[Elder of Ziyon] The first minyan on the Temple Mount in 913 years

Something rather momentous happened on Monday.

A group of ten Jewish men prayed together on the Temple Mount.

From Times of Israel:

Likud politician Moshe Feiglin on Monday violated the unwritten rule that prohibits Jews from practicing religion on the Temple Mount, as he prayed at the holy site.

Feiglin, a political hard-liner, is No. 15 on the Likud list for the upcoming elections and head of the Jewish Leadership faction within the right-wing party, a nationalist group defined by many as extreme.

Footage obtained by Channel 10 showed a group of Jews, including the likely future MK, as they prayed on the Temple Mount.

Though there is no law against Jews praying on the Temple Mount, for years both Israeli officials and the Islamic Wakf — the religious group in charge of managing the site — have told Jews not to carry out religious ceremonies or prayers at the site, for fear of violence and a potential outbreak of riots.

The video makes it clear that this wasn't a few people praying - this was a minyan, as opposed to other times that individuals prayed on the Har HaBayit.

When was the last time there was a minyan on the Temple Mount? One might think it was before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, but there is much evidence that Jews visited the site, off and on, for hundreds of years afterwards through the Byzantine era. In a fascinating paper by Gedalia Meyer and Henoch Messner about the halacha and history of Jews visiting the Temple Mount, we learn:

Following the Arab conquest we have very little information concerning Jewish activity on the Temple Mount. Unlike during Byzantine times, there is no indication that the Muslims prohibited Jewish visitation to the site. The first solid report of what was going on during this time comes in the early 12th  century when Jerusalem was already in the hands of the Crusaders. This report is found in a rarely referenced book called  Megilas Hamegila by Avraham ben Chiya. He was a rabbi who is believed to have lived in Barcelona and was occasionally quoted by the Abarbanel, among others.

On page 99, he mentions that the Arabs had good relations with the Jews. He says that the Jews were even permitted to have a synagogue on the Temple Mount, which they used on holidays to serve in place of the sacrifices that had been offered in the Beis Hamikdash.

This synagogue was destroyed when the Crusaders came [in 1099], and since that time the Jews were prohibited from entering the Temple Mount area.

The fact that there was an actual, functioning synagogue on the Temple Mount in the 11th century is not well known.

Any way you look at it, this visit on Monday was historic.

The Islamic media noted that Feiglin visited, and that he "attempted to perform Jewish and Talmudic rituals," but there has been no note about the prayer quorum. Certainly there have been no riots as Muslims have threatened for years.

(h/t Yerushalimey)




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Posted By Elder of Ziyon to Elder of Ziyon at 12/05/2012 09:13:00 PM