Quds in Arabic, Kodesh in Hebrew

America’s leading antisemitic pundit Tucker Carlson is out with an amusing new conspiracy theory. The real force behind the war in Iran is: The Chabad movement. You see, President Trump’s daughter and son in law, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, pray at a Chabad House in Washington DC. And Chabad believes deeply in the coming of the Messiah. And so, this war is designed to hasten the Messiah’s coming, destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, and rebuild the Third Temple. Ergo, Chabad is behind it all! Or something like that.

It can be fun to come up with such salacious theories. For example: Carlson himself professes to be a Christian. Twenty years ago, he supported the Iraq war. Iraq is located in ancient Babylon. In Tucker’s Christian scriptures (The Book of Revelations), it says that Jesus will eventually confront Babylon. Could this be why Tucker supported that war?? I’m only asking questions…

It isn’t worth confronting conspiracy theorists with facts, because their bigotry is not based in fact to begin with. It might be worthwhile, however, to use this as an educational moment to remind ourselves what our own view on the Third Temple is. But first, we need to understand Iran’s view.

Iran’s terrorist arm is called the Quds Force. This is a reference to the Arabic term for Jerusalem, Al Quds, which means: “The Holy”. Arabic and Hebrew are related. Quds in Arabic is Kodesh in Hebrew. (The letters QDS here correspond to the Hebrew letters Kuf Dalet Shin). “Al Quds”, with the definite article, means: “HaKodesh”; as in: Ir HaKodesh, The Holy City, Yerushalayim. That is the ultimate aim of the terrorist Quds Force, which also controls Hezbollah and Hamas: to conquer Jerusalem by force. By the grace of God, the evil Quds Force is now being pounded by the heroic pilots of the American and Israeli Air Forces, the two strongest Air Forces in the Western world.

And how did Israel succeed in conquering Jerusalem in 1967? The Jewish State did not have any preexisting policy of taking Jerusalem by force. They took it in the context of an existential, defensive war which they hadn’t asked for. And so, it happened organically, due to historical circumstance, to fate, or, to those of us who are Religious Zionists: due to Divine Providence.

The Jewish State itself was also not primarily brought about by force. The Zionist movement aimed to achieve a Jewish State diplomatically, and through mass immigration. Of course, once there, The Jews of the Land did arm themselves defensively. However, the great medieval sage Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (Ramban) was, in fact, of the opinion that in every generation there is a Biblical obligation incumbent on the Jewish People to take back the Land of Israel, even by force of arms if necessary (Ramban Bamidbar 33:53-54).

Contra the view of Ramban, those Orthodox Jews, such as Satmar (or my own righteous ancestors in Munkatch), who fiercely opposed the Zionist movement pointed to a passage in the Talmud Ketuvot 111a that God administered three Divine oaths upon the Jewish People and the nations of the world: 1) That the nations not persecute us overly much (it should be obvious that the nations violated this oath!) 2) That The Jews be loyal citizens of the countries in which they live. And 3) That it is prohibited for us to take the Land of Israel back by force.

Ramban apparently rejects these oaths as being legally normative. The oaths are also not recorded or addressed at all by the Shulchan Aruch or by the Rambam in his Mishneh Torah, or by any other of the major legal codes, leading to the unavoidable conclusion that they were only ever meant to be allegorical, and not legally binding.

In any case, the Religious Zionist response to the invocation of these three oaths was that Zionism was not about using force, but about achieving a Jewish State through diplomacy and immigration, which does not even violate the oaths in the Talmud to begin with.

However, with regards to rebuilding the Temple specifically, it does seem that the Satmar position is, in fact, the normative Orthodox view. R. Elijah of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon) is quoted as saying that the oaths only prohibit us from reestablishing a Jewish State in the Land of Israel if the underlying intent is to rebuild the Temple by force. R. Ovadia Yosef, the late and great former chief Sefardic rabbi of Israel, also made this same distinction between the State of Israel itself, to which the oaths do not apply, and the Temple in Jerusalem, to which they do.

2. A Peaceful Rebuilding?

Does that mean that we are required to wait for the Messiah to bring about the rebuilding of the Temple? Not necessarily. There is a third possibility, the one on which the Zionist movement itself was based: what if we could bring it about through human initiative, but peacefully? Granted, it’s impossible to imagine such a scenario today. But imagine if in, say, fifty years from now. Israel is at peace with Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis, already custodians of the holy Muslim sites in Mecca and Medina, invite us to rebuild our Temple. Maybe they’ll offer to move the Dome of the Rock a bit over somewhere.

Many sources (Rashi Sukkah 41a, Rambam Laws of Kings 11:1) do imply that we can only build the Third Temple when Messiah comes. Others say that it can be done even before the Messianic Age, as long as the nations of the world permit us to do so (see Bereshit Rabbah 64:10).

Another requirement, recorded by Rambam, is that the Temple be built by the direction of a sovereign Jewish King. The Religious Zionist view, based on Rav Kook, is that a king does not have to be an individual with a crown; the current Jewish Sovereignty in the Land of Israel, embodied by the [majority Jewish] 120 member Knesset, is the collective Sovereign (a “Malchut”, which is just as good as an individual “Melech” for this purpose). The individual Prime Minister, in this democratic reality, is not the king; he simply leads the collective Sovereign, the government, which is the king. (The State of Israel also has a President, currently Isaac Herzog, but his role is only ceremonial).

Another requirement to build the Third Temple, from the Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzvah 95), is that the majority of world Jewry is living in Israel. We are very close that materializing. Currently, about 45% of world Jewry lives in Israel. That number continuously creeps up closer to 51%, as much of diaspora Jewry sadly continues to assimilate.

Rambam also writes that before the Temple is rebuilt, the Jewish Sovereign in the Land must defeat the Amalekites. The ethnic Amalekites no longer exist. But to the extent that we now generally view Amalek as a metaphor for evil, it stands to reason that we can’t rebuild the Temple until evil is no longer a systematic threat.

In any case, we can tell the Tucker Carlsons of the world the following: the normative Haredi view is that the Temple can only be rebuilt by the Mashiach. The normative non-Orthodox view is somewhat agnostic or complicated on the matter of the Temple, but non-Orthodox Jewry, which constitutes most of world Jewry, certainly has no interest in forcibly rebuilding the Temple, if at all. The normative Religious Zionist view is divided by those who side with the Haredim that only the Mashiach can rebuild the Temple, and those who believe that it can be rebuilt before such a time, but only if it can be done peacefully. A small minority of Religious Zionists do seem to advocate blowing up the Mosque, but they remain on the fringe, and I don’t know of any great renowned rabbis (Gedolim) who support such a view.

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem is probably the leading organization advocating for rebuilding the Temple before the Messianic age, but only by peaceful means. On their website, they write:

“Many scenarios can be imagined which would accomplish this, the most promising, and not necessarily the most far-fetched, would entail Moslem recognition of the Mount as the intended location for the rebuilt Temple. With the acquiescence of the Moslem world, the Moslem structures currently on the Mount would be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere. Traditionally, Moslem texts, beginning with the Koran, accept the prophecies of the return of the Jewish nation and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple. Today, of course, radical Islam holds sway over the Moslem world, and until this phenomenon is defeated, the likelihood of a peaceful preparation for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple remains nil”.

My own heart and soul side with the Temple Institute. I can’t see any possibility of peacefully rebuilding the Temple any time soon. But perhaps, in say, fifty years from now, if the circumstances allow for it? Miracles do happen…especially in Israel.

In conclusion, while educating the Tucker Carlsons of this world is a pointless endeavor, it is worthwhile to use these moments as opportunities to reeducate ourselves on our Torah views regarding these important matters. As we’ll sing at the end of the Seder in Adir Hu in a few weeks: Oh God build, oh God build, build Your Holy House soon!!

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)