Visiting the Temple Mount—: Taboo or Mitzvah

The Significance of Visiting the Temple Mount in Jewish Law and Interpretation

Ideology is not only . . . to be found in the discourse of ideologues. Its principal locus is the language of everyday life, the communication in which and through which we live our daily life.

—John B. Thompson

On June 2, 2008, the twenty-eighth of the Hebrew month of Iyar, 5768—Jerusalem Day—the fortieth anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, forty nationalist Orthodox rabbis, some of them from the settlements of Judea and Samaria, visited the Temple Mount. This declarative act was preceded by a number of calls opposing the ban on visiting the mount that had been issued after the Six-Day War by the Chief Rabbinate. Such calls have been issued in clearly political contexts: in 1996 at the height of the struggle against the Oslo Accords; in 2001 in protest against the Waqf’s exclusion from the mount of non-Muslims at the beginning of the second intifada; and in 2004 after the Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims.

The rabbis’ visit to the Temple Mount was a high point in the debate within nationalist ultra-Orthodox society between opponents and supporters of such a visit. The visit to the Temple Mount also revealed a nascent change toward the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and its rulings.¹

Both opponents and proponents of the visit base their halachic arguments on Jewish law and historical precedent, often citing the same sources. The debate also divides the religious and political leadership of the national ultra-Orthodox community itself. The rabbinical council of the Jewish communities in the West Bank, including Rabbi Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Arba, who is close to Temple activists, is an enthusiastic supporter of the “ascent to the mountain” and is also a member of Rabbis for the Temple, a group established in 2001. In contrast, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the rabbi of Beit-El (neighborhood A) and head of the Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter, is among the staunch opponents to the idea. The conflict of opinions is heightened in light of ideas that are shared by both sides about the place itself. Both camps believe the Temple Mount possesses cosmic sanctity stemming from the place itself, and both sides call upon midrashic sources connecting the Foundation Stone to the beginning of creation.² In justifying their rulings, both camps invoke the Talmudic laws regarding the hierarchy of sanctity and impurity and the maintenance of distance as they apply to people entering the Temple area. They also call on historical references that support their opinion. Both groups express the importance of the issue through repeated references to the penalty of excommunication to be imposed on anyone who does not follow the commandments of mora mikdash, “awe of the Temple,” according to their halachic system.

Yaron Eliav’s research takes the sting out of this debate by arguing that the identification between the site of the Temple (the mountain), and the Temple itself, derives from the period after the destruction of the Second Temple. According to Eliav, when the Temple stood, there was no connection between the mount and the Temple, and prohibitions on access had to do only with the mount’s cultic structures, from which the sanctity stemmed.³ This position finds further support in Rachel Elior’s research, which shows that the term “Temple Mount” began to be used only after the destruction of the Second Temple.⁴ Neither side of the debate relates to these caveats, another way in which their positions on the sacred place are similar. In the rest of the article I discuss the nature of calls for certain actions by the two camps and attempt to shed light on the reasons for these calls. Their halachic considerations are based on complex Talmudic issues and on the Rishonim and Achronim, which exceed the limits of this article.⁵

The opinion of those who prohibit entry to the Temple mount will be discussed as it relates to the Chief Rabbinate’s ruling after the Six-Day War. The position of those...