Thoughts On Temple Mount Architecture

At Huffington Post, Robert Eisenman writes:

...let me observe that, while we Jews - 'we' in Israel and 'we' abroad - are expert at giving awards or commemorating our tragically obliterated and long-departed dead...we totally lack or are deficient in creating memorials...

I speak now of the Temple and Temple Mount...the Jews - perhaps because they have been so preoccupied by political matters - have not commemorated their return [to Israel as a sovereign nation]. They have not given it a living a symbol...

This is what a Temple, even if only a monumental one (because we as Jews would never be able agree on anything - in particular, what such a building or monument could or would be or do), would mean. Oh yes, one knows the arguments for and against, the "dos" and "don'ts", the difficulties, talking points, religious injunctions, commandments, absurdities - the whole subject being fraught with nuance pro and con. These I would not even attempt to sort out as they are far beyond my abilities...But twenty-five years ago, when a colleague was Minister of Science, I was invited to participate in assistantship capacity. As a Professor at a California University, the logistics prevented me from doing so in any formal way; but I gave an answer, when asked for new ideas which could be promoted by such a Ministry, with a proposal for an International Architectural Competition (much like the one ultimately held in Berlin and later in New York to commemorate and replace the destroyed World Trade Center) fifteen years before the Millennium. This would be called:

"Temple Mount Two Thousand: Holy to Three Faiths," announcing a utopian architectural competition and outlining a call to all the great architects of the world to participate (which would, of course, have included my brother, the present Wolf Prize recipient - a little nepotism here for which I am not either embarrassed or apologetic. But he had no hand in the suggestion, which was purely my own, or even any knowledge that I was making it, either then or now).

This is the way these things are traditionally worked out. This was the way it was done in Berlin (in fact, it was done twice before final designs were decided upon); this is the way it still should be done today. The best minds of architects, city planners, sculptors, memorialists, artists - even archaeologists - should be invited to participate and contribute models, suggestions, and designs for how to deal with the situation on the Temple Mount in its totality (which has not changed very much since then, except for the emotions and political agitation surrounding it) from any perspective they wished - what to construct anew, what to add, what to bridge, what to reconstruct - building, monument, or sculpture. Again, I emphasize the word "utopian" or even "academic."

This would not be beyond them to envision in one way or another and, from my perspective, this was the way to move forward. The proposals, of course, would be completely theoretical or utopian and no promise of any actual building, engineering activity, or sculpture was or would be attached - just innovative ideas for arranging the enormous space involved. Still I knew people would participate both then and now. People would not be able to resist the call to help solve the burning issues inherent in a reconstruction of or on the Temple Mount incorporating in its locale a monument, Temple, or field of sculpture that would express the ideas a new Judaism or Post- Holocaust 1948 Jewish People would need for commemoration, not of the dead but to inspire the living.

Now, that is indeed an idea.


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