Tendler Attends The Temple Mount

Ultra-Orthdox prohibition on entering Temple Mount splinters

The ultra-Orthodox rabbinical consensus on banning the entry of Jews to the Temple Mount is showing cracks. This comes in the wake of a decision by religious Zionist rabbis to lift the ban and the increase of religious Zionist visitors to the site.

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, son-in-law of the ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, visited the Temple Mount last Thursday with Temple Institute officials for the first time. Feinstein was one of the greatest Haredi adjudicators in the United States in the previous generation. Tendler, a bioethics expert and Talmud instructor at Yeshiva University, New York, is known mainly for his rulings on transplants and genetics.

Recently several ultra-Orthodox rabbis visited the Temple Mount but unlike Tendler, none would have his name released, due to sensitivity to this issue. Some two years ago, kabbalist Rabbi Dov Kook, who is married to Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv's granddaughter, also covertly visited the mount.

...Well-known religious Zionist adjudicators who have changed their approach include Kiryat Shmona Rabbi Zfania Drori, the chairman of the West Bank settlers rabbis committee, Rabbi Dov Lior, head of the hesder yeshiva in Ma'ale Adumim, Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch and dozens of others.

Some of these rabbis said Jews must be permitted to enter the Temple Mount to liberate it from the Muslim occupation, which is denying any Jewish affiliation - historic, religious and national - to the site and its past.