Yisrael Medad reported yesterday that renovation work is again being carried out inside the Dome of the Rock and that scaffolding has been put on The Rock, known as the Foundation Stone.
He rightly complains that none of the Israel State authorities have shown any inclination to commit themselves to the Protection of Holy Places Law:
The Protection of Holy Places Law 5727 (1967), to remind us, reads:
The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places…2 (a) Whosoever desecrates or otherwise violates a Holy Place shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of seven years.
His article was accompanied by these pictures, which were scanned from the Makor Rishon newspapaer:
The Rock, known in Arabic as the Sakhra, around which the Dome of the Rock was built, was of course the location of the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. This drawing shows the location of The Rock inside the Dome of the Rock:
The plan shows the relationship between The Rock and Solomon’s Temple:
Medad’s article is followed up by Nadav Shragai’s blog post “The Temple Mount: Second Temple-era mikveh discovered under Al-Aqsa mosque”. This, of course, is not a recent find, as it was already discovered in the 1930’s by Hamilton, although made public only a few years ago. See these previous posts here and here.
Nadav’s post is, however, worth reading as it gives a potted history of what happened on the Temple Mount since the devastating earthquake in 1927.
R. Sommons,
Living in the United Kingdom, I have no intention to build the Temple in Jerusalem, but leave that for the Jewish people to decide.