed list of these activities, as well as the different ways the organizations that encourage visiting the Temple Mount obtain tacit or overt support from the state, be it financial or other.
The report describes the difference between people and organizations acting for a change of the status quo on the Temple Mount and those that may be driven by a deeper messianic frame of mind. But it concludes that as far as the anticipated reaction of the Muslim world is concerned, both kinds of motivations are dangerous.
It must be remembered that in March, King Abdullah II of Jordan signed an agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas renewing the king’s status as guardian of the holy sites of the Muslims on the Temple Mount, including the two mosques there – the Dome of the Rock and Al- Aksa. It is also worth noting that the standing of the Wakf – the administration of the holy sites to Islam – is recognized by the State of Israel in the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.
The present arrangements concerning the Temple Mount state that the Wakf has total control of the administration of the site, as well as the opening and closing of the entrances – except for the Mugrabi Gate, situated above the Western Wall. The decision to prevent Jews from praying on the Temple Mount was made a few weeks after Israel took control of east Jerusalem following the Six Day War, according to the desire of the Chief Rabbinate, which wanted to prevent Jews from going up to the Temple Mount for religious purposes, and not specifically out of fear of eventual tensions with the Muslims. But for the past few years, more and more Jews – Orthodox and traditional – have changed their attitude toward the interdiction and visit Judaism’s holiest site on a regular basis. They are still not permitted to pray there, let alone get down on their knees. And now MKs are joining this rather new but growing trend, and that is exactly what Ir Amim is concerned about.
NOT ALL those who go to the Temple Mount – whether on a regular basis or occasionally – are motivated to do it for the same reasons. Generally, explained Dr. Tomer Persico of Bar-Ilan University, who edited the report, the Jews who go to the Temple Mount can be divided into four types. The first kind – and, according to Ir Amim and Keshev, the most dangerous – are those motivated by nationalistic reasons. They hark back to the days of the Brit Habirionim, a right-wing organization in the early 1920s that yearned to rebuild the third Temple, despite the fact that most of them were not observant Jews.
“They were motivated by the belief that in order to renew the Jewish national spirit, it was necessary to establish a kingdom (and not a democratic state), and there was an urgent need to rebuild the most important symbol of Jewish nationality in the Holy Land,” explained Persico at the opening of the evening at Mishkenot Sha’ananim.
But then came other motivations, such as the halachic need, since about one-third of the mitzvot are linked to the existence of a Temple in Jerusalem.
The most representative of this second trend is Rabbi Israel Ariel, a former paratrooper who fought in the Six Day War and, over the years, has become one of the most outspoken representatives of the religious right of the national-religious stream.
MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) represents the third type – described by Persico describes as “the seekers of romantic spirituality, who want to have a new Temple in order to reestablish a direct, true and intimate link to God, one that can only exist at that specific location.” For Feiglin, religion as we experience it today is the result of a need to fill the vacuum caused by the destruction and the absence of a Temple and can no longer be sufficient, he said at a meeting with MK Ruth Calderon, broadcast on both MKs’ personal video channels (YouTube). For them, as for many women, the spiritual experience of a prayer said at that unique holy site cannot be compared to any other religious experience and should not be forbidden.
Rabbi Yehuda Glick, formerly a member of the Temple Institute in the Jewish Quarter and currently teaching at the Otniel Yeshiva, is one of those who seek the spiritual experience that only the Temple Mount can provide. Glick, who was present at the panel discussion at Mishkenot Sha’ananaim, insisted on the universal aspect of spiritual prayer, explaining that “The prophets in the Bible taught us that ‘God’s House – the Temple – will be a House of Prayer for all the Nations’ and thus could be a place of prayer.
and spiritual experience for the Jews and the Muslims and the Christians as well,” he emphasized. He ended his speech with a part of the traditional Muslim prayer, explaining that for God, “all genuine prayers are welcome.”
Glick believes it is a sign of the success of the Jewish prayer initiatives that the Left is interested in the issue.
“In recent years, we have become, from a marginal group that didn’t make much of an impact and could be disregarded, a significant and large group,” he tells In Jerusalem. “When I started to go to the Mount, we barely made a minyan [a quorum of 10 men] – today I have some 300 rabbis from religious-Zionist circles who support us and participate. From Rabbi Dov Lior to Rabbi Yuval Cherlow – they all support the idea that Jews have the right to pray on the Temple Mount. So my guess is that now, when I see the welcome result of my efforts, when the issue is part of the mainstream, people from other side feel the urge to look into it closer.”
The fourth type of visitor to the Temple Mount is the messianic kind. “Rebuilding a Temple is part of a messianic approach and vision,” explained Persico, adding that not everyone who has a messianic vision is automatically involved in activities to rebuild the Temple. “Gush Emunim, for instance, the largest and most powerful messianic movement in modern Israel, wasn’t concerned with the reconstruction of the Temple,” he said.
However, one cannot ignore that all the people involved in the Jewish clandestine movements of the 1980s (Mahteret Yehudit), with Yehuda Etzion at their head, who planned to bomb the mosques on the Temple Mount, were all members of the Gush Emunim movement.
Dr. Yitzhak Reiter of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and the Academic College of Ashkelon, an expert on the issue, said there was no question that the situation was “explosive and, as such, should be very carefully handled.” However, Reiter added that he didn’t think that all the Jews, despite the growing numbers, who want to visit the holy site and even pray there, present a danger for the region.
AS FOR the role the state is playing – according to the report – in encouraging the various organizations dedicated to rebuilding the Temple, or at least changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, there are a few assertions. The first one points to the fellowship society registry, which registers these organizations and, in so doing, enables them to raise funds for their activities.