Five Rabbis Denounce Jewish Prayer on the Esplanade of the Mosques

Five prominent representatives of the Israeli rabbinate condemned on Wednesday, August 14, the presence of many Jews, including a far-right Israeli minister, who came to pray the day before on the Esplanade of the Mosques in East Jerusalem, recalling the ban on Jewish worshippers going to this holy place disputed by the rabbinate.

On Tuesday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir filmed himself on the esplanade with other Jews who had come to pray there, provoking a wave of international criticism. Nearly 3,000 Jews then “prayed, danced and raised the Israeli flag” at the site, according to an official of the Jordanian Waqf, the Islamic authority responsible for administering the holy site.

The stakes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Located in East Jerusalem, a sector of the holy city occupied and annexed by Israel, the esplanade, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock, is a key issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was built on the ruins of the Second Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 by the Romans. For Jews, it is the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

“I call on the nations of the world not to regard these government ministers as representatives of the Jewish people.”said Yitzhak Yosef, former chief rabbi of Israel in a video. “We (Jews, editor’s note) want peace between nations, and must not allow ourselves to be led by extremist groups”he added.

Four other rabbis, reference figures for a large part of Orthodox Jews, appear in the video and recall, like one of them, David Cohen, the position of the rabbinate according to which “It is strictly forbidden (for Jews) to enter the Temple Mount”This religious prohibition, questioned by certain rabbis of the religious Zionist movement from which Itamar Ben Gvir came, is motivated by the risk for a Jew of committing sacrilege by treading on the Holy of Holies of the ancient sanctuary, which only the high priests of the Temple era could enter.

In the video, Rabbi Cohen addresses the prayer participants as “thugs, who publicly desecrate the Temple”.

A rule frequently broken by nationalist Jews

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denounced a ” event “ which constitutes “an exception to the status quo”Under the status quo, which was decreed after Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967, non-Muslims can go to the esplanade at specific times without praying, but this rule is increasingly being broken by many nationalist Jews.

According to the Jewish calendar, Tuesday was the ninth day of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. As every year, thousands of worshipers gathered on this occasion for a prayer at the Western Wall, below the esplanade.