Aliyah to Har Habayit-- Temple Mount Today

Yes, today was a big celebration for me... I ascended Har Habayit-- Temple Mount today for the third time. As with the first time, I joined my neighbor Rachel Sela and a variety of women from Shiloh and further afield. It has been a few years since

Actually I was involved in an attempt to ascend Har Habayit which failed due to anti-Jewish government orders. I had forgotten about it completely until searching my blog for the links of my successful aliyot.

My second aliyah to Har Habayit was with my husband, one of our sons and his son, yes, three generations. It was very thrilling.

This week, the beginning of the Jewish Month of Elul, is a double anniversary for us, aliyah to Israel, 56 years, and aliyah to Shiloh, 45 years. So when I saw that Rachel was saying that she's going up today, I decided that I'd join.

Rachel ascends Har Habayit relatively frequently and invites women to join her. This time there were a few young ones who brought their children, even nursing babies. This was amazing to me, who took decades to make my way there, because it wasn't all that suitable aka safe at first for a young mother. Also, conditions for Jews were awful and dangerous. And then... it took me a long time.

Regulations have changed, even over the few years since my first visit.

Even though siddurim (prayer books) and Tehilim (Psalm) books are still officially forbidden, they offered us printed papers with prayers. And nobody stops anyone from praying from their phone.

We sang and danced to religious texts we knew by heart. We also got down on the holy ground facing the holiest spot praying our own private prayers silently.

There were also men in the group "supervised" by the same police officers. Yes, that's Yehuda Glick, well-known for his ascents to the Temple Mount and his miraculous recovery from an assassination attempt a number of years ago. 

This visit was more relaxed than my previous ones. At one point, the men who were assigned to our group had had enough, but we hadn't. We were allowed to stay with a newer one. The police were very accommodating. That began only in recent years, since Itamar Ben-Gvir became Minister of National Security, which includes the police on Har Habayit.  

Just to make things very clear. All of the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have a long documented history as Jewish. Islam was invented thousands of years after Judaism, and Jerusalem isn't even in its early narrative and books. But on Har Habayit-- Temple Mount all the signs are in Arabic. Israel has failed to protect its most precious place, where both the Jewish Holy Temples were located. Thank Gd there is a bit of improvement, though we have a long, long, very long way to go.

Our group today on Har Habayit (with permission from Rachel Sela)