Torat Kohanim, Then and Now

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Yeshivat Torat Cohanim - Uproar Over a New Yeshiva in Jerusalem

A notice posted in a small (non-Jewish) British magazine in 1921 caused a great stir in the London Zionist office. Confused, the London office dashed off a request for immediate clarification to the Zionist executive in Jerusalem.

The request caught the Jerusalem executive committee by surprise. They in turn forwarded the inquiry to the Chief Rabbi’s office in Jerusalem. The inquiry quoted the magazine notice:

“A matter of great significance to the public has been reported from Jerusalem. Chief Rabbi Kook has announced that a new yeshiva or seminary will be established in the holy city, with the goal of instructing men of priestly or Levite descent regarding their Temple duties. The studies will include rites connected to the Temple sacrifices.

The rabbi believes that this matter is extremely pressing, as he is convinced that, with the state of the world at this time, the Jews will once again offer sacrifices to God. Indeed, such a possibility has been long expected by those with insight into Jewish sensitivities, knowledgeable in the prophecies of the Messianic Era.” (“The Christian”, Dec. 22, 1921)

The Jerusalem executive demanded a response. What was going on? Were there imminent plans to rebuild the Temple and reinstate the Temple service?

Rav Kook Responds

The reality — a small group of young men studying the Talmudic tractates that discuss the principles and laws governing the Temple service — was light-years away from the London magazine’s eschatological portrayal of an academy established for the practical instruction of kohanim. And yet, from Rav Kook’s written response, one senses a certain approval for the magazine’s interpretation of the significance of the event. And perhaps a measure of disappointment in the reaction of the London Zionist office.

Below are excerpts from Rav Kook’s dignified reply:

1. It is true that Yeshivat Torat Cohanim was established here [in the Old City of Jerusalem] with the unique goal that scholars who are Kohanim will study the Talmudic order of Kodashim, which is the authoritative source for studying all forms of service in the holy Temple.

2. Despite its secular manifestations, the Jewish people’s national revival must be anchored in the nation’s foundations in holiness. The inner goals of the nation need to be firmly rooted in all matters of holiness.

We must affirm at all times our eternal aspiration that the Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days — openly and with deep faith, without hesitation or misgivings.

3. It is our firm belief that the day will come when all nations will recognize that the place that God chose for all time as the site for our Temple shall be returned to its true owners. There, “the great and holy Temple” will be built, a house which will become — through the Jewish people — “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Isaiah 56:7), as God has promised.

And even though this yeshiva is entirely and purely an institution for [theoretical] Torah study, the yeshiva’s establishment nonetheless contains a subtle message to the world. The nations should not think that we have — even in a fleeting moment of despair, God forbid — conceded to relinquish our rights to the site of the Temple, the cornerstone of all holy places.

In the past, the official British committee questioned my views regarding the Temple Mount and our relationship to it. I responded that, until recently, realizing our national rights to the Land of Israel was universally viewed as an unlikely outcome. Nonetheless, Divine Providence brought about the means so that which was improbable became probable. We are certain that this process will continue, until all peoples will recognize the justice of our rights to our Holy Land, as it is written in Scripture.

So, too, the day will come when all nations will recognize the truth of our rights to the Temple area. All will know and recognize that the prophetic vision regarding this holy place — that “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations” — will only come to pass when this great and holy Temple will be established there, in the hands of its original, eternal owners, the people of Israel, God’s people from time immemorial. They and no other.

(Adapted from Zichron Re’iyah, pp. 201-203; Igrot HaRe’iyah vol. IV, 1127)

The general rabbinical approach to the question of entering Mount may be divided into four main schools.

The first rejects such a possibility, which is left to Messianic position is shared by the majority of members of the plenum Chief Rabbinate.

The second seeks to prepare actively for Redemption, but within legitimate religious frameworks, through theoretical study of the laws relating to the sacrificial worship. This approach does not include actual entry into the Temple Mount site and remains within the accepted framework of Torah study. The approach of Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook reflects this position.

The third school argues that the construction of the Temple is indeed a public commandment, but before this takes place, spiritual elevation is needed, through settlement across the entire Holy Land and the dissemination of the light of faith, which constitute the foundation on which the Temple may be constructed. Thus, until that time it is prohibited to enter the mount. This approach is the most common among the Mercaz Harav yeshiva school.

The fourth and most activist school permits Jews to enter the Temple Mount, with certain restrictions. To this end, much effort is devoted to identifying the borders of the Temple area in order to avoid problems of ritual impurity that arise in entering the prohibited areas. This fourth school is becoming more dominant among the religious Zionist leadership, both political and rabbinical.

The study also discusses the clear phenomenon of the erosion and weakening of the prohibition against Jews entering the Temple Mount. It is difficult to ignore the growing support for this approach among ever wider circles. The research also discusses the manner in which a political process-the Oslo Accords-led to a series of counter-reactions, influencing religious approaches that had previously been considered immutable. We see that strict Orthodox circles have changed their religious behavior as the result of changing times. The fear that the Temple Mount will be lost and transferred to Arab control legitimized far-reaching changes in a long-standing religious ruling.

The yearning of the religious population for the Temple Mount and for the ideal of re-establishing the Temple grew stronger due to the threat to Israeli sovereignty over the site. As long as Israel controlled the site and the idea of handing the Mount over to Palestinian sovereignty as part of a peace agreement was not raised, even activist circles among the religious Zionist community did not, for the most part, seek to change the reality on the Temple Mount. Although the desire to build the Temple is a central theme among these circles, it was postponed until a later stage of the process of redemption, as they see it. By contrast, since the emergence of the Oslo accords and discussion of the division of sovereignty in the "Holy Basin" (the Western Wall and the Temple Mount) there has been an increasingly strong counter-reaction demanding that Jews enter the site and create facts on the ground. The proof of this is the large number of people who have entered the Mount during the year after the Mount was reopened (September 2003) despite the Halachic prohibition. It is reasonable to suggest that it will be difficult to continue to ignore this growing support for action on this question among ever-widening circles.

It is still too early to determine what will become of these trends. It is also possible that further developments would be a result of the changing political reality. It may be, on one hand, that the question of Jews entering the Temple Mount will become routine. On the other hand, if the crisis and violent situation continues, there could be found those who would desire attack the mosques on the site in order to promote the messianic process.

Religious Zionism and the Temple Mount Dilemma—Key Trends, Author(s): Motti Inbari
Source: Israel Studies , Summer, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 29-47
Published by: Indiana University Press

In a poll published in the Makor Rishon newspaper in 2014, a solid majority of 75 percent of Religious Zionists expressed support for visiting the Temple Mount. The results showed, however, that the national-religious community is split into two groups of equal size: those who personally intend to visit the Temple Mount, and those who do not. Asked, "Have you already visited the Temple Mount, or do you intend to do so in the future?, 36 percent replied that they had not visited before but intended to do so; some 15 percent of respondents had visited in the past and intended to do so again in the future. Taken together, more than half.

Given that visiting the Temple Mount used to be considered the preserve of a radical and eccentric minority, the data represents a meteoric success for Temple Mount advocacy groups within the Religious Zionist community. Party to the achievement are also those who do not themselves visit the site. Religious schools and yeshivas have added content on the Temple sacrifices and holy vessels to their curricula. The Temple Institute, which is making the instruments needed for worship in the Third Temple of its imagination, attracts enormous domestic tourism, mostly from Religious Zionist Israelis. Even from those who are not directly involved, there is plenty of hands-off support. Since 2012, Makor Rishon has published a weekly column by the journalist Arnon Segal, dedicated to encouraging Jews to visit the Temple Mount for a host of political and halakhic reasons. In one such column, spread across a full page, Segal used flowcharts to explain to his readers "how to burn the red heifer" - a rare calf that used to be slaughtered and burned by the Temple priests as part of a purification ritual, and the rediscovery of which, according to tradition, is to herald the messianic age.

The Temple Mount loyalists, or "mikdashnikin," are a diverse lot. They are split into dozens of groups, from mass organizations to relaeiy minor factions. Some prioritize displays of strength, accentuating lsraeli sovereignty at the site, even though the government of Israel, shortly after seizing control of the area during the 1967 war, surrendered its administration to the Waqf, an Islamic religious agency overseen by lordan. Others wish to pray there - an act of worship that is forbidden to Jews - or simply to visit. Some go much farther and want to move toward the construction of the Third Temple, training themselves in the intricacies of its rituals and animal sacrifices. What will happen to the two Islamic sites on the Temple Mount, which Muslims around the world flock to and revere? Some Temple Mount activists hope to destroy them, plain and simple. Others, such as Yehudah Glick, dream of a house of prayer for all peoples; as Isaiah prophesies, a utopia of interreligious harmony radiating out from the Mount.

Yet the growing prominence of the Temple Mount is also the story of a halakhic revolution. What was once considered a grave prohibition punishable by karet, a physical or spiritual extirpation handed
down from the heavens, is now deemed perfectly permissible by tens of thousands of Religious Zionists and hundreds of rabbis. In halakhic terms, the transformation happened practically overnight - a mere fifteen years, in which nothing physically changed on the Temple Mount, and its political and diplomatic status remained static. The only change Was in the eyes of the beholders, the members of the Religious Zionist community itself. To be sure, not everyone's attitudes have shifted. Many religious Israelis are still trying to hold back the tide, which places the Temple Mount - yes, it too - quite frmly on the spectrum of religious disputes that divide the national-religious community.

The erosion of the halakhic status quo upon the Temple Mount- which places this episode within the wider metamorphosis gripping religious society - has only served to further undermine the status of
the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, as it strictly forbids visiting the site. As with other hot button issues in recent years, the rabbinate has found itself on the losing side, with vast swaths of religious society openly disobeying its ruling. But on this issue their defiance is especially jarring. Those ascending to the Temple Mount are from the most conservative flank of religious society. They ought to be the rabbinate's natural supporters. Moreover, the flouting of the rabbinate's ban also attests to the community's diminishing respect for stately comportment. By visiting the Temple Mount, the masses are asserting their refusal to accept these decorous and diplomatically convenient rabbinic rulings, which, in so far as the Temple Mount is concerned, have come as welcome news indeed for the heads of state. This is nothing less than a revolt, albeit focused, against the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the government of Israel; its joint stance, ever since 1967, is seen by many right-wing religious youth as nothing short of defeatist.

The Temple Mount activist Yossi Peli said in an interview to the website Kipa in 2016: "There is a deep understanding in the national-religious] public that we need to articulate a complete, proactive vision,
not just to fight defensive wars. It's also a matter of generational change: there's a new generation that isn't content with the fact that we have a state and understands that we have to make meaningful strides forward ... In order for genuine change to happen in this field, there has to be fundamental change in our basic assumptions. Halakha says that the preferable way to build the [Third] Temple is by a king - in modern terms, that means first we have to build an enlightened leadership, one that sees the Temple as one of its main objectives." Stately conduct, then, ends at the gate to the Temple Mount.

Whatis really driving the masses thronging to the Temple Mount? Religion and politics have always gone hand in hand when it comes to the Temple Mount, ever since the 1980s and the Jewish Underground's
plot to blowup the Muslim sites to the Islamic Movement's near-annual 'A-Aqsa-Is-in-Danger" fests starting in the late 1990s.

Dr. Tomer Persico, a theologist, argues that the Jewish Temple Mount movements not only made a radical departure from Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook's vision of redemption as a piecemeal process; they are also demanding the effective secularization of a holy space. The increasing visits by Religious Zionists to the Temple Mount, he writes, amount to an "active revolt against the halakhic tradition," while for sections of national-religious society "ethnonationalism is replacing their respect for state authority and, moreover, their halakhic sensibilities" He also senses that Temple Mount activists are reinterpreting the idea of sacred space: instead of steering clear of this holy site, retreating from it in awe, Religious Zionists are determined to accentuate their ownership over it. In Persico's view, the Temple Mount activists deepest motives are not connected to religious worship per se but to questions of sovereignty and control.

One surprising supporter of Persico's academic interpretation is Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the most prominent opponents of Temple Mount activism. He contends that the side that supports visiting the
Temple Mount is motivated by an urge to conquer, rather than a quest for sanctity.'

Excerpts from FRAYED - The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionits, by Yair Ettinger, 1923

Moshe Feiglin

He is against religious coercion and the establishment of religious political parties. He has come out against legislation such as the Chametz Law, which forbids selling leavened products on the Passover Holiday, when eating or owning leavened food products is prohibited by Jewish law.^[27]

He is also a proponent of the civil marriage initiative in Israel which would allow any Israeli citizen to marry without a religious cleric.^[28] At present, marriage in Israel is impossible outside the confines of a religious system; hence, for tens of thousands of people with problematic religious status, it is impossible ever to get married in the country. The present system also places the power of divorce in the hand of the Religious courts, who are answerable only to the Supreme Courts. The civil marriage initiative would make the religious nature of marriage entirely voluntary, effectively separating religion and state in this matter.^{[citation needed]}

Feiglin has advocated removing the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf's control over the entire al-Aqsa complex, and suggested a synagogue should be established on the Temple Mount.^[29] In February 2014, at Feiglin's insistence, the Knesset debated the status of the Temple Mount.^[30] Feiglin's platform states:"We have to internalize that this is our Land - exclusively... Most important: We must expel the Moslem wakf from the Temple Mount and restore exclusive Israeli sovereignty over this most holy site."^[31]

^{See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Feiglin}

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