While the empty Western Wall plaza received the full public attention, the Temple Mount also remained desolate from Jews • It must be removed from the confinement we imposed on it • Project "Here we close for fun"
Sorry we forgot about the Temple Mount
Photography:
Ophir Dayan
We talk a lot about closure damages, business closures, the education system, public institutions and what not.
On issues of values, beliefs, customs, rituals - much less.
The pictures distributed on the eve of Yom Kippur from the Western Wall were unusual.
For many, the desolate extension symbolized the social and civic responsibility of the worshipers who refrained from attending, others saw it as proof that the religious were "suckers," as Boaz Golan put it.
As they relinquish their pardons, masses demonstrate in Balfour.
But instead of looking away from the Western Wall to Balfour and getting upset, I would recommend looking up a few meters.
There, too, lies a default.
Throughout the year the Temple Mount stands almost empty of Jews, only a few hundred people, a nucleus of devotees, return to visit it.
But even the Temple Mount, if he could have imagined, could not have imagined how deserted and desolate it would be in the Corona period.
The closure, which I have no doubt is necessary, limits the entry of Jews to the Temple Mount to those who live a mile or less away, and these are of course not many.
On the last day of Yom Kippur, groups of Jews living not far away climbed the mountain.
In the traditional white clothes and against the background of the golden cap, their presence further emphasized the scarcity.
If you ask from the ranks of Naomi Shemer, the Temple Mount is empty when there are no Jews in it.
But even when they are so few it pinches the heart.
And my heart ached, like everyone else, in front of the picture of the empty Western Wall.
The status of Slichot at the Western Wall is exciting every year, but what is more sad is that not enough of the Slichot seekers at the Western Wall look up, and so do many others in the Jewish people.
If they looked, they would understand that while we were educated to pray at the Western Wall, the seat of the two temples is right above it, and it is precisely him who is not visited by thousands to apologize.
And perhaps that is why he deserves, most of all, a pardon.
Forgiveness that when we forgot the Temple Mount, forgiveness that we turned the Jews into Type D citizens who were forbidden to pray in its territory or come to its gates on Saturdays and settle for a few hours on weekdays, but mostly forgiveness that we neglected it and its heritage.
When the corona closure ends, we will also remove the Temple Mount from the conscious closure we have imposed on it.