by David Hornestay

Created on: August 05, 2011   Last Updated: August 11, 2011

The Temple Mount is called in Hebrew, Har Habayit, Mount of the House (i.e.,the Holy Temple), Har Hakodesh (the Holy Mount), or, less frequently, Har Hamoriah (Mount Moriah).  Each one signifies the sanctity and centrality which Jews ascribe to the Mount.

Moriah was the land to which the Patriarch Abraham was directed when God tested his willingness to sacrifice his own son, and tradition relates that the particular hilltop on which the test took place became the Temple Mount.  The Mount of the House identifies the place where the two Temples, one built by King Solomon and one by the returning Babylonian exiles, were the centers of Jewish worship for nearly a thousand years.  The Holy Mount conveys the concept of the eternal sanctity of the site, whether or not a Temple stands there.  For this reason, most observant Jews will not set foot on the top of the Mount for fear of profaning it in a state of ritual impurity.  They content themselves with worship at the Western Wall just below.        

Through the ages, Jewish worshippers anywhere in the world have turned toward the Temple Mount.  The Divine Revelation to Moses includes repeated instructions for the sacrificial service to be conducted at "the place where the Lord your God will choose to rest his name" (Deuteronomy 12:11, e.g.) and for the men of Israel to attend at three annual major festivals.  Ever since the capture of Jerusalem by King David and his purchase of the Temple Mount site approximately 3,000 years ago, that has been the accepted location for fulfillment of the Mosaic law.

In the Jewish consciousness, the Mount has been further sanctified by the blood shed in defense of the Temples, by the destruction of the sacred structures, by the bitter exiles and the long separation from the Mount, and by the longing expressed in prayer and poem for its restoration.  The haunting "Next year in Jerusalem" cried out at festivals and celebrations always meant not just the city, but also its holiest place. 

In our own time, blood was shed again to end the Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem which had denied all Jews access to the Western Wall and any proximity to the Temple Mount from 1948 to 1967.  When the victorious Israeli Army reached the Western Wall below the Mount, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan spoke for all Jews, including totally secular ones like himself, when he declared, "We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to be separated from it again."         

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