Jewish Visits to Temple Mount at All-Time High as Israeli Leaders Reaffirm Status Quo

Jerusalem, 9 September, 2024 (TPS) -- Jewish visits to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount reached an all-time high as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog separately stressed Israel’s commitment to a status quo at the holy site on Sunday.

Ahead of the Jewish New Year, the Jerusalem-based Beyadenu organization reported that 52,337 Jews visited the Temple Mount since last Rosh HaShanah. Beyadenu, an organization dedicated to strengthening Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, conducts daily tours on the holy site.

The previous record was 51,483 Jewish visits in 2022.

“The people of Israel wants to go up, more and more,” Beyadenu CEO Tom Nisani, told The Press Service of Israel. “Despite the war, people are coming to pray, to visit. It’s a process of years, the numbers go up almost every year. Now it is rising a lot, but it’s been going up for years.”

He added, “It took a lot of time since 1967, at the beginning there were maybe 100 Jews going up to the Temple Mount per year, then 500. In the past few years, we managed to work hard enough to get the issue to the mainstream, and now people are less afraid.”

The Temple Mount, where the First and Second Jewish Temples were built, is the overall holiest site in Judaism. The Western Wall is the only remnant of a retaining wall encircling the Temple Mount built by Herod the Great in the first century and is the holiest site where Jews can freely pray. According to the status quo, while non-Muslims are allowed to visit the Temple Mount, they are not allowed to pray there.

On Sunday, President Herzog told US Ambassador Jack Lew that Israel remains committed to the status quo on the Temple Mount. This was in response to recent comments by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who in an Aug. 26 interview advocated the construction of a synagogue at the holy site. His remarks drew criticism from the US State Department.

During Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu ordered government ministers planning to visit the Temple Mount coordinate their plans with him ahead of time, according to a readout provided to the media. The directive was prompted after MK Yitzhak Kroizer visited the site and visibly prayed earlier in the day.

The delicate status quo governing the Temple Mount goes back to 1967 when Israel liberated the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six-Day War. Fearing a religious war, then-defense minister Moshe Dayan agreed to let the Islamic Waqf, a Muslim trusteeship, continue managing the holy site’s day-to-day affairs, while Israel would maintain overall sovereignty and be responsible for security.

Rabbis are increasingly divided over Jews ascending to the Temple Mount. For centuries, the widespread rabbinic consensus was that the laws of ritual purity still apply to the site. But in recent years, a growing number of rabbis have argued that ritual purity laws don’t apply to all sections of the Temple Mount and encourage visits to permitted areas to maintain Jewish connections to the Mount.