ISRAEL: NEW FANATICS AND OLD

...The other barrier to ascent concerns the spirit, rather than the law, of Judaism...

...Why did the Lord do this to us...

...In 1969 an Australian Christian tourist tried to set fire to the Aksa Mosque, and in 1982 an American Jewish immigrant killed several guards and civilians while shooting his way toward the Mosque of Omar...

...This is not at all surprising: the return of Jews to the Mount, the redemption of the Mount from the hands of non-Jews, and the restoration of sacrifices are all part of their "messianic agenda...

...Such confidence in its world-historic mission enables the religious right to march on, brushing all criticism aside, identifying completely with government policy in Lebanon and pressuring the government to expand settlement on the West Bank...

...This is the essence of Zionism...

...The Conference looks upon the present situation, in which the rights of all religions except Judaism are safeguarded, as grievous...

...During the election campaign of 1977, the future prime minister promised Gershon Saloman that if he were elected, Jews would be permitted to pray on the Mount...

...Therefore we shall overcome the shame of concessions and retreats, as we have shaken off the impurities of exile...

...In these difficult hours we must return to our sources, to our rabbis who set our course...

...The conference produced this statement of principles: The Temple Mount, the place of the Temple, is holy to the Jewish people...

...Hundreds were sent to the Sinai, both to force the government to reverse its decision and to stage a rehearsal for later action in Judea and Samaria...

...Because the attainment of a state of complete ritual purity is virtually impossible, the rabbis have ruled that ascent to the Temple area is forbidden...

...Who else will create this order...

...it is also much more...

...The connection between the people and the land is analogous to the connection between the body and the soul...

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...The Conference opposes illegal actions on the Temple Mount...

...Here a distinction must be made between the place where the Temple itself stood and the area around it...

...The withdrawal was finally understood as a mere delay in the messianic process—a delay that must be overcome by intensified settlement on the West Bank and an eventual return to the Sinai...

...Gush Emunim reaffirmed its mission to press the redemptive process forward...

...The sources, especially the utterances and scant writings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kuk, provided guidelines for a response...

...The students were followers of Rabbi Yisrael Ariel...

...Rabbi Yehoshua Zuckerman articulated the thoughts of many: A great tragedy has occurred...

...There were three major reasons...

...The Conference calls upon the government of Israel to find a fit expression for Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount and a proper arrangement for Jewish prayer there according to the decisions of the Chief Rabbinate...

...But a more formidable challenge arose when voices of protest began to be heard from its own ranks...

...The building, still inhabited by Arab families, had once belonged to Jews...

...To these people, settlement activity, as conducted by Gush Emunim in Hebron, and actions by the Israeli Defense Force (the army), such as the invasion of Lebanon, are manifestations of the messianic process...

...Rabbi 342 Hayim Druckman, the founder of the Mazad party, proclaimed: "Our reality brings us to the building of the Third Temple...

...The most recent assault was different—a well-planned effort involving many people and linked to a definite goal...

...Characteristic of this perspective is the great success, in Zionist yeshivot, of The Great Period, a work whose significance lies in its literal application of messianic categories to contemporary events...

...Though all Jerusalem is at last, after 2,000 years of dreams and prayers, under Israeli sovereignty, the Temple Mount has been surrendered to the violently anti-Zionist Supreme Muslim Council, the WAQE . . . The Faithful of the Temple Mount . . . are striving to achieve and ensure freedom of access to and worship on the Temple Mount...

...These rights, he said, could be asserted by continued attempts to ascend the Temple Mount...

...Did we not build Azmona on the foundations of pure faith...

...Have we hurt the cause...

...In December 1982, the annual conference of the Faithful of the Temple Mount, usually attended by only a handful of members, attracted hundreds of participants...

...we are drawing close to a great future, in which we shall celebrate the Passover fully...

...The war in Lebanon raised a new set of issues for the religious right...

...First, the Faithful restated the absolute and pressing obligation to redeem the Temple Mount from the hands of non-Jews...

...But even without such general understanding and conviction, the right and the righteous push on...

...Second, lectures delivered at the conference reviewed the state of the current struggle to assert Jewish sovereignty over the Mount...

...Bnei Akiba, the religious Zionist youth movement, introduced the issue for the first time this year at its annual conference...

...No moral defense was presented by the rabbis who responded to Rabbi Amital, as if the sense of acting in a drama of redemption had released them from such responsibilities...

...the ground in Jewish law has been prepared to permit ascent...

...In its revulsion from what it regards as the dependency inherent in the state of exile, the radical right places a fierce emphasis on Jewish autonomy...

...With evident horror he quoted a statement that appeared in a religious journal at the time of the bombing of Beirut: "We must stay in the Land even at the price of war...

...Gush Emunim and Bnei Akiba, two major groups of the extremist nationalist religious right, have become newly active on this issue...

...More than that, we have to initiate war in order to conquer and free the Land...

...UNDERSTANDABLY, THE CAMP DAVID AGREEMENTS came as a shock to the religious right...

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...It would be better, in their view, if the rest of the nation understood God's purposes as they do: the end station could be reached much more quickly if it were so...

...The statement is meant to be taken literally...

...Bnei Akiba will now include the subject of the Temple Mount on its agenda, out of a deep expectation that the Temple will be rebuilt [and] seen in our day...

...Settlement, for the groups of the radical right, is not simply a political process, a way of annexing territories...

...In the war for the Peace of the Galilee our military powers were revealed again, and our image as a military power was enhanced among the nations," said Eliezer Waldman...

...However, the very fact that the Temple Mount has become a concern of this activist movement is one more sign that the Mount is becoming a contested political issue...

...We have been confused since Yamit," he said, "and fail to assert our national and religious rights...

...This period of self-doubt was genuine but brief...

...The withdrawal caused serious self-questioning within the religious right...

...All this is both known and dismissed by the zealots who have planted settlements on the West Bank and have now turned to the Temple Mount...

...The religious right's increased interest in the Temple Mount has recently led to the founding of a yeshivah for the training of priests—the "Crown of the Priests" yeshivah in an old building in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem...

...Its majority gave total support to the war, in all its stages...

...Kaufman's arguments resemble those of Rabbi Zalman Koren, who has also demarcated areas outside the Temple where he is certain that Jews may pray...

...For the religious right, settlement is also the empirical expression of Jewish self-determination...

...Rabbis and activists associated with Gush Emunim are working for a change in the status 341 of the Temple Mount...

...Israel's wars are seen as miraculous victories advancing this process...

...First, problems of religious law concerning ascent to the Mount, and second, the 338 dominance of a moderate leadership that was not fired by a desire to "push [toward]" and establish Jewish sovereignty over the Mount...

...Finally, the conference provided a variety of challenges to Jewish laws that hinder ascent...

...In a similar vein, a noted Orthodox professor of philosophy has said that "not only the building of the Temple but also the erection of an altar . . . require a special inspiration, an inspiration of prophecy . . . and without it, heaven forbid that we ascend unto the Lord to carry out the sacred service...

...At the same conference, Rabbi Druckman told his admirers that...

...The religious right found it easy to dismiss most criticism of the war...

...Kaufman claimed that since the boundaries of the Temple are now known, there is no reason why Jewish prayer, outside of those boundaries, should not be permitted...

...Police, after the incident, found in Rabbi Ariel's apartment a cache of weapons, maps, and diagrams of the Temple Mount...

...Without the Land of Israel we are not the People of Israel...

...Particular attention was paid to the activities of a recently organized Knesset committee whose aim it is to reverse the 1967 law giving authority over the Mount to the WAQE Although this committee has made no great strides toward its goal, the Israeli government could choose to make it a more effective body at any time...

...The script—if one insists on reading it literally—moves inevitably to the Temple Mount...

...Particularly charged with meaning is the 1967 Six-Day War, which is compared to the miraculous victories of the Maccabees...

...It is difficult to imagine anything that could do more harm to the possibility of peace than a change in the status of the Temple Mount...

...And indeed, for 15 years the issue excited very little controversy...

...The "goy" cannot be permitted to interject rational political considerations or to impose pressures—whether the "goy" is the United States or the part of Israel that does not share the messianist-nationalist orientation...

...Criticism from abroad was anti-Semitism—domestic criticism, self-hatred or even treachery...

...Our work for the Land of Israel is not done out of bitterness or disappointment but out of certain faith in the absolute divine imperative regarding the renewal of Israel upon its inheritance...

...And while the students who took part in it were clearly extremists, they are supported by a larger following of religious and secular nationalists who are determined to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount...

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...For [this is the teaching] we have received from our masters: the third Temple will be built by God himself...

...We have proven that we can make autonomous decisions without considering what the 'goyim' think...

...So what...

...During the Passover week of 1983 the Temple was the subject of a well-attended two-day conference sponsored by the Crown of the Priests yeshivah...

...They are animated by an ideology that permits them to ignore the political and moral claims of others: they insist that they know God's will...

...and by the introduction into the public schools of a new curriculum on sacrifices...

...Moshe Dayan, the architect of this policy, stated that Israeli soldiers will be found only outside the Mount itself...

...Have we revealed our own weakness...

...Their leader is Gershon Saloman, a seventh-generation Jerusalemite Revisionist who joined the right-wing Tehiyah party after Begin signed the Camp David agreements...

...Just as the West Bank could not have been settled if the Israeli government had not supported that policy, the Temple Mount will not come under Jewish control if the government does not wish it so...

...Saloman restated the beliefs of his group in a recent letter to the Jerusalem Post: Fifteen years ago Israel liberated the Old City and all Jerusalem from Arab occupation...

...Settlement and, if necessary, conquest of the land are seen here as essential to the messianic process...

...The four men, yeshivah students, had intended to perform a Passover sacrifice there...

...339 In the view of the religious right, the modern Zionist movement acts as God's agent in returning his people from exile and establishing "the third commonwealth...

...Are we obligated to conquer every inch that was promised to Abraham, our father...

...they do not speak of "hastening the end...

...For years the activities of the Faithful were conducted in muted tones and attracted few people...

...Yet the Temple Mount has remained a Muslim enclave...

...We have claimed that our task is to create order in the world," said Eliezer Waldman, "an order of faith and holiness...

...Two main factors motivated the position of the Orthodox on the Temple Mount in 1967...

...Second, the war 340 was understood as a war concerning Judea and Samaria...

...There had been two previous assaults upon the Temple Mount since Israel conquered the Old City in 1967...

...Did we err...

...The troops, in the form of yeshivah students, rabbis, and settlers, are prepared to move...

...These young men are not involved in political organizing...

...After the 1967 war, the Israeli government acted quickly to demonstrate its recognition that the Temple Mount is sacred to Muslims too, and that it had no designs on the site...

...Only on the basis of these sources can we stand firm in the struggle over the future of Zionism that now rages within our people...

...Such impurity is said to derive from direct or indirect contact with dead bodies...

...The Knesset committee is pressing for legislative changes that would permit ascent and the construction of a synagogue...

...I t is hardly surprising then that growing circles within the nationalist religious right have recently shown an increased interest in the Temple Mount...

...The radical religious right is not united in a single organization or party...

...The primary religious legal problem is one of purity...

...It represents God's rule in his Land...

...There cannot be full redemption of the People and the Land of Israel as long as the Temple Mount is ruled by an alien power...

...Because they are based on a study of Biblical and religious sources, Koren's conclusions have won great respect within religious circles...

...First, the right believes that the real borders of Israel extend into southern Lebanon, and a war of conquest is justified...

...This policy, though by no means based on considerations of Jewish religious law, was acceptable to the vast majority of Israel's Orthodox Jews...

...The right believed that the destruction of the PLO would relieve pressure for territorial compromise and Palestinian selfdetermination on the West Bank...

...In the centuries since the destruction of the Temple, hope for its reconstruction has been transformed into a distant, indeed an eschatological vision...

...There is no retreat from the Redemption, which has begun...

...With the aid of slides and diagrams, he attempted to prove that the site of the Temple is north of the Mosque of Omar...

...The Israeli government will guarantee general security but will not intervene in the internal guarding [of the sites...

...The pioneers carry the flag of Jewish strength...

...Arab population of East Jerusalem—indeed, through the entire Arab world...

...The symbols of holiness are earthly and concrete...

...A collection of authoritative sources was cited to legitimate the call for realization, in the present, of what has long been an eschatological vision...

...Harry Kahn, to whom we wish to express our gratitude...

...This would mean that the Muslim shrine would not have to be destroyed in order for the Temple to be reconstructed...

...the Kingdom of Israel has been rebuilt...

...These are Muslim mosques and should be autonomous...

...His successor, sharing his revisionist ideology and his confidence in Jewish might, may well be prepared to go further...

...But in the past two or three years, the issue of the Temple Mount's status has been taken up by the right wing of the religious Zionist camp...

...Asher Kaufman, a physicist, presented archeological evidence that he claimed identifies the exact location of the Foundation Stone and of the Temple itself...

...The rhetoric of redemption in such addresses is used by people who believe firmly that the footsteps of the Messiah can be heard: This is already the middle of the Redemption...

...As to the former, a 16th-century legal code, the Shulhan Aruch, states that "anyone who enters the place where the Temple stood incurs the death penalty, because all Jews today have been violated by the impurity of death...

...Only one small, extremist group has been dedicated to disrupting the existing peaceful arrangements...

...In his opening remarks, Rabbi Aviner said that "we must not forget that the ultimate purpose of the ingathering of the exiles is the building of the Temple...

...Rabbi Yehuda Amital, the head of Yeshivat Etzion, one of the most illustrious institutions associated with the religious Zionist movement, became the leader of religious opposition to the war...

...Control of the Mount was left in the hands of the highest Muslim authority, the WAQF...

...And as they do, they push the entire region closer to Armageddon...

...by the publication of rabbinic opinions endorsing prayer on the Mount and the claim to Jewish sovereignty there...

...The Faithful of the Temple Mount" have never numbered more than 100 members, among them a good many Jews from England and America...

...They do, however, help to create an atmosphere of anticipation in which extremist activists can thrive...

...Delays are regarded as backsliding and those who cause them as betrayers of the vocation of the chosen...

...The Aksa Mosque and the Mosque of Omar are the holiest Muslim temples in the area...

...This eschatological spirit is evident in a statement made by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Nissim in 1967: "We have done all that human hands can accomplish...

...Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who had gained fame as the militant rabbi of Yamit, published a pamphlet in which, on the basis of Biblical evidence, he described Lebanon as the very heart of the Land of Israel...

...It is made up of the more extreme elements of several different groups: the National Religious party, the Tehiyah party, Herut, Gush Emunim, Mazad (a new party), and the settlement organizations...

...Under the direction of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, 30 young men study the talmudic tractate on sacrifices there...

...There is no room for doubt here," said Hanan Porat, a leading organizer of the Gush Emunim and now a Member of the Knesset representing the Tehiyah party: Even according to the minimalists [he continued], Southern Lebanon is part of the Land of Israel...

...The last sentence is comforting in its moderation...

...Then we shall no longer say "the Passover lamb that our fathers used to eat when the Temple was standing," but rather, "the Passover lamb that we eat in the Temple...

...Third and finally, the war was seen as a great demonstration of Israeli strength...

...Amital spoke out sharply against the fundamentalism of those who claim that Sidon and Tyre are as much a part of historic Israel as Tel Aviv and Judea, and therefore must be retaken: It may be possible to say that Lebanon is our possession according to the divine promise...

...We have not come to rule over the Muslims' holy places or to interfere in their religious life...

...The new Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Mordecai Eliahu has suggested, on the basis of Koren's opinions, that a synagogue and yeshivah be constructed in the permitted zone...

...The rabbi and 40 of his followers were arrested, but subsequently released...

...According to those who founded the yeshivah, acquiring it is part of the process of redeeming the Land...

...This moderate religious outlook, widespread in religious Zionist and non-Zionist circles, corresponded to the Israeli government's explicit desire to maintain a national consensus in favor of leaving the Temple Mount undisturbed...

...For Druckman and other religious zealots, the only question is one of tactics...

...Each of these events sent shock waves through the This article is part of a series, all written by Israeli contributors and dealing with Israeli society and politics, made possible by a grant from Mr...

...Why should we be concerned about the DamascusBeirut road when we have great problems within the Land of Israel...

...It washed away some of the bitterness of Camp David...

...The latter-day pioneers of Gush Emunim, fundamentalist in their understanding of the Bible, insist that the policies of the Israeli government must be guided by the religious imperative of settlement...

...but each, however ugly, was an isolated act, the work of a single disturbed man...

...Some of Amital's right-wing critics spoke as if waging war and defying world opinion were admirable ends in themselves...

...This is a manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven...

...of the Land of Israel...

...They are preparing themselves to serve as priests in the Temple, believing that they live in the aeon of redemption, and that its final stages are drawing nigh...

...Any act that would seem to profane these sites would strike at the heart of Arab religious and national sensibility, and the Arab-Israeli conflict would be raised to a new level...

...All these groups share a messianic ideology that is centered on two interwoven ideas: the realization, in our time, of redemption through Zionism, and the right of the People of Israel to possess all of the ancient Land of Israel...

...Begin did not keep that promise, he did help bring about a political mood in which the demand for Jewish sovereignty over the Mount could come to seem legitimate and proper...

...However, because the boundaries of the Temple are no longer demarcated today, the dominant Orthodox position, and that of the Chief Rabbinate, has been to forbid ascent altogether...

...The talks delivered there may be divided into three main themes...

...Gush Emunim and other groups formed a movement to block the withdrawal...

...This is a total teaching of faith...

...The root of the mistake of Rabbi Amital lies in a basic misunderstanding of the value and centrality of the Land of Israel in the process of the redemption of Israel...

...In theory, any Jew may ascend after taking a ritual bath...

...assessments of political opportunity are guided by the messianic vision...

...The response to Amital was vehement...

...The completion of the redemptive process depends on the literal fulfillment of the Biblical promise regarding the Land of Israel: all of it must be settled by Jews, to whom it was promised more than 3,000 years ago...

...The resistance in the Sinai failed: the settlers were removed and the settlements demolished by the very government ideologically committed to the "Greater Israel...

...Amital charged that many religious Zionists were embracing a militaristic nationalism at the expense of basic religious values—such as the love of peace and life itself...

...I CHRONICLES 22:7-8 On March 10, 1983, Jerusalem police prevented four armed men from ascending the Temple Mount, the site where the Temple stood, sacred to Jews and Muslims...

...Nor did the Lord intervene...

...Yigal Ariel pointed the direction...

...The IDF has absolute sanctity...

...Concerning the area outside the original boundaries of the Temple, purity restrictions are less stringent...

...In this view, Israel, even in its semiredeemed state, remains "a people that dwells alone...

...In the view of these groups, settlement has become symbolic of the total process of redemption from exile through which the Jewish people is passing...

...If we don't, there will be none...

...But the word of the Lord came to me saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: Thou shalt not build an house unto my name because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight...

...Such a statement, said Amital, is false to the laws and spirit of Judaism...