Last update - 00:00 15/05/2007
Religious Zionists to continue visits to Temple Mount
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
Religious Zionist rabbis and yeshiva students are planning to continue their visits to the Temple Mount, according to Rabbi Avraham Wasserman, one of the organizers of Sunday's high-profile visit.
"This is a process," said the rabbi, who heads the Ramat Gan Yeshiva. "After so many years in which people got used to it being forbidden to ascend the Temple Mount, explanatory work and lengthy preparations are needed to bring the public to the mount in purity, after fulfilling all the halakhic requirements."
According to Chief Rabbi of Haifa She'ar Yeshuv Cohen, who once headed a panel appointed by the Chief Rabbinate to study the Temple Mount issue, the problem is knowing exactly which areas of the mount Jews are permitted to enter under Jewish law.
The panel he headed reached no conclusions on this issue, but Cohen says it would be possible to solve this problem by locating the site of the synagogue that existed on the mount for 400 years after the Second Temple was destroyed. He personally believes that visits to the mount should be permitted, but since he is currently a member of the Chief Rabbinical Council, "I am not taking an official stance."
Though the rabbis' visit Sunday had an enormous impact on the religious Zionist community, the two most important religious Zionist rabbis - Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu - declined to participate, and their position on the issue remains unclear. Another prominent religious Zionist rabbi, Shlomo Aviner, unequivocally forbids ascending the mount.