Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (review)

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the most sacred place for Judaism, created a delicate and potentially explosive problem for Israel after it was captured from the Jordanians in the 1967 Six Day War. On the one hand, after that victorious—some would say miraculous—war, re-building the Third Temple in place of the Muslim Mosques standing there seemed like the correct thing to do from a national and religious point of view. On the other hand, Israel always claimed to be dedicated to improving its relations with other countries and especially to reaching peace with its Arab neighbors. Nothing would have enraged the Muslim World, and most of the Western World, more than such a drastic intervention in the sacred status of the holy mountain. Building a Temple, and presumably restoring sacrificial slaughter, is also anathema in light of Israel's modern, rationalistic, secular ethos, promising the rights of all denominations under its rule, and maintaining a delicate status quo between its secular and religious population. One can only conjecture how Judaism as we know it would be transformed if a Third Temple were built. Meanwhile, religious Israelis, who study about the Temple and pray for its return, encounter the halakhic law that prohibits them from entering the sacred compound. By leaving the holy place in the hands of the Muslim Wakf, Israel has, in a sense, bypassed these questions, while institutionalizing a constant reminder that the return of the Jews to their ancient land is inherently partial.

Motti Inbari starts his book on the Jewish fundamentalists' attempts to return to the Temple Mount with the reversal of the decree that prohibits Jews from entering the compound. In 1996, the Committee of Yesha Rabbis (Yesha is the acronym for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) ruled that Jews are permitted, and even encouraged, to enter the Temple Mount. The desire to go there and transform the place has existed before, but the Oslo agreements and diplomatic negotiations regarding the future of the Temple Mount made it imperative, to the mind of those rabbis, to show substantial Jewish presence on the mountain. This decision exemplifies how radical ideas start infiltrating into wider audiences.

From the perspective of the larger Israeli society, or even the national religious section, the groups that Inbari discusses in his book are small, esoteric, and marginal, the radical fringes of the extreme right, an issue for the Israeli security forces rather than for the understanding of Israel's politics, society, and prospects for the future. However, as Inbari convincingly claims in his introduction, they are, in fact, of great consequence, both for understanding contemporary Israel and for theoretical considerations. Their potential for provocation is considerable, and within the context of the delicate situation of the Middle Eastern conflict, their historical importance outweighs their actual numbers. They claim the right to a justified interpretation of the fundamentals of religion and nationality (understood as one) and challenge the acceptable boundaries of Israeli belief systems, asking tough questions regarding the meaning of Jewish existence on the Land of Israel. While their connection to canonical Jewish texts is one of their defining features, they are part of a global fundamentalist phenomenon, and Inbari shows how their attraction reaches out beyond Judaism to Christian fundamentalists of North America.

Motti Inbari's book is a detailed, nuanced, and profound exploration of the main groups and individuals that constitute the fundamentalist right in Israel, and that have the resurrection of the temple as the basis of their ideology. First to be presented and discussed is Rabbi Israel Ariel and his Temple Institute. The narrative told by Rabbi Ariel, on his mystical enthusiasm following the 1967 war, especially when as a soldier he was assigned as a guard on the sacred mountain, exactly where, by his calculations, Kodesh Hakodashim stood in ancient times, is a prototypical story of the emergence of a fundamentalist. Inbari adds to this story the activities...