Av, 5768
August, '08This article
appeared in Hebrew on the NRG Website.
 On the 19th of every Hebrew
month I have the privilege to guide a group of Jews on the Temple Mount.
At seven thirty in the morning, I wait at the main entrance to the
Western Wall for the people who will join me. The people who come to my
'tour' are not average tourists. Before they arrive, they purify
themselves in a ritual bath, put on non-leather shoes and make sure that
they know where it is permissible by Jewish law to walk on the Temple
Mount.
This week is part of the period of mourning for our destroyed, holy
Temple. As most of my readers will probably not be joining me for my
guided tour of the Temple Mount, I invite you to join me here for a
virtual tour. I hope that someday you will join me for the real thing.
At seven thirty we enter the side entrance that leads to the Mugrabim
Gate. Well, we don't really enter. Other groups of tourists from around
the world or groups of Israelis who look like tourists sail right past
the security. But for us – the Jews who look like Jews – there is a
special procedure. We must undergo a body check. On the surface, it
seems like the police are searching for weapons, as is the norm in all
public places since the Oslo 'Peace' Accords descended upon us. But
actually, they are searching for something much more dangerous. They are
searching for prayer books. One time, a particularly industrious
policeman caught me with a Grace after Meals card that I always carry
with me in my wallet. I began to laugh and almost got myself arrested.
After it is clear that we are free of any dangerous prayer materials, we
undergo a briefing. The group is sternly informed that it is forbidden
to pray on the Temple Mount – the site of the Jewish holy Temple.
"Whoever prays," the policeman warns, "will be arrested, and will not be
allowed on the Temple Mount next time." After that degrading ceremony,
we ascend to the holiest place in the world. The yearning for this place
and for the Temple that will be built upon it has preserved our identity
for close to two thousand years.
We gingerly step onto the wooden bridge that will bring us to the
Mugrabim Gate, above the Western Wall.
Before we enter the gate, I ask my group to look down below, to the
Herodian street that was uncovered in the archeological digs in and
around the Temple Mount. This is the street on which Rabbi Akiva and
Rabbi Tarfon walked. On the day of the destruction of the Temple, one
thousand nine hundred and thirty eight years ago, Roman soldiers toppled
the huge stones of the Western Wall onto the street below. This pile of
rocks was unearthed and wisely left by the archeologists as it had been
found. It provides us with a snapshot of the day that the Temple was
destroyed.
With awe in our hearts we enter the Temple Mount. The awe is almost
immediately sidelined by what feels like an emotional sledgehammer to
the head. Arab children are playing soccer. Other Arabs sit in the shade
and chew on a sandwich. The Temple Mount looks like a Moslem park.
Our holy Temple of the past peeks out at us from everywhere, but you
have to be able to see past the sorry picture of the present.
Exquisitely crafted marble pillars from the Second Temple period are
scattered about the Mount. Remnants of the gold plating that covered the
pillars can still be detected in the cracks.
A Moslem wakf guard joins our group. He keeps his eyes on our
lips. If he sees someone whispering a prayer, he immediately informs the
policeman, who will call out extra forces to arrest the criminal.
And now, we stand at the entrance to the Hulda Gates. It is from here
that the Jews who came from near and far for the Jewish holidays would
enter the Temple Mount. It was here that, after days of walking to
Jerusalem, they would finally see the Temple in all its glory. We can
imagine how, when they would come face to face with the house of G-d,
they would bow down with intense devotion. We stand silently as we face
the Dome of the Rock that covers the Foundation Stone, the site of the
Holy of Holies. We tightly seal our lips. It is forbidden for Jews to
pray.
We continue. Off to the side we see what looks like a pile of junk. We
approach the pile. This is not junk, but huge, ancient wooden planks.
When a fire broke out at the Dome of the Rock a number of years ago,
large amounts of these planks were removed from there. A Jewish man
managed to buy some of those planks from an Arab junk dealer. He sent
them for botanical examination and for Carbon-14 dating. The tests
showed that the planks are made of cedar and cypress trees – the very
same trees cited in the Book of Kings – the trees that Hiram the king of Tzor sent to King Solomon to build the First Temple. The laboratory
tests date the trees to the First Temple period. When a 2000 year old
boat was discovered in the Sea of Galilee, a museum was built in Ginosar
to house the vessel that may have carried the Jew who founded
Christianity. But original remnants of the First Temple? Just throw them
into the junk pile. That is how Israel relates to its Jewish identity.
We continue to walk. The Arabs have been digging through the center of
the mountain for years and have already cleared an immense area that now
houses the largest mosque in the Middle East. They do their best to
destroy any remnant of the Jewish Temple. The Israeli government allows
them to dig and destroy as they please. Piles of debris - chock full of
ancient archeological artifacts - are regularly trucked off to Jerusalem
garbage dumps. Jews who pick through the piles of debris have found
amazing artifacts from the First and Second Temples. The gray tone of
the debris piqued the interest of the Temple loyalists. Laboratory tests
confirmed what they suspected. The dominant factor in the debris is ash.
One thousand nine hundred and thirty eight years ago, a huge fire burned
here.
We reach the entrance of the sanctuary. This is where the priests raised
their hands to bless Israel. We stand in silence. Strong emotions of
awesome sanctity and horrifying degradation storm through our hearts.
And here we end our virtual tour. I have presented you with just a taste
of what we experience on the Temple Mount. Whoever wishes to learn more
is welcome to join me on the 19th of every Hebrew month.
The famous, prophetic poet, Uri Tzvi Greenberg, wrote: "He who rules the
Mount rules the Land." The Temple Mount is the beating heart of the Land
of Israel. Our national heart is no longer circulating the blood to our
organs. On the periphery – Sderot and Ashkelon – gangrene has begun to
spread.
When Jews give the keys to the Mount to a foreign nation, they forgo the
justice of their claim to any other part of the Land. The most important
weapon that a nation can have – belief in the justice of its cause – has
been denied us, and we steadily retreat. If we deny the Mount, we cannot
claim that our cause is just. Not in Jerusalem and not in Tel Aviv.
If we want to return to ourselves – to our moral health, our culture,
our security and our destiny – if we want to bring peace to our land and
to the world, we must remember the destroyed house of G-d and
tenaciously return to the Temple Mount.
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The following article appeared on Sunday, 2 Av (August 3) in Hebrew
on the Arutz 7 website.
 In this series on the expulsion from Gush
Katif, we asked the chairman of the Manhigut Yehudit faction of the
Likud, Moshe Feiglin, for his perspective on the failure of the struggle
against the expulsion.
"On the tactical level," said Feiglin, "we staged some tremendous
demonstrations. But there was no real struggle because we did not allow
ourselves to win. The spiritual and political leadership of the struggle
set its goals on convincing and not on winning."
According to Feiglin, there were four main points at which the
anti-expulsion struggle could have triumphed: blocking of the roads – if
it would have continued and been supported by the spiritual and
political leadership of the struggle; conscientious objection; breaking
out of Kfar Maimon and the struggle inside Gush Katif – if there had
been a struggle and if the people there had not been convinced by the
leadership to go to the synagogue to say Psalms instead of fighting for
their land.
"The leadership did not want to triumph," Feiglin stated. "It wanted
demonstrations. The youth and adults who came to save Gush Katif were
dedicated and willing to sacrifice a lot. But the settler leadership was
bound to an ideology that placed the state on a pedestal above all other
values. Many rabbis did not even support conscientious objection."
"Whoever thinks that the state is the supreme value edges uncomfortably
close to fascism," Feiglin added. Religious Zionism must conduct an
honest and searing soul search. Although there is much to be admired in
its philosophy, it nevertheless collapsed at the moment of truth. Some
of the Religious Zionist leaders turned its value system upside down, or
at least sideways. The state cannot be above all."
"On a more fundamental level," Feiglin said, "this tragedy came about
because the state is sick and in a type of auto-immune reaction, it
attacked the public most loyal to it. This disease cannot be cured
simply by repeating that we are right. Everybody knows that we are
right. But nevertheless, the Right's political power has shrunk. The
average Israeli is waiting for us to propose a viable alternative. That
alternative must be faith-based, Jewish leadership for Israel and not
just a quest for a few more Knesset seats.
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"How can we go up? Our
brothers have melted our hearts, saying that they (the Canaanites)
are greater and mightier than we are." (Deuteronomy 1:28)