The Issue of the Temple Mount

by Rabbi Levi Zipperstein

Introduction

The common knowledge of our time is that the vast majority of Rabbis of this generation have prohibited the Jewish people from entering the Temple Mount (Har HaBayit), the holiest site in Judaism. The Temple Mount is the site of where the Beit HaMikdash (the Jewish Temple) once stood and the place where the Moslems have erected one mosque, the al-Aqsa and a site of pilgrimage, the Dome of the Rock. The supposed restriction of Jewish entrance imposed by the rabbis has been proclaimed because under usual circumstances, when the Temple is standing, a level of holiness must be attained before permission is granted to a Jew to enter the area. There are greater and lesser restrictions according to the place one seeks to go on the Temple Mount. The Rabbis state that since the actual location of the Temple structure is not known for certain, it is unclear where a Jew may go without first attaining the most extreme level of purification (mandated by Jewish Law when entering the confines of certain areas of the Mount and when the areas are either under the sovereignty of the Jewish people or the Temple is standing). Therefore, a rabbis have pronounced the prohibition that a Jew must not walk on the entire area of the Temple Mount. The assumed conclusion regarding the Temple Mount is that no Jew should shoulder the risk of incurring the punishment of Kareit. Kareit is the divine punishment of cutting off of one's soul from the World to come and is imposed upon a Jew entering the confines of certain areas of the Temple Mount in an impure state. These laws apply during normal circumstances. Let it be clear that normal circumstances in Jewish law assumes the existence of the Temple and the practices that accompany it...

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