Mourning a self-imposed exile

The good news, as a new poll shows, is that Israel’s Jews are starting to grasp the inappropriateness of this abdication: Though only a minority favors rebuilding the Temple, solid majorities agree both that Israel should reassert control of the Temple Mount and that it should use this control to enable Jews as well as Muslims to pray there, just as it does at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs (Machpela). The bad news is that we remain far from translating this realization into practice.

There was nothing voluntary about the losses Tisha B’Av commemorates: Babylon destroyed the First Temple after vanquishing the Jews in battle; Rome destroyed the second after doing the same. Nor, for millennia, was there any doubt about our desire to rectify that loss: Jews began building the Second Temple on the ruins of the first the moment the area’s then-hegemon, Persia, permitted them to return from exile and start work; when it, too, was destroyed, countless generations prayed to be able to return and rebuild it again.

Modern Israel initially seemed to follow this same pattern. There was nothing voluntary about its loss of half of Jerusalem during the War of Independence, and when the Six-Day War provided an opportunity to recoup this loss, Israel seized it. Immediately afterward, the government annexed East Jerusalem, alone of all the territories captured in 1967. Thousands of Jews flocked to the Temple’s last surviving remnant, the Western Wall, to celebrate its liberation. Mordechai Gur, whose brigade liberated the Old City, announced his success in a now-iconic broadcast: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” Like generations before him, Gur understood that the Mount was the Jewish people’s heart and soul; thus it was the Mount whose liberation he proudly proclaimed – not the Old City, the Jewish Quarter, or even the Western Wall.

But then, something unexpected happened: Secular Jews who hoped to trade most of the newly acquired territories for peace, and sought to prove their bona fides, joined forces with religious Jews who deemed the Mount too holy to profane by a Jewish presence (though oddly, not a Muslim one). Together, they voted to abandon the Mount and return de facto control to the Muslim Wakf. Consequently, to this day, Jews are forbidden even to open a prayer book or recite a Psalm on the Mount, and Jewish visitors are allowed up only in small groups, when they aren’t barred altogether.

As I’ve written before, this decision had numerous harmful consequences. First, it betrayed Israel’s fundamental obligation to protect Jewish rights: Today, Jewish policemen routinely arrest Jews for the “crime” of seeking to pray at Judaism’s holiest site.

Second, it undermined Israel’s longstanding demand to retain Jerusalem as its united capital: How is the world to believe we truly care about Jerusalem when we voluntarily ceded control of its holiest Jewish site, not even demanding anything in exchange, and obediently enforce the Wakf’s ban on Jewish prayer there while letting Muslims worship freely?

Third, it encouraged the Arab belief that violence pays, because every time they riot on the Mount, or even threaten to riot, Israel responds by closing it to Jews – sometimes for years, as in 2000-2003.

But perhaps worst of all, it encouraged our enemies’ belief that they can someday destroy us, by demonstrating that deep in our psyches, we ourselves aren’t sure of our right to a sovereign state here. For no people confident of the justice of its cause could voluntarily cede its holiest site to others.

It’s therefore encouraging that Israeli Jews are starting to understand how problematic this is. In a poll conducted last month for the Joint Forum of Temple Mount Organizations, 49% of respondents deemed it “important” or “very important” for Jews to visit the Mount, handily outnumbering the 37% who considered it unimportant. Significantly, this included a plurality of secular and traditional Jews as well as 78% of religious Zionists; only the ultra-Orthodox overwhelmingly considered it unimportant. Moreover, 55% of respondents expressed personal interest in visiting the Mount, including 60% of secular and traditional respondents (compared to 20% of the ultra-Orthodox).

Unsurprisingly, only a minority expressed interest in praying there; many Israeli Jews have no interest in praying anywhere. But fully 59% – including even a plurality of the ultra-Orthodox – thought Israel should impose an arrangement on the Mount similar to that at Machpela, where both Muslims and Jews can worship freely in separate sections of the site. This would actually be even easier on the Mount, since unlike at Machpela, Jews and Muslims don’t want to pray in the same spot: All Jewish religious authorities agree that the area containing the Mount’s mosques is currently forbidden to Jews.

A majority of respondents also want Israel to wield de facto control over the Mount – a necessary precursor to such an arrangement. Almost one-fifth of respondents incorrectly thought it already does. But of the others, 47% thought the state should be in charge, while another 11% wanted a Jewish religious authority in control.

Unfortunately, the government is way behind the public on this issue. Nevertheless, if enough of the public were to press hard enough for long enough, no democratic government could remain indifferent forever.

Forty-six years after Gur’s proclamation, the Temple Mount still isn’t in our hands. Thus this week, Jews will once again justly mourn their exile from their holiest site. But it’s vital to remember that this exile, unlike the others, is self-imposed. Hence if we are ever to realize our tradition’s promise that Tisha Be’Av will someday become a day of rejoicing rather than mourning, it’s our responsibility to work to end it.