For Many Activists Climbing The Temple Mount For Tisha B Av Is An Act Of Defiance

But near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, other sounds prevailed: loud chants by Jews who ascended it in honor of a day of mourning, despite the fact that doing so had caused clashes in the past. stern warnings from police officers against prayer; and voices from Muslim women and children offended by the scene. Such was the scene on the 10th of Av, a day after the 9th of Av, which marks many things, but above all the destruction of the two Jewish temples (Jewish tradition dictates that when the fast days fall on the Sabbath, the fast is done before or after Saturday, excluding Yom Kippur). The Temple Mount is open to people of all backgrounds, but only Muslims are allowed to pray there. Tourists were present Sunday, along with those who took part in the holiday pilgrimage, including far-right Knesset member Itamar Ben Gvir, American Jewish far-right pundit Ben Shapiro and a group of Texas Christians invested in seeing the temple rebuilt as a place where everyone can pray. “There must be no ritual!” a policeman told a group of about 30 Jews, almost every one a man, before leading them through the Mughrabi Gate to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. Get The Times of Israel Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories By signing up, you agree to the terms But the group’s very presence was a ritual, designed to mark the destruction of the Temple, pray for its rebuilding, and demonstrate Jewish attachment to and control of the site. For these men, the act of walking the plateau, some clothed, some barefoot, is an act of resistance and prayer. The tug-of-war between the supplicants and the police on Sunday became more acute since the latest conflict in Gaza, which was launched by Israel on Friday and targeted Islamic Jihad, the terror group Israeli officials claim was to launch guided missiles at Israeli targets. The Iran-backed group fired hundreds of unguided rockets into Israel in retaliation, and sirens sounded in the Jerusalem area on Sunday morning. Far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir speaks to the press as he arrives to visit the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem on August 7, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90) The sirens did not sound near the Temple Mount, but the threat they heralded was very much in the air. Israeli officials want to keep the fight in Islamic Jihad and prevent Hamas from joining. Hamas, the terror group that controls the Strip, appears to be content so far with Israel’s decimation of its rival, but has in the past been incited to join attacks on Israel for what it sees as Jewish attacks on Muslim areas, including of the Temple Mount. Israeli media reported that security officials were keeping a close eye on the Tisha B’Av event. Tensions erupted in a push and pull between Jewish supplicants and police officers tasked with preventing their pilgrimage from igniting an already volatile situation. “We’ll be quiet, we’ll be quiet,” Yehuda Ben David, 18, told a police officer who threatened to break up the visit as the chant of “Take comfort, take comfort my love” grew louder. The song dropped to a low moan. The officer then got on his walkie talkie and Ben David led the group in a new song pleading for the Temple to be rebuilt. Elchanan Nonhait, a nursing student, was among about 2,000 people waiting for police to divide them into groups of 30 or 40 to walk around the perimeter of Mt. He said he understood that mass entry could spark an all-out war, but it only sharpened his resolve to stake a Jewish claim to the Temple Mount and the entire country. Elhanan Nonhait was among the Jewish pilgrims who climbed the Temple Mount on August 7, 2022. The police asked him to remove his sticker, which they saw as a provocation. (Ron Campeas/JTA) “You can’t deny the connection” between the mass events on the Jewish Temple Mount and the risk of violence, he said, “but look, they closed the Jewish areas around Gaza,” he said, referring to Israeli orders to residents of those areas remain indoors until the risk of missile launch has subsided. “That’s the reality – if we can’t be on the Temple Mount, we can’t be anywhere,” he said. Nonhite wore a sticker on his T-shirt that read, “I also climbed the Temple Mount,” in Hebrew. An officer ordered him to remove it as he approached the Mughrabi Gate. A flurry of conflicting rules rang out in waves as the supplicants made their way along the wooden lift between the climb from Western Wall Square and the Mughrabi Gate. Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a former Knesset member and president of the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation, which organizes the pilgrimage, walked up and down the line of supplicants waiting to enter and reminded them of the requirements for an appearance on the Temple Mount: a ritual bath in mikveh, or spring, or sea, before arriving, and without leather shoes. A diaspora of Orthodox Jews who still observe rabbinic rulings barring entry to the mountain, based on the dangers of crossing holy ground forbidden to all but the purest of priests, tried to negotiate with those waiting in line. They offered pamphlets to the supplicants and politely reminded them that a number of current and former chief rabbis have ruled against entering the Temple Mount. Most of the petitioners ignored the traditionalists, but one or two engaged, citing competing rulings, sometimes by the same rabbi. There were quick exchanges referring to ancient sages, and sometimes these turned into discussions of piety. “You are ignorant!” one of the Temple Mount supplicants called out to a young traditionalist, who was perched on a ledge overlooking the line. Outside the Mughrabi Gate Glick’s ethos prevailed and he realized it. He was one of the first to climb the mountain, arriving before 5 am, and praised the others for making the pilgrimage, in between reminding them of the ritual requirements. In an interview, he recalled how his followers once outnumbered the traditionalists, and now it’s the traditionalists who are outnumbered. “In 1989, when I started going to the Temple Mount, there were one or two of us who went up and hundreds of people told me it was not allowed. Now we have thousands going up and one or two people can walk [saying] they are not allowed,” he said. A screen grab from a video of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, center right, as he leads a tour of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, May 29, 2022. (Facebook) He introduced to reporters a group of Texan Christians who accompanied him on his tour, a representation of his hope that the rebuilt Temple will have places open to all for prayer, as it was before it was destroyed two millennia ago, “This will soon be the house of prayer for all nations,” said Steve Wearp, a Dallas-area resident who imports Israeli settlement goods into the United States. “And we have to understand that when the Temple was destroyed, it wasn’t just a loss for the Jewish people, it was a loss for the entire world.” Wearp said he was leading a group of about 200 Christians – including about 30 who were with him in Jerusalem on Sunday – who were fasting for Tisha B’Av. “A dry fast,” he said, grinning. They call themselves “Nations’ Ninth of Av”. As the supplicants lifted the wooden hoist, they left behind Glick’s encouragement and approached a reality that is wary, among the police, if not outright hostile, among Muslims. As the group of about 30 walked into a waiting area with a model of the rebuilt Temple, a tall, shaggy man asked, “How many years since the Temple was destroyed?” When no one answered, he asked again. “1,954,” a man finally answered. Police control was intense. A police officer advised the men not to attract attention as they walked around the site. A second officer, wearing sunglasses, warned a man who was singing loudly to shut up. The man, wearing a red hat, dropped his voice, but a third officer, watching the group with a video camera, ran to his colleague and said he caught the man in the red hat praying. The officer demanded to see the man’s ID and let him off with a warning. Leaders emerge organically among groups of strangers, and Yehuda Ben David, the 18-year-old, was a natural. He began to sing songs in a murmur and then in a full voice and then more followed. Muslim women sitting in the shade of the trees shouted “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is great,” and a group of children joined in. The officer, echoing every parent who said “I’m going to stop this car” to discipline the kids, pointed to a gate and said, “I got another group out of here early and I’m going to do the same to you.” “We’ll be quiet, we’ll be quiet,” said Ben David, and the group followed suit and remained quiet – but soon began to sing again. Ben David encountered the Dome of the Rock mosque, which occupies part of the site where the Temple is believed to have stood, and was quickly “moved,” making the tumultuous movements of Orthodox Jews in prayer. others followed. As the group approached the Chain Gate, where the ride ends, the men were less embarrassed and sang loudly. Some of them bowed to the Dome of the Rock as they retreated, an ancient way of acknowledging the sanctity of the Temple by not turning their backs on it. The police confronted them and pushed them out of the gate. The man with…