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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 7, 1984
PAGE 11
pering with Muslim control over the area. The promise has been
kept••••
Political pragmatism, however, is unlikely to withstand the mes
sianic passions that are directed at the Temple Mount, and even
the ancient rabbinical and more modern governmental injunctions
that have kept observant Jews from going up to the Mount are now
being reconsidered. All Jews are regarded by Jewish law as "un
clean," and are therefore forbidden to go onto the Mount.
The
most sanctified place on the Mount in the days of the Temple was
the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant, containing the
Ten Commandments, was kept.
Since it is difficult to specify
precisely where the Holy of Holies was located, and lest someone
step on that place even inadvertently (incurring an automatic
death penalty, according to ancient law), the injunction against
stepping there was extended to the entire area.
The Israeli courts have generally denied the right of Jews to
pray on the Temple Mount, but there are signs of change there,
too. In 1983 the High Court reaffirmed that the Temple Mount is a
holy site for Jews and that, accordingly, Jews not only have the
right of access, but a right of worship as well. Nevertheless,
the court insisted that because of the delicate and complex sit
uation stemming from Muslim opposition to any Jewish presence on
the Temple Mount, the issue has become political••••
The driving force behind the Temple Mount movement, however, is
the American evangelical community, some 45. 5 million strong.
The evangelicals met regularly with former Prime Minister Mena
chem Begin over the years, reportedly urging him to rebuild the
Temple, and they raced to Washington this spring to endorse the
proposal to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, citing Biblical prophecies of the day in the near fu
ture when Jerusalem will become the capital of the world•••• The
most visible link between the evangelicals and the drive to re
build the Temple is found in the Jerusalem Temple Foundation in
Los Angeles, the latest of several ?rganizations (and the only
such group in the United States) designed to put pressure on the
Israeli government to limit the Wagf's control••••
A few years ago, anyone in Israel who talked about rebuilding the
Temple, or advocated freedom of prayer on the Temple Mount, was
considered to be a lunatic. Today, according to a poll published
in the newspaper HAARETZ, 19 percent of the Israeli public be
lieves there should at least be freedom of prayer on the Mount.
The chief rabbinate has created a special committee to "prepare a
theological, archeological, and architectural report concerning
the location of the Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount," and some
members of the committee--Rabbi Dov Lior from Kiryat Arba and
Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, the Sephardic chief rabbi--are known to
support the building of a synagogue on the Temple Mount. There
are groups studying the rituals of the Temple, others studying
� manufacture of priestly garments for the Temple, and a grow
ing yeshivah [a school for Talmudic studies]--the Yeshivah Ateret
Hacohanim--that is not only training priests (in a fifteen-year
course!) for service in the Temple, but is also slowly buying