Today, however, rabbis from most of the religious-Zionist spectrum have endorsed Jewish visits to the site. Rabbis including Efrat’s Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Mazkeret Batya Hesder Rosh Yeshiva Yuval Cherlow, Rabbi Re’em HaCohen, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein of Yeshivat Har Etzion and others have ruled that it is permissible to visit Har Habayit, provided one observes the halachic rules that govern such visits: A visit to the mikveh (ritual bath), no leather shoes and one must tear clothes upon leaving the site.
In the haredi world, too, inroads are being made to support the Temple Mount. Although virtually no haredi rabbis have publicly endorsed the visits, groups of haredim regularly visit the site, with the quiet approval of their rabbinic authorities.
Still, Yehuda Glick said there is a very long way to go before Jews realize their full rights at the site.
“Look, I’ll tell you something,” Glick said with a frustrated smile. “Every tiny, abandoned ruin in Israel has a metal sign, put there by the government, with basic information about the site. The only exception is the Temple Mount, the holiest spot on earth. There, there is no indication at all that there once stood a Temple here, that there is any Jewish connection to this spot at all.
“It’s a sign that the country, as a whole, must make a decision to establish Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount. Until we do that, it is like a sign to the Jewish and non-Jewish commuities – in Israel and abroad – that we don’t really care about the Temple Mount.
So that, I think,is the real call of our generation: to learn about Har Habayit, to pray for the right to be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, to demonstrate peacefully for that right but to call clearly for the government to re-commit this country to the words of Motta Gur: Har Habayit L’Yadenu (“Retake the Temple Mount to our hands!).
