Against the backdrop of heavy rioting on the Temple Mount and inside Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday, a group of prominent rabbis and politicians on Sunday evening called upon the Jewish public to forge a stronger bond with the site, and to ascend the Temple Mount with increased vigor.
The declarations came during a conference at the Heichal Shlomo center in Jerusalem, which was attended by Rabbis Dov Lior, Yaakov Medan, Yuval Cherlow, and Elyakim Levanon, among others. MKs Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) Uri Ariel (National Union), Ariyeh Eldad (National Union), Michael Ben-Ari (National Union), and Uri Orbach (The Jewish Home) were also in attendance, along with Jerusalem Deputy Mayor David Hadari and Likud member Moshe Feiglin.
News of the gathering, which was organized in part by the Temple Institute – a Jerusalem-based organization dedicated to researching and, eventually, rebuilding the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount – was seen as one of the causes of Sunday’s unrest in the capital, after Islamic groups got wind of the rabbis’ intention to publicly call for Jews to ascend the mount and mobilized their followers to the mount as well, "in its defense."
But Temple Institute Director Yehuda Glick, who welcomed the series of speakers at the event, began by invoking the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
, telling the crowd, "Before he was murdered, [Rabin] said that the greatest danger facing democracy in Israel was the surrender to violence."
"Yet, recent events [in the capital] show an alarming phenomenon of police actually caving in to Palestinian violence on the Temple Mount."
Thus was the tone of the conference, in which Glick and other speakers additionally spoke out against what they labeled "discrimination" against religious Jews who wish to visit the site.
"When a visibly Jewish person wants to go onto the mount, they are made to wait, sometimes as long as an hour, while police subject them to humiliating security checks and searches," said Yosef Rabin, who is affiliated with an organization called The Movement for the Establishment of the Temple.
"Meanwhile, secular Israelis and non-Jewish tourists are allowed to enter the site freely. One of the messages here tonight, in addition to the call on Jews to increase their presence at the Temple Mount, is to call attention to, and hopefully put an end to, this discrimination by police."
"It’s absurd to me that the only other place I know of where Jews are forbidden from praying, on a state level, is Mecca," Rabin added. "But we’re talking about the Temple Mount – the holiest site in Judaism."
Rabbi Yaakov Medan, one of the heads of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Elon Shvut, addressed the crowd in a similar vein, saying, "There are many people who believe that the police are leftists, or anti-Jewish."
"But I can tell you that the police are neither leftists nor are they anti-Jewish," he continued. "They are two things – one, they are able to identify the side which has momentum, and two, they prefer less work. Therefore, they will often assist the side with momentum, in order to make their lives easier."
In the meantime, Medan went on to explain, it was the Arabs who had the momentum on their side, and therefore the police preferred to keep Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, out of concern for Arab reactions.
"But if Jews were to increase their presence, keep coming to the Temple Mount, and if they get thrown out, come back and file a complaint," Medan said, "then we would gain the momentum, and I’m not talking about a few people here. I’m talking about hundreds and thousands."
Other rabbis discussed the recent halachic prohibitions that had been issued by prominent haredi rabbis, forbidding Jewish entry onto the Temple Mount out of concerns of ritual purity. Many high-profile rabbis, such as Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiya Yosef and the Lithuanian haredi Rabbi Shalom Yosef Elyashiv have very publicly announced rulings that forbid all Jews from going to the Temple Mount.
"But this is simply because they’re afraid that people who don’t know where they can or can’t go, will go up and enter the truly forbidden places," said RabbiYosef Elboim, who heads The Movement for the Establishment of the Temple. "If we were able to go up there and mark where it is permissible to go and were it is forbidden, I believe these rabbis would change their rulings," he added.
"Unfortunately, given the current climate, we cannot do that right now."
The rabbis weren’t the only ones to make such calls. At the conclusion of the conference, MK Hotovely told the Jerusalem Post
that she believed a stronger bond needed to be forged between the Temple Mount and the Jewish people.
"And the way to do that is to declare it," she said. "The way to do that is to go there. True, this is something the rabbinical world is divided on at the moment, but I think it’s something that the Jewish people should begin to do more."
Asked if she believed calls to increase Jewish visits to the mount would only inflame recent tensions in the area, Hotovely said she believed the opposite was true.
"The more we back away from the Temple Mount, the more violence will increase. And not only will it increase, she added, it will spread to other parts of Jerusalem, to the Kotel for example."