AJ+ | —
“For Jews, the Temple Mount (known as Haram as-Sharif, or “Noble Sanctuary,” to Muslims) is their religion’s holiest site. The Temple Mount is on the same hilltop as Islam’s third-holiest site: the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Recent pushes by far-right Israeli Jews to pray on the Temple Mount have heightened tensions, especially as the current arrangement – which prevents Jews from praying there – has been part of a long-standing agreement between Israel, Jordan and Palestinians. Beruria Steinmetz-Silber explains to AJ+ why the contentious site is so important on a personal level.”
AJ+ “This Is Why The Temple Mount Matters To Israeli-American Beruria”
I suppose many people have a primitive way of being in the world, wherein they need to have some anchor stabbing into a spot on the planet that they can call their own, and where they can identify with and relate to ‘their kind’. Unfortunately, different people can stab their anchors into the same place, or create competing places even far apart, creating pain and harm where there needs be none. I consider it barbaric to let your primitive instincts – which everyone has – rule your thinking mind and create problems and suffering that need not exist. There’s beauty in the real world as it exists every moment, and the past and its sects and divisions can be appreciated and even lauded without giving them full sway to carry the destructive impulse from generation to generation, ruining the chances for a good life for the greatest number of people and disallowing the greater good to exist more fully in a world desperately in need of it.
I thought that Jews were prohibited from praying there for fear of inadvertently invading the “Holiest of holies”, or whatever. Am I wrong?
There’s a plethora of theological theories that surround the Jewish Temple, the Ark of the Covenant, and Temple Mount and whether these areas and items have retained their sacred status or are simply old relics.
Christian Zionists have made the Third Temple and restoration of the temple objects of worship a priority due to eschatological concerns. On the Jewish side, the Temple Institute, funded by the Temple Foundation, is trying to make the Third Temple a reality.
Rabbi Chaim Richman had been the longtime director of the Temple Insitute.
Have you ever seen bigots deferring to religious taboo when the opportunity to proclaim lordship over some piece of soil arises?
Me neither.
I suppose that the Koran, the Torah and other holy writs designate these consecrated venues to communicate with the Divine One? I further suppose that the Divine One insists on killing anyone who gets in the way of prayer on these hallowed grounds?
Why do religious people have to cause so much goddamn trouble?
I would never die, or especially expect my children to die, for sacred sand and stone. Why don’t the Israeli’s, dissassemble all the sacred sites, buildings etc., and transport them to Nevada, which isn’t worth a good goddamn anyway, move all of the Jewish population there, and let the Palestinians have what’s left. Their children will be safe, and in five years, they’ll turn Nevada into a paradise.
If Muslims, Christians, and Jews want to fight to the death over imaginary bullshit, fine; just leave the rest of the world out of it. To the victor go the holy rubble.