Who's Afraid of the Temple?

By Moshe Feiglin

I have a hard time with the Kinot (Tisha B'Av lamentations). In my opinion, the Kinot have become nothing more than lip service. We are actually in love with destruction. We have exchanged the essence of the Temple Mount for the Western Wall, the candy for the wrapper and the purpose of the lamentations for the lamentations, themselves. The longing for the Temple that kept us whole as a nation during 2000 years of exile and returned us to our land and our state, has somehow morphed into a horror show in the minds of too many Jews - both secular and religious.

The secular have been brainwashed to believe that the Temple - the source of world peace and stability - will create a world war. The religious think - rightfully - that the Temple will destroy their religion. In other words, the Temple will extricate Judaism from its narrow, religious, detached-from-reality framework and restore it to its original, all-encompassing stature. Judaism will then be part of every facet of life, from the most mundane and personal to the most sublime and universal. The religious are not enthusiastic about that. The Zionist Jews have become used to the separation between holy and mundane (the complete opposite of their declared ideology) and the ultra-Orthodox have become used to being detached from the mundane. Everybody is quite comfortable in their own shallow and murky ponds.

The Temple threatens everybody's world. It sanctifies everything. And due to the fears of the observant Jews, it still lies in destruction. Only because of the fears of the observant Jews.

This week, we ascended the Temple Mount and met some of the paratroopers who had liberated Jerusalem in the Six Day War. "It looks like you will have to re-capture the Temple Mount," I said to one of them. "We're ready and waiting for orders," the aging veteran answered with a smile.

With G-d's help, we will soon have authentic Jewish leadership that will issue those orders.