Har Habayit. Where Jews are forbidden to pray, while Ishmael’s guttural caterwauls resonate throughout the Old City. Where even attempting to pray or recite psalms ensures that you will get arrested.
Har Habayit. Where the Arabs are emboldened because they see that one day all of Israel will be Judenrein. Where Arabs can throw stones and even pour acid on Jewish heads (as they have done in the past.)
If one wants to understand why Israel is killing itself through appeasement and territorial concession, why the idea of transferring hostile Arabs is anathema, and why rockets can rain death upon the country for an entire month, look at the Temple Mount. The abominations on the Temple Mount explain it all; fear and appeasement of the enemy, apathy and antipathy to all things Jewish, and the maddening malaise that sickens our country.
Har Habayit and Halacha
Avigdor Lieberman’s recent remarks castigating those who ascend the Mount are of no concern. Yet another example showing this blowhard for who he is. A weakling opportunist who has no regard for Jewish dignity. Naturally, since he has no knowledge of Halacha, his words are irrelevant. Yet one cannot be so cavalier with one who occupies the position of Sephardi Chief Rabbi. At the recent funeral for Shalom Aharon Ba’adani, who was murdered by another Arab who thought it would be nice to plow into a 17 year old boy with his vehicle, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef noted the following:
“Jews must not go to the Temple Mount and provoke the Arab terrorists. “This must be stopped…only in this manner shall the blood of the people of Israel stop being spilt.”
To level such charges against committed Jews who halachically ascend Har Habayit in order to assert jewish sovereignty is disgraceful, and a mockery of the Rabbinate. To accuse them of fomenting violence is as despicable a libel that the Arabs throw at us. An Arab didn’t shoot Rabbi Glick (may he have a full refuah) because he ascended Har Habayit. He shot him because he saw him as a figurehead for promoting Har Habayit, and the usurping Arabs want to deny the history of the first and second temples.
As if that wasn’t enough, Rabbi Yosef proceeded to besmirch gedolim and chachamim of the past and present with his ad hominum attack:
“Fourth-rate rabbis cannot dispute (the rulings of) the sages of Israel.”
A Chief Rabbi who denigrates the Torah scholarship of prestigious poskim who disagree with his position will have to beg mechilah for his words. The complicated issue of visiting Har Habayit is hardly monolithic in the eyes of Rabbonim. (For a more rigorous treatment of this mutli-faceted Halachic issue which is beyond the scope of this author, read “Entering The Temple Mount-in Halacha and Jewish History” by Gedalya Meyer & Henoch Messner.) Even according to those who permit going up, it goes without saying that no G-d fearing Jew would ever ascend, except within the precise framework of the Halacha. So a Rav who castigates other poskim, on the grounds that it is prohibited by consensus, is telling half a story. Furthermore, many of these halachic personalities who oppose going up do so for reasons that have less to do with Halacha and more with a shtetl complex that clouds their reason. Fear of the Arabs. Fear of the U.S. State Department. Oftentimes, their own words say as much.
The Rambam likely prayed atop Har Habayit. Was he a fourth rate Rabbi? What of the Radbaz, whose framework provides the route for many who ascend according to Halacha? The contemporary posek, Rabbi Moshe Tendler, shlitah (son-in-law of Reb Moshe Feinstein, zt”l) regularly ascends Har Habayit when he visits Eretz Yisroel. Also a fourth rate Rabbi?