Look at most artistic reconstructions of the Temple Mount and you’re likely to see Leen Ritmeyer’s name attached to them. The architect of the Temple Mount Excavations following the Six-Day War, Ritmeyer has spent much of his life researching the mysteries of the Temple Mount and helping people visualize the ancient structures behind the present remains. The Quest is his personal chronicle of the research he has done, the challenges he has faced, and the answers he believes he has discovered.
David Instone-Brewer of Tyndale House has created an enormously useful website for the study of Rabbinic Texts.
It is now easy to look up most of the early rabbinic legal texts. The rabbinic texts were among the first to be digitised and there are some wonderful tools, but the good ones cost a lot of money and aren’t very friendly.
So I made the RabbinicTraditions.com site for myself. It is quick to use and more powerful than most, and has proved so valuable that I’m making it available to everyone.
You can freely read the texts of the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah, Tosephta and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. For a small fee per year or for life, you can fully search these texts.
The study of the Mishnah, in particular the tractate Middot, has helped enormously in my study of the Temple Mount and has made it possible to locate the pre-Herodian Square Temple Mount, shown in yellow in the illustration below:
In an interview with Aaron Klein’s Investigative Radio programme on New York’s WABC Radio, Eilat Mazar claims that the 2nd Jewish temple is just ‘waiting to be unearthed’. You can read the interview here.
Although I would agree that many remains of the First and Second temple period are still existing below the surface of the present-day Temple Mount, I doubt if any remains of the Temple building itself are still extant.
The reason for this is that the floor of the Dome of the Rock and its surrounding area is actually 5 feet (1.5 m) lower than the top of the foundation of the Second Temple, which, according to Josephus was 10 feet 4 inches (3.15 m) high.
The bedrock falls to the east of the Dome of the Rock and I believe that remains of the steps leading up to the Temple, the Altar, and the Nicanor Gate could still be found.
The Temple was built on the top of Mount Moriah and therefore the further away from the top, the better the chances are that remains could be found.
On the second of the common days of Pesach (Passover), which this year fell on the 21st of April, there is usually a large gathering at the Western Wall to watch the priestly blessing.
Yesterday a much smaller, but perhaps more important priestly blessing was allowed for the first time in recent history on the Temple Mount itself. See this Israel National News report:
Hundreds of religious Jews from all streams were able to happily commemorate the 44th anniversary of the first-ever entry of Israeli soldiers onto the TempleMount.
For the first time in the history of Israeli restrictions on Jewish entry to the Temple Mount, the recitation of the Priestly Blessing was permitted there. It happened on Wednesday, Jerusalem Reunification Day, when hundreds of visitors – all of whom immersed in a mikveh (ritual bath) prior to coming and took other precautions required by Jewish Law – were allowed to enter the Temple Mount in groups of 30-40.
Among them were several Cohanim (descendants of Aharon the Priest). They spread their hands in the customary manner and recited, “May G-d bless and watch over your… May G-d shine His countenance upon and show you grace… May G-d raise His countenance towards you and grant you peace” (Numbers 6, from the portion to be read aloud this week in synagogues throughout the Jewish world).
Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, head of the Temple Institute and one of the paratroopers who helped liberate the Temple Mount in 1967, and who was miraculously saved from death at the tim, recited aloud the blessing, “Barukh – Thou art the source of blessing, G-d, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.” Many visitors and listeners, including policemen, recited “Amen!”
The visitors specifically noted the fair and pleasant attitude displayed by the police, as well as the preparations and security precautions they implemented for all those wishing to ascend to the Temple Mount on this date.
In addition to the above, Rabbi Yoel Elitzur delivered a Torah lesson on Temple-related issues, after which the participants – again, including policemen – stood for the recitation of the Kaddish.
Despite the close proximity of the Moslem Waqf policemen and their obvious anger, the visit went off nearly without a hitch. One Israeli policemen yelled angrily and threatened the Jewish visitors, but that incident ended relatively quickly.
Jehuda Hartman was 22 on June 7, 1967 when he stood as an IDF paratrooper at the liberated Western Wall or Kotel. 44 Years later, on Jerusalem Day, he recreates the shot. Click on the picture to see the video:
Jehuda Hartman returns to the Western Wall
Two months later, I visited the Western Wall myself and vividly remember the excitement that was still in the air.
Some 2000 years ago, Strabo wrote that Jerusalem was a “city well watered within, but desert outside” (Geography 16:2:40). The Gihon Spring and the many water reservoirs inside the Old City of Jerusalem attest to the truth of that statement.
I don’t think, however, that he knew anything about Israel’s largest underground stream that was recently discovered inside a man-made cave.
A cave discovered during excavation work by Israel Railways in Jerusalem contains the largest and most impressive underground water sources ever discovered in Israel, scholars say.
The cave was discovered near the International Convention Center in the capital during construction work on a station for the future high speed Jerusalem-Tel Aviv train line. Builders came across it while digging a service shaft at a depth of 75 meters – five meters from the planned bottom of the shaft.
The Jerusalem cave opening into a shaft dug during railway construction. Photo: A. Frumkin
Over the past few days, scholars from the Cave Research Unit of the Hebrew University’s Department of Geography, who were called to the scene by engineering companies working with Israel Railways, have been crawling through the underground nooks and crannies. “It’s hard work, crawling through mud into a cave the end of which we haven’t reached yet,” Prof. Amos Frumkin, head of the unit, said. Frumkin said the cave is between a half a meter to a few meters wide, and is a few dozen meters high.
According to an initial survey by Frumkin’s team, the cave developed as water seeped in from the surface and dissolved the limestone. The resulting cavern is known as a karstic cave, named after the region in Slovenia where the phenomenon was first documented. The surveyors said that during their initial exploration, they found water flowing through the cave from northwest to southeast.
Frumkin estimates the cave to be about 200 meters long but that it could be longer. A small canyon at the end of the segment that has so far been checked plunges through cracks down into a series of waterfalls.
Frumkin says the cave “puts Israel on the map of tropical and temperate karstic regions where underground streams are common.”
The cave also has hydrological significance because it is part of the mountain aquifer, an underground reservoir into which rainwater flows from the surface, and that extends all along Israel’s central mountain range, Frumkin says. “The study of the cave can help us understand the precise mechanism by which water flows through the aquifer in the Jerusalem area,” he adds.
It will also help researchers understand how pollution leaches into the ground from the surface. Researchers usually have to drill wells to study this problem, but the newly discovered cave allows a direct look into the aquifer.
As opposed to the cave discovered in the Ramle area a few years ago, which contained crustaceans previously unknown to science, Frumkin says only microscopic life-forms were found in his explorations. Nevertheless, he says the cave must be protected as a valuable natural phenomenon, and that this can be accomplished without impeding construction of the railway station.
Read the Israel National News report on the countrywide celebrations that start tonight:
Jerusalem Reunification Day – the day marking Israel’s return to the Temple Mount, the Old City , Mt. of Olives, and the areas that became Ramat Eshkol, Gilo and more during the Six Day War in 1967 – is increasingly being celebrated not only in Jerusalem. In fact, over 80 cities around the country will mark the occasion with marches and otherwise, this Tuesday night and Wednesday.
These nationwide commemorations – the first time, in most cities – are being organized and coordinated by theMerimim et HaDegel(Raising the Flag) movement, in a campaign named, “We are All Jerusalem: Celebrating Jerusalem Throughout the Country.”
This report by Matti Friedman of the Associated Press, has been widely published today:
JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.
At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.
Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.
Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem’s main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.
But many Palestinians, who reject Israel’s sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.
A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky.
Other tunnels are mentioned also, such as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Canaanite Tunnel and Zedekiah’s Cave, also known as Solomon’s Quarries near the Damascus Gate.
The next major project, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city’s main Roman-era streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, scheduled for completion in three years, will link up with the Western Wall tunnel.
Although most of these tunnels and underground areas have been known for a long time, it is interesting to see that they have become a new underground tourist attraction.
The report then continues to describe the political impact that these underground excavations and tunnels have on the local population. You can read the whole report here.
In a previous post, we reported on State Comptroller’s report on the illegal activities by the Waqf on the Temple Mount. According to the website of the Temple Mount Faithful:
“The goal of the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement is the building of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in our lifetime in accordance with the Word of G-d and all the Hebrew prophets and the liberation of the Temple Mount from Arab (Islamic) occupation so that it may be consecrated to the Name of G-d.”
The Jerusalem Post reports that this group, led by Gershon Salomon, has petitioned the High Court to have the full report published:
Fearing mass-scale destruction of holy artifacts under the Temple Mount, the Temple Mount Faithful, a group that calls for the Jewish takeover of the site, petitioned the High Court on Thursday to order the full publication of the secret State Comptroller’s Report on excavation works being conducted at one of the holiest places in the world.
Citing “harm to Israel’s national security and possible harm to its foreign relations”, the High Court has so far refused to publish the complete report.
