Like every morning, after immersing himself in a ritual bath, Rabbi Elisha Wolfson goes to the Temple Mount, the esplanade of the Mosques. Like any non-Muslim, he accesses it through the Maghreb Gate, which overlooks the Wailing Wall, in the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem. Around this vigorous thirty-year-old with light eyes and a full beard crowd around ten Israelis. A majority of religious Zionists identifiable by their knitted yarmulkes, but also two Orthodox in black frock coats and a Sephardic traditionalist accompanied by his son. “The little one will soon be bar mitzvahed [NDLR : 13 ans, la majorité religieuse]. I wanted him to climb the Temple Mount before it was rebuilt,” slips mischievously this father from Sderot, a working-class town near the Gaza Strip.
Before taking the wooden footbridge which leads to the esplanade, the group must listen to the instructions of the police officer supervising the visit. “You are prohibited from moving away from the group. Banned from brandishing an Israeli flag and, above all, prohibited from praying,” warns the agent. These instructions are part of the status quo in force since the conquest of the Esplanade des Mosques by Israel during the Six-Day War in June 1967. The Muslim holy site was until then under Jordanian control. Anxious to avoid any confrontation with the Islamic world, the Israelis entrusted the esplanade to the Waqf, a Muslim foundation responsible for administering the mosques. The status quo stipulates that Jews can visit the esplanade at specific times but must refrain from practicing any form of worship there. Until recent years, this rule was strictly respected. Waqf employees carefully monitored the movements of the Jews’ lips and demanded their expulsion at the slightest clandestine prayer. Things have changed a lot.
On this September morning, the esplanade is bathed in a captivating light. On the right stands the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. On the left, the emblematic building of Jerusalem: the sublime Dome of the Rock, gilded with fine gold. “This is exactly where the Holy of Holies was located, the most sacred place in the Temple of Jerusalem,” explains Elisha Wolfson. The group obliges itself to follow the contours of the esplanade in order to avoid desecrating the remains of the second temple, once the spiritual center of Judaism, destroyed in the year 70 by the Roman emperor Titus.
After a few minutes of walking, still surrounded by the Israeli police, the Jewish faithful sit on a low wall facing the Dome of the Rock. They say prayers out loud, in violation of the status quo. But the police say nothing and the Waqf men do not show themselves. Radiant, Rabbi Wolfson delivers his daily address. Filmed on a mobile phone, it will be broadcast to thousands of subscribers of the WhatsApp group “Let’s connect to the Temple”. “God tells us, ‘If you are not truly connected to this place, then that means you are not completely sure that you are not thieves.’ Recently I heard Ofer Winter – may God soon lead the army of Israel – who said that if we do not come here with the strength of the Bible, then we are thieves. we have nothing to do here,” asserts the rabbi.
“The Temple is the source of our entire identity”
Ofer Winter. The tribute paid by Rabbi Wolfson to this brigadier general, herald of the religious Zionist right and candidate for supreme command of the IDF, says a lot about the porosity between Israeli power and visitors to the Temple Mount. The latter now have solid relays within the government. Starting with Itamar Ben Gvir, the sulphurous Minister of National Security. On August 13, on the 1,954th anniversary of the destruction of the Temple – an event commemorated each year by millions of Israelis – Ben Gvir took to the esplanade from where he published a resounding video on his X account : “I see very good progress in the application of our sovereignty here. Our policy is to allow prayer [des juifs].” A statement immediately qualified as “unacceptable provocation” by Western chancelleries. That day, the attendance record was broken: more than 2,000 Israelis set foot on the esplanade. Already more than 50,000 visitors for the year 2024. Never seen before.
“We are witnessing a real awakening of the people of Israel, who are beginning to reconnect with the Temple Mount,” says Ofira Halevy, a journalist from Maariv who regularly garners more than 100,000 views on the videos on his TikTok account dedicated to the Temple. Not particularly religious, this Israeli of Yemeni origin notes an unprecedented popular enthusiasm around the esplanade and the reconstruction of the Temple. “The atmosphere has completely changed in recent years. Jews are no longer afraid to demonstrate their attachment to the Temple Mount, to pray, to sing, to wave Israeli flags. This is essential, because the Temple is the source of our entire identity, and I am convinced that it will allow us to overcome all our divisions.”
The activist visits to the esplanade aim to anchor in Israeli opinion the urgency of rebuilding the third temple of Jerusalem in place of the mosques. Until the beginning of the 2010s, this project mobilized a handful of enthusiasts. Today, a host of citizen organizations are working concretely to hasten the reconstruction of the sanctuary. Funded by extremely wealthy patrons, the Third Temple association aims to coordinate all initiatives: design of architectural plans, training of future priests, resolution of legal issues, etc. The Thirdtemple.org site claims 620,000 unique visitors worldwide, including nearly 130,000 in Israel and 50,000 in the United States. It is available in five languages (Hebrew, English, French, Russian and Spanish). “At this stage, our priority is to raise awareness among as many Israelis as possible about the Temple. By this I mean public opinion but also political decision-makers, who must take concrete measures to enable the construction of the third temple,” one of the movement’s main financiers told L’Express, on condition of anonymity.
The arrival of red cows in Tel Aviv
In September 2022, some funny news euphorized the small community of Third Temple activists. A plane from Texas landed at Tel Aviv airport with five perfectly red cows in its holds. Historically, the arrival of the cattle in Israel gave rise to a vibrant religious ceremony in one of the airport hangars. Because obtaining a red cow, without the slightest hair of another color, constitutes an essential prerequisite for the reconstruction of the Temple. According to the biblical text, the ashes of the red cow form the basis of a mixture with which the faithful must be sprinkled before entering the Temple grounds. Currently, the cows are under guard in Shiloh, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank where a Hebrew shrine once stood. “There are still some religious problems to resolve in order to sacrifice the cows and carry out the purification, but this could be done very quickly. This will mark a crucial step towards the reconstruction of the Temple”, affirms the historian Haïm Berkovits, very familiar with the case.
Red cow breeding in Texas was financed by American evangelists. The support of these political-religious groups holds a central place in the system of the third temple. In the United States, the cause has supporters at the highest levels. A one-time contender for the White House, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis regularly appears alongside Third Temple activists. In 2014, he took to the esplanade in the company of a member of Congress, Andy Harris, who deplored “the limited access and discrimination against Jews compared to other religions to visit the Temple Mount”. Close to evangelical circles, David Friedman, United States ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, is trying to plead the cause with the billionaire. “He is trying to convince Trump to climb the Temple Mount before the presidential election. We are also working with the Americans to try to convince the Saudis to allow the reconstruction of the Temple,” confides the anonymous financier.
All this unrest is not lost on the Palestinians. The defense of Al-Aqsa even becomes the main battle of the armed groups, as indicated by the name of the attack of October 7, baptized “Flood of Al-Aqsa” by Hamas. The same evening of the massacres, Ismaïl Haniyeh, the head of the political branch of the movement, since assassinated by Israel, declared in a televised speech: “We had warned them and we have warned everyone of what is happening in Jerusalem and in Al-Aqsa Mosque We told them: ‘Don’t play with fire. Don’t cross the red line.'” Last January, for the hundred days of the war in Gaza, a video from Abou Obaïda, a Hamas spokespersons, demonstrated a perfect awareness of the progress of the project: “They introduced the red cow to make a detestable religious myth come true”, accused the Islamist activist.
When the activists of the third temple are asked about the risks of a global explosion, they systematically formulate the same type of answer: “The Temple is a work of peace. It will unify all nations towards the same goal: to live in harmony with divine will We must not be afraid,” assures Ofira Halevy. In the meantime, tensions around Al-Aqsa are shaking the world.
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