FROM THE WRITINGS OF THE RAMBAM

On Tuesday, 4 Heshvan 5026, we left Acre to ascend to Jerusalem midst danger, and I entered the Great Holy Place and prayed there on hursday, 6 Heshvan. These two days... I vowed would be holy days of prayer and joy in G-d and of drinking and drinking. May G-d help me in all these endures and may I be able to fulfill my vow to G-d. Amen.

And just as I merited to pray there in its ruins, so may I and all Israel see it consoled speedily. Amen.

(Sefer HaCharedim Mitzvat Tshuva Chapter 3)

Lema'an Beit Hashem Elokeinu

Now is the time to speak up about the Mountain ofthe Beit HaMikdash. Here are two recent items which I must speak up against and condemn.

1. Since Sukkot, Jews have been barred from entering the Temple Mount. Although the Kotel has been closed for short periods for security purposes, never has the Temple Mount been closed even for a minute to Moslems. It is a terrible injustice to bar Jews from entering the Temple Mount.

2. Recently, the restraining order against 13 Chai VeKayam activists has been renewed. Please note that although there have been Arabs who have committed violent actions on the Temple Mount, never has one Arab been barred from entering the Temple Mount. These restraining orders are inequitable and unjust and should be removed.

Although a minority of Rabbanim in Israel actually forbid entering the Temple Mount and others are against it (although admitting it is halachically permissible to enter certain areas if one dips in a mikva or ma'ayan first and is aware of the boundaries), the Temple Mount remains our Holiest sight, and barring Jews from entering and praying there is a crime against the Jewish People and against humanity.

If the fate of the place of our Holy Temple concerns you, you can email or fax the following government officials. (If you have additional numbers or email addresses, I would appreciate it. --email: Yirmiyahu Fischer yirmi@jer1.co.il )

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
Fax:  011-972--2-566-4838
email: prime-minister@likud.org.il

Avigdor Kahalani (Internal Security Minister)
Fax: 011-972-2-628-9243

Yuri Eddelstein
Fax: 011-972-2-618-138

SPECIAL REPORT/THE BATTLE FOR THE TEMPLE MOUNT

by: Yossi Klein Halevi

For nearly 30 years, an uneasy status quo prevailed on the Temple Mount- Jordan effectively controlling the site, Palestinians aspiring to it, and most Orthodox Jews considering it too holy to walk upon. Now, though, Yasser Arafat is doing his best to edge out the Jordanians, and an increasing number of Jews are asserting their own historical right.

The conflicting claims are threatening to turn what is already the region's most sensitive ground into a real flash point.

THEY WERE BACK AGAIN ON. Tisha Be'av, the summer fast day commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. As in previous years, a handful of members of the Temple Mount Faithful fringe group gathered near the Western Wall plaza to protest Muslim control of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, shouting into TV cameras about Jewish pride and Arab perfidy and government appeasement. Then, just as predictably, another handful of zealots from the far-right Hai Vekayam group - whose leader, Yehudah Etzion, was jailed in the mid 80s for plotting to blow up the Muslim Dome of the Rock as a prelude to the rebuilding of the Temple - were carried off by police after trying to illegally pray on the Mount. Both events received the requisite media coverage, confirming for much of the public that the demand for a formal Jewish presence on the Temple Mount remains a marginal issue even within the Orthodox community, championed only by fanatics and cranks. And yet later that same day - unreported by the media - a thousand religious Zionists, including rabbis and students from mainstream yeshivahs, silently gathered in the vaulted, tunnel-like entrance to the Temple Mount's "Cotton Gate," intending to pray on the Mount. They were blocked by a tight row of police. And so the mostly young men and women prayed where they stood, asking God to undo Israel's "shame" and restore the Temple: "Just as we've seen it in ruins, let us merit seeing its rebuilding." One man blew into a silver, thin-stemmed sort of trumpet - a replica of an instrument played in the ancient Temple - filling the dark tunnel with piercing, brassy sounds.

In the past, the Temple Mount was indeed a marginal, almost untouchable issue in the religious Zionist community. Preoccupied with settlement-building, and fearful of violating the rabbinical precept against treading on the ground that once held the Temple's inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies, religious Zionists simply avoided the issue, implicitly leaving the resolution of the Temple Mount conflict to messianic times. That passivity suited the Mount's Muslim guardians, wh object to all worshipers from other faiths praying there. BUT NOW THE ORTHODOX JEWish attitude is beginning to change. Partly it's the result of years of educational outreach. Tens of thousands of religious Zionists - including students in state-sponsored religious high schools - have attended lectures and slide presentations by organizations like the Temple Institute, a group funded partially by the government whose Jerusalem museum houses gold and silver replicas of Temple implements (ready for use in a rebuilt Temple), and which sponsored the Tisha Be'av gathering at the Cotton Gate.

The Netanyahu victory has raised expectations of a change in the so-called "status quo" - which grants Jews the right to visit but not pray on the Mount, and which gives Israeli police authority at its gates but Muslim officials control within. Netanyahu's government is the first to include in its coalition guidelines implicit support for Jewish prayer on the Mount, promising to "guarantee the rights of the Jews to pray in all the places holy to them." Already under pressure not to exacerbate tensions with the Palestinians, Netanyahu is unlikely to initiate any changes on the Mount for now. "The government has no intention of altering the status quo," promises Jerusalem mayor and Netanyahu confidant Ehud Olmert. And Temple Mount activists lost a major potential ally in August when justice minister Yaakov Neeman was forced to resign following allegations of wrongdoing. Neeman was the first serving minister ever to participate in prayers on the Mount - joining a small and private afternoon prayer group this past Tisha Be'av in the Makhkema, a building at the southern entrance to the Mount that serves as Border Police headquarters.

But the activists have begun an unprecedented dialogue with the new government. In mid July, Netanyahu adviser David Bar-Illan told them he sympathized with their position, on civil liberties grounds. "People used to smile when they'd mention us," says veteran activist Yisrael Medad. "Now we're taken seriously, and in some religious Zionist circles, very seriously."

Activists have presented the government with a list of demands, including establishing a tourist center overlooking the Mount, which would explain the site's significance for Jews; turning part of the Makhkema into asynagogue; and ending the veto power of the waqf, the Muslim Religious Trust, over Jewish prayer. And though none of those demands is likely to be met at this stage, Netanyahu is apparently receptive to allowing Jewish "study groups" onto the Mount, according to Nadav Shragai, a Ha'aretz reporter and author of a recent book on the Temple Mount conflict. "But he wants to be sure the study groups don't turn into prayer groups," says Shragai, adding that Netanyahu intends to include the prayer issue in final-status talks with the Palestinians.

ANY CHANGE IN THE STATUS QUO could result inviolence. The October 1990 Palestinian riot on the Mount, for example, which resulted in 17 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers, began with a false rumor that members of the Temple Mount Faithful were coming up to pray. Muslim authorities do not recognize Jewish claims. "There's no mention at all in Islam that this was the original site of the Temple," says Adnan Husseini, director of the waqf. If Jews were allowed up to pray, warns Hassan Tahbub, the Palestinian Authority's minister of religion, "of course there'd be violence."

Since 1967, all Israeli governments have endorsed the status quo - implemented on June 17, 1967, a mere week after the Six-Day War. Then-defense minister Moshe Dayan removed his shoes and sat on a prayer rug in the silver-domed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and told Muslim officials they would retain control of the Mount. It was, in effect, the first instance of Palestinian autonomy. By offering exclusive Muslim rights over the Mount, Dayan hoped to prevent the Arab-Israeli conflict from degenerating into a Muslim-Jewish holy war over the region's most sensitive ground.

If the political ban has held all these years without being seriously challenged by Orthodox Jews, that is because it has enjoyed near-total rabbinic support. The conventional reason for the rabbis' ban on entering any part of the Mount was that it prevented Jews from accidentally treading on the Holy of Holies - where the Ark of the Covenant stood and which only the High Priest was permitted to enter, and only then on Yom Kippur. But there were other motives for the caution: the sense that all matters relating to the Temple are the messiah's prerogative; and the fear of bloodshed if Jews prayed on the Mount.

And yet, just as the political constraint against a Jewish presence there may be weakening, so too is the rabbinic taboo. There is a growing sense within the religious Zionist camp that the unqualified ban may be overly stringent. Rabbinic authorities through the centuries unanimously agreed that the Holy of Holies would have been located in what is today the Dome of the Rock - and so, argue activists, walking the parameters of the Mount, and especially the southern area around Al-Aqsa, is spiritually "safe." Privately, some of the most respected rabbinic authorities - including former chief rabbis Mordechai Eliyahu and Avraham Shapira - have allowed followers to go up to the Mount, provided they do so without provocation or demonstrations, and avoid the Dome of the Rock. "They've let it be known to people they consider responsible that they don't want the Mount to be left without Jews," says Medad. And while the current Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau won't endorse "going up," he won't condemn it, and merely cautions against entering forbidden areas - implicitly acknowledging that some parts of the Mount are halakhically accessible.

Though only a small minority of Orthodox Jews ascend the Mount, to do so is no longer considered a violation by many mainstream religious Zionists. In recent months, classes from half-a-dozen hesder, or military, yeshivahs, led by their rabbis (including Yehudah Amital, religious Zionism's leading dove), have quietly gone up.

Every Tuesday, a small group led by a 45-year-old hasid named Yosef Elbaum meets outside the Mughrabi Gate, above the Western Wall plaza. After submitting identification to Border Police, who check their names against a list of banned Jewish "troublemakers," they enter the massive, green-painted wooden doors. They are immediately flanked by an Israeli policeman and a sulking waqf official, who watches the lips of Elbaum and his friends to ensure that no illicit prayers slip through. The group - bent on demonstrating a Jewish presence - traverses the perimeter of the Mount, attracting stares from picnicking Arab families under pine trees and boys playing soccer near the Dome of the Rock. A waqf official, recognizing Elbaum, greets him in Yiddish: "Vos macht ir?" he asks with a smile - How are you? Says Elbaum: "There doesn't have to be a war over the Mount. If 10,000 Jews go up, the waqf will appoint 10,000 guards to accompany them and make sure they don't pray. But it will become a part of life."

Winning the right to Jewish prayer is merely the activists' interim goal; the ultimate goal is a rebuilt Temple. For Orthodox Jews, who pray for its resurrection three times a day, the Temple embodies Judaism's attempt to sanctify the material world: Just as Shabbat and the holidays are intended to create sacred time, so was the Temple meant to create sacred space. According to tradition, the Temple was the place where God violated His remoteness and revealed Himself to human beings. "The yearning for the Temple is a longing for the renewal of the dialogue between God and Israel," says the NRP's Hanan Porat, who heads the Knesset's Temple Mount lobby and helped conquer the Mount, as a paratrooper, in 1967. I don't expect the rabbinic establishment to initiate Temple Mount activity, only not to interfere," Porat says. "The Jews will return to the Mount through grass-roots pressure, not through a meeting of rabbis deciding to go up. On this issue, the rabbis will follow the people."

(You can mail feedback to: feedback@jreport.virtual.co.il)

IN THE NEWS

(Arutz-7 News Brief: Friday, October 11, 1996)

COURT REJECTS TEMPLE MOUNT PETITION

ARABS THREATEN

(Arutz-7 News: Sunday, October 13, 1996)

COURT REJECTS ANOTHER TEMPLE MOUNT PETITION, BUT LEAVES DOOR OPEN

(Arutz-7 News: Monday, October 14, 1996)

SYNAGOGUE ON TEMPLE MOUNT?

(Arutz-7 News: Tuesday, October 15, 1996)

REVISED PETITION SUBMITTED AGAINST TEMPLE MOUNT MOSQUE

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