JERUSALEM — Following renewed violence, the Temple Mount has become part of Israel’s reality once again. Some religious Jews are vocally reclaiming their right to pray there, while others refrain from going up – for religious, not political reasons.
“My knowledge of the place was… vague and foggy,” says Varda Meyers Epstein, who has lived in Israel for three decades. “As if it were a historical place rather than a real place. It didn’t occur to me what the symbolism of planting a mosque there meant.”
The Temple Mount is the biblical site of the binding of Isaac, Jacob’s dream, and the threshing floor bought by King David on which his son Solomon built the First Temple itself.
“It may be shocking to a lot of people,” says Batya Medad, an olah of over 40 years, “but in all honesty, the Kotel [Western Wall] is of extremely low holiness in comparison. The Western Wall,” she explains, “is a much later expansion of the Temple Mount.” It only became a place of prayer in the last few centuries. “Until then, Jews were going up to the Temple Mount.”
To Muslims, the Temple Mount is revered as the location of the binding of Ishmael and Muhammad’s ascent to heaven. Today, two Muslim landmarks stand on its 37 acres. The iconic golden Dome of the Rock and the lower grey dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
When it was recaptured from Jordan in 1967, Moshe Dayan, a secular kibbutznik, saw Jews venerating the Temple Mount and reputedly sneered, “What is this, the Vatican?” He handed control over to Muslim religious authorities, and a law was enacted forbidding Jews from praying there.
But Jews have been returning in the last few years, at least until Oct. 29, when a Palestinian Arab terrorist shot and wounded Yehuda Glick, an American-born rabbi and Temple Mount advocate.
Medad, a journalist and blogger, visited the Temple Mount for the first time this summer with a group of religious women led by Glick and Rabbi Yosef Elbaum, another prominent advocate.
She was shocked by inequalities between religious Jews and other visitors, including lengthy delays before her group was searched and allowed to enter. She called the restriction of Jews on the Temple Mount “the epitome of hypocrisy.”
She also says that the law against prayer on the Mount is not right.
Many defy the law. “If one is caught moving one’s lips in a fashion that could look like prayer, you’re considered to be breaking the law,” says Medad. “My friend and neighbour who led the group was very careful about saying prayers, and words from Psalms, as if she was having a conversation.”
Following recent violence, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, Israel’s chief Sephardi rabbi, has called on Jews to avoid the area.
His statement has spurred a backlash. “The idea that because the Arabs are being violent, we must desist from going to our holiest spot,” Medad said, “doesn’t make any sense.”
Elka Saadon, a Montrealer who has lived near Haifa for 17 years, is confused by media reports. “I have mixed feelings; on one side, it’s really important to us, more than the Kotel. But on the other side,” Saadon said, “you don’t want to start another war over it. They say in the news that it’s because [Glick’s group] went up, they brought a lot of people; that’s what incited the whole thing. I have no idea.”
Saadon’s 18-year-old son went up with Yehuda Glick before the shooting. Though she was happy he went, she says, “I would find it too dangerous to go there myself.” Saadon feels more strongly now. “We have no idea why the Arabs want it so badly,” she says, “and why we can’t visit there.”
Jews outside of Israel are too passive; she says. They say, “Why make trouble? Keep the Temple Mount for the Arabs. We have the Wall; it should be enough.”
Epstein, a blogger, believes in the Jewish right to control the area. But she wouldn’t go up herself, not because of incitement, but for religious reasons.
“Since we don’t know the exact location of the [Holy of Holies], it’s better not to go up there, since one might end up walking in this spot, which is forbidden for all except the [High Priest].”
Although rabbis have created maps of permitted areas, other problems remain. “One must not wear leather shoes and one has to immerse in a ritual bath. It’s complicated.” Disregarding these details demeans the holy site.
Nevertheless, Epstein’s views have shifted. She sees people like “ Glick, [and MKs] Moshe Feiglin, Shuli Moalem, and Tzipi Hotovely as absolutely heroic for ascending the Mount.”
Like Epstein, former Torontonian Danny Hershtal, a political analyst and former Knesset candidate, would never go up himself, for halachic reasons. However, he says, “I don’t oppose it for those given rabbinic approval.”
He mentions the 1920 riots which happened because Jews wanted to pray at the Kotel. “We can’t simply constrain ourselves to Muslim sensibilities, because they could be endless.”
While Arabs throw stones and the world urges Israelis to concede, Dayan is also commonly vilified in religious circles for giving up this precious site.
“This is the biggest sin of my generation,” says Epstein. She will never understand how anyone allowed Dayan to do such a terrible thing. “ If the cries against his action were loud, they weren’t loud enough.”
“It’s an enormous piece of land,” agrees Medad, “which unfortunately, the Israeli government has allowed the Jordanians and the Muslim Waqf to administer, rather than giving it the holiness it deserves.” She pauses before adding, “We have thrown away our responsibility.”
