A band of messianic Jews who consider themselves ordained to build the “Third Temple” were thwarted Monday in their plans to plant the first stone of the holy edifice. But they vowed to continue.
Police halted Gershom Solomon, longtime leader of the Temple Mount Faithful, and about a dozen supporters who were carting a large stone to the Temple Mount in the Old City, with the news media in tow.
They were told that since Moslem prayers were in progress, they could not enter the area.
The group began a sit-down strike at the Mograbi Gate leading to the mount. The activists said they would not leave until they could position their stone.
“This stone will be erected on the Temple Mount — if not now, then later; if not today, then tomorrow,” Solomon declared. “And a second stone is ready and waiting, and then a third.”
The Temple Mount is the third holiest site of the Islamic faith, after Mecca and Medina. Two shrines, Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, are usually packed with worshipers, who are extremely sensitive to intruders.
Clashes have occurred in the broad, open space when ultranationalist Jews, often led by right-wing politicians, have made provocative forays into the area.
To keep the peace, the government has banned Jewish worship on the mount. Jews pray directly below at the Western Wall. But Jewish extremists have vowed to reclaim the entire area.
RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT DISAPPROVES
The Temple Mount Faithful claim to have readied blueprints for the Third Temple, designed by a panel of architects whom they refuse to identify.
Their efforts have met with almost universal disapproval in Israel’s religious establishment.
The former Ashkenazic chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, a nationalist with strong religious attachments to the Temple Mount, has called Solomon’s activities a travesty of biblical prophesies about rebuilding the Temple.
That would be done by divine intervention, “certainly not by Gershom Solomon,” Goren has said.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, believes the Temple Mount Faithful are well motivated but misguided.
He approves of their “educational message” that “the Temple Mount belongs to the Jewish people and has been taken over by aliens.”
Lau says the medieval rabbis were divided over whether the Temple would be rebuilt by God or by the Messiah. But in either case, it would not occur until the ingathering of the exiles was completed and the Messianic Age had commenced, Lau said.
“We must keep patiently praying for that to happen,” he said.
In the Western Wall plaza just below the Temple Mount, hundreds of Kohanim draped in prayer shawls energetically blessed thousands of worshipers in the traditional “Birkat Hakohanim” event that takes place during Hol Hamoed (the intermediate days of) Sukkot. They hardly took notice of the Temple Mount Faithful nearby.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
