Record Number of Jews Visit Temple Mount During Year 5784 on Jewish Calendar
JERUSALEM, Israel – A record number of Jews have ascended to the Temple Mount since the beginning of the Jewish year 5784 which began last September.
According to the Beyadenu organization, more than 52,000 Jewish worshippers visited the holiest site in Judaism this past year, more than a 14 percent increase over the previous year, when 44,317 worshippers came.
It's the largest number since Israel retook control of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The issue is a sensitive one in Israel, as the nation's Muslim adversaries frequently charge that Jewish visitations are a prelude to Israel's building a Third Temple on the site, where two revered Muslim holy sites, The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque, currently stand.
The increase in visitors coincided with a "Return of Israel to the Temple Mount" conference in July at the Knesset, where National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced a prayer policy of the "political echelon," according to JNS News.
Last Sunday, however, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog issued statements emphasizing there is no change to the "status quo" banning Jewish worship at the site.
Herzog stated Israel has an "unequivocal commitment to preserving the status quo at the holy site – in accordance with political agreements laid down since 1967 [with Jordan], and in the spirit of the rulings by leading rabbis and religious figures over the last 100 years.”
However, Rabbi Stephen Burg, director of Aish Ha Torah in Jerusalem, questioned that policy in a recent ILTV interview.
“It’s almost surreal to hear people arguing so vehemently against people being able to pray in a holy site," he declared. "I think there needs to be a conversation about how everyone, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, could be allowed to pray and to reach out to the Almighty from all the different religions that believe in one God."
Burg added, “I think people should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. How the structure will be, and what that would look like – that is a real conversation that should happen. I feel that we shouldn’t ban anyone from praying in any place where they feel they could reach out to the Almighty,”
The government's concern is that Muslim sensitivity concerning the Temple Mount could enlarge Israel's current 7-front war to an 8-front war embroiling Jerusalem.
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