Among the thousands of Jewish worshipers bustling throughout Jerusalem’s Old City last Wednesday morning to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, many could be seen carrying large blue flags emblazoned with an illustration of the biblical Temple.

These flags have come to dot the crowds during many Jewish holidays in the Old City, and represent a once-fringe aspiration held by a section of Israel’s national religious camp inching its way into the movement’s mainstream: rebuilding the Jewish Temple of antiquity to usher in the messianic era.

On the second day of Sukkot, groups of religious Zionist revelers paraded throughout the Old City selling these flags, encouraging coreligionists not just to mark the week-long festival by praying at the Western Wall, but also to visit the Temple Mount.

Venerated by both Jews and Muslims, the site today houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine, administered by a Jordanian-run Islamic trust called the waqf. Jewish ascent to the Temple Mount is an incendiary issue among Muslims, who view it as a major encroachment on one of their holiest sites.

“Sukkot is one of the shalosh regalim [three major festivals], in which we are commanded in the Torah to go up to the Temple and make sacrificial offerings,” said Avraham Yedidya Ben-Shlomo, a young man with a thick beard and long sidelocks selling flags to passersby headed to the Western Wall.

Ben-Shlomo, a religious Zionist from the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, was one of thousands of Jews who visited the Temple Mount over the course of the holiday, though he has been plenty of times in the past, he told The Times of Israel.

But the Temple Mount’s hallowed status in Judaism presents a problem for many Orthodox Jews, particularly Haredim, who believe it is a grave sin for Jews to set foot where the Temple’s inner sanctuary once stood while in a state of ritual impurity — a status that can’t be changed until after the Temple is rebuilt and certain sacrifices can be brought to complete the purification process.

The exact location of the inner sanctuary is disputed, which led many rabbis to issue a blanket ban on visits to the Temple Mount.

After Israel conquered the Old City from Jordan in the Six Day War, the two countries came to an informal agreement that reentrusted daily operations of the Temple Mount to Jordan, which allows Jews and other non-Muslims to visit, but not pray at the site.

Israel’s Chief Rabbinate swiftly deemed Jewish visits to the site forbidden.

The so-called “status quo” agreement........

© The Times of Israel