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Temple Worship Today?
R. J. Zvi Werblowsky

[The following is a reprint of the topical article in The Jerusalem Post Week-end Magazine, of Friday, August 25, 1967, by permission of the author and editors. The titles are our own.]

Since 1948 the question has not infrequently been asked what the Jews intended to do about their Temple, the rebuilding of which they have so fervently prayed for during the last 2,000 years. Did they have any serious religious concern in repossessing the Old City of Jerusalem and with it the Temple area? Were they really making any preparations for the resumption of the ancient sacrificial ritual? Since June 1967 these questions have been heard with increasing frequency. The author, Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, discusses these questions here.

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Prior to the summer of 1967 questions about the rebuilding of the Temple were asked mostly in Christian circles. To the present writer's knowledge the problem was rarely, if ever, discussed in Jewish or Israeli circles — not even at rabbinical gatherings or conferences. No doubt the Israeli occupation of the Old City forced the rabbis to reflect more seriously on the matter, yet even so it was only as a result of Army Chief Rabbi Goren's actions on and around the 9th Av that the problem, hitherto a theoretical curiosity, was suddenly brought to the attention of the larger public in Israel and abroad.

It is a curious fact that the few and scattered demands to rebuild the Temple on its ancient site emanate from extremist nationalist circles rather than from religious and rabbinic quarters. The former seem to be fired by the idea of a Temple that would symbolically wipe out the hiatus of exile and homelessness in Jewish history and re-establish Jewish existence today as the manifest continuation of the days of King Solomon and the Maccabees. The rabbinic leaders, on the other hand, seem to be more hesitant, and their hesitancy comes as a bit of a surprise to those who have only a partial acquaintance with Jewish tradition.

The fact that the aforementioned questions were, in the past, mainly asked by Christians implies that they were asked with a good deal of ignorance and bias. The bias is often evident even in the motivation of the question. But there is undoubtedly room for legitimate interest on the part of Christians and others in the nature of the religious situation wrought by the national renascence. The Jewish prayerbook, and more particularly the liturgy for the festivals, is replete with expressions of the longing for the restoration of the Temple in its glory. In fact, prayer is sometimes said to be but a "substitute" for the fuller and more perfect worship in the Temple. Under the circumstances, it is only natural to ask whether the Jews still regard these age-old aspirations as essential to them.

But alongside this legitimate interest one easily detects other motives too. There is a suggestion that the Jews are up to dark designs that would give the gravest offence to Moslems all over the world, that they might invade the Haram-esh-Sharif to build their Temple, and that anyway they could not be entrusted with the guardianship of the holy places... Although the following lines are written mainly with a view to acquainting the interested reader with the rabbinical background of the subject, a few words may be in order on some more general aspects.

Temple worship today?

There are, it seems, three different aspects to be considered. In the first place, there is the political and social aspect: would any plan to renew the priestly worship in the Temple be feasible today, not only with a view to gentile reactions but considering the attitudes of many Israeli (and for that matter also European and American) Jews regarding sacrificial ritual. Secondly there is the more specifically religious and psychological aspect: what attitude would be adopted not by Jewry in general but by religious Jews in particular? Do sacrifice and priestly ritual still appeal to them emotionally, and does Temple worship constitute a desirable religiousideal in their eyes? And finally, how does the halakhah (talmudic-rabbinic law) envisage this problem?

A large section of Israeli Jewry — some would even say the majority — are not religious in the orthodox, rabbinic sense. Of this large section a certain part is definitely anti-religious. The religious parties had the greatest trouble to secure fulfilment of their minimum demands such as public observance of the Sabbath, or religious education for immigrant children. In recent years the religious parties have considerably strengthened their position, partly (though not wholly) by exploitation of the precarious balance of a coalition government. Even so, many of their attempts to secure some sort of traditional-religious character to public life are resented by part of the population as rabbinic totalitarianism, orthodox tyranny, clericalism, medieval obscurantism and the like. Even if the religious parties and the rabbis were to decide that the sacrificial ritual ought to be resumed (and we shall see in the following paragraphs that they are very far from doing so), the realization of this desire would be extremely difficult. Not only are the majority of Israelis too levelheaded to provoke Moslem fanaticism by invading one of the holiest shrines of Islam and invite the displeasure of the whole civilized world, but many of them would oppose, on grounds of principle, "atavistic" innovations of this kind. On the other hand it seems as if some groups were interested in the rebuilding of the Temple for nationalistic rather than strictly religious reasons.

Vital contact lost.

But whereas evaluations of the attitude of the general public are of necessity vague and impressionistic, matters are different when we turn to the religious groups who might reasonably be expected to entertain projects concerning Temple and sacrifice. In this connection we should note first of all the historical fact that since the cessation of sacrifice in A.D. 70 the Jews seem to have lost, slowly but gradually, their inner, vital contact with sacrificial ritual. The most remarkable thing about the offer of the Emperor Julian (dubbed "the Apostate" by his enemies) in the 4th century to rebuild the Temple was what seems to be an absence of response from the Jews. This lack of enthusiasm may, perhaps, be attributed to the complete exhaustion of the Jewish people after terrible wars, abortive risings and violent persecutions. For some centuries, indeed, the hope that "tomorrow God might rebuild the sanctuary" had been real enough, and discussions concerning the minutiae of ritual were conducted with all the learning and ingenuity of which the rabbis were capable. A whole section of the Mishnah with the corresponding Babylonian Gemara is devoted to the subject. The results of these talmudic controversies are embodied in book nine (Abodah) of Moses Maimonides' great Code (henceforth referred to as Cod. Maim.). Not a single detail is left out in that monumental work: the prescribed measurements and architectural lay-out of the sanctuary with its buildings, courts, halls, and rooms; the exact description of altars, vessels, sacerdotal vestments and ritual instruments; the rules of qualification for (and disqualification from) the priestly and levitical ministry; rules concerning access to the Temple precincts; rules specifying which animals may or may not be sacrificed; the manner and ritual of the various public and private sacrifices, offerings and other liturgical actions. Post-exilic liturgy tended to assign a central part to the memory of the Temple ritual and to the prayer for its renewal. In fact, the daily Amidah-prayer contains a petition to the effect that he who will restore his Presence unto Zion may "accept [his] people Israel and their prayer; restore the service to the oracle of [his] house; and receive in love and favor both the fire-offerings of Israel and their prayer".

Liturgy for festival days strikes a plaintive note as it reminds the worshippers that "on account of our sins we were exiled from ourland, and removed far from our country, and we are unable to go up to appear and prostrate ourselves before thee and to fulfill our obligations in thy chosen house, that great and holy Temple which was called by thy name". The prayer for redemption proceeds logically in opposite order to its liturgical climax: "May it be thy that thou mayest again in thine abundant compassion have mercy upon us and upon thy sanctuary, and mayest speedily rebuild it and magnify its glory. Our Father, our King, do thou speedily make the glory of thy kingdom manifest upon us... bring our scattered ones among the nations near unto thee, and gather our dispersed from the ends of the earth. Lead us with exultation unto Zion thy city, and unto Jerusalem the place of thy sanctuary with everlasting joy; and there we will perform before thee the sacrifices that are obligatory for us, the continual offerings according to their order and the additional offerings according to their enactment."

But all this cannot blind us to the fact that in course of time the inner and vital contact was lost. The prayer book dates to a large extent from the period immediately following the destruction of the Temple, and so does the Mishnah. Maimonides merely codified the material which he found spread unsystematically throughout the talmudic literature. And the same Maimonides, in his philosophical work, Guide for the Perplexed, said some very startling things about sacrifices which, if taken seriously, would render much of the legislation in his code obsolete. In a way Maimonides is merely a late medieval example of a tendency that had long been present in Jewish thinking and which strove to "spiritualize" the meaning of the Temple and of the sacrificial cult. Evidently the "crude" and "material" forms of worship were somehow felt to be objectionable, and the cultic traditions were therefore reinterpreted by way of spiritualization. The other, and in many ways more authentic — or at any rate more popular — tradition insisted on the supreme significance of the Temple as the locus of God's presentia realis in the midst of Israel and on the uniquely sacramental and atoning qualities of the priestly ritual. In modern Judaism the crisis has come to a head. Many non-orthodox groups (liberal, reform, progressive, or however called) have deleted from the prayerbook all references to the reinstitution of sacrifices.

Current orthodox opinion.

More interesting still is the fact that many orthodox Jews, when pressed hard on this point, admit that they are rather at a loss how to express their views on the subject. Many of them adhere to the traditional liturgical formulas, entertain the ancient hope regarding the rebuilding of the Temple, and affirm their belief in the future restoration of the sacrificial cult for purely dogmatic reasons: the Temple ritual is part and parcel of God's Law as revealed in the Torah and expounded in the Talmud, and hence, in the fullness of time, the fullness of the Law would be restored.

Others frankly admit that they expect mankind to be given a "new heart" after the advent of the Messiah, i.e. a different kind of religious sensitivity which would enable them again to relate more vitally to the meaning of a sacrificial cult. It would be rashness and folly for a historian of religion to lay down what is, or is not, a legitimate Jewish attitude regarding the Temple and sacrificial ritual. All he can do is to state the bald fact that in the eyes of many Jews the Synagogue means more than the Temple, prayer-worship and the practice of the traditional commandments more than the idea of a sacrificial cult, and that animal gorban (sacrifice, literally "bringing nigh") is no longer experienced as necessarily the most adequate method of bringing oneself and the world nearer to God. Others, on the other hand, feel that this apparently "spiritualizing" attitude simply jettisons, for illegitimate, apologetic and modernistic reasons, what is an integral part of the biblical rabbinic tradition. But even they cannot deny that renewedsacrificial worship is affirmed by them for dogmatic and legalistic reasons rather than out of a deep yearning or a vital inner relationship.

Halakhic thoughts vis-a-vis rebuilding.

Let us now consider an extreme case: let us assume that there were no political difficulties in rebuilding the Temple, that the non-orthodox Jews would not object, that the religious Jews would desire it, and that the orthodox rabbis were given a free hand to realize what for almost 2,000 years they have prayed for. What exactly would they do?

Mention has already been made of the peculiar reticence and reluctance characteristic of Judaism in this matter. After the destruction of the second Temple, popular and rabbinic legend (aggadah) began to embroider with luxuriant imagination on the prophetic promises and pictures of future glory, and provided detailed descriptions of the miracles to be wrought at the final redemption, when God himself would build the new Temple out of fire. Unlike the first two Temples which both were the work of men's hands and were therefore also destroyed by men, the third sanctuary would be eternal because built by God. To the extent that this aggadic material had any halakhic (i.e. legal) relevance, it tended to question man's right to presume to do himself that which should be God's own doing, particularly since the stability and quality of the new Temple depended precisely on the fact that God himself had intervened. If the new altar had to descend miraculously from heaven, it would be impious arrogance for man to set it up himself. The point was actually discussed in the 19th century in an exchange between Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler and the German Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. In fact, Rabbi Kalischer was the only rabbinic authority ever seriously to raise the question of Temple and sacrifice, and most of the halakhic pros and cons on the subject can be found in his writings and in the rejoinders of those who disagreed with him (i.e. practically all his colleagues). (Cf. R. Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Derishath Zion, and R. David Friedman of Karlin, She'eloth David.)

But let us assume this apocalyptic rather than strictly halakhic obstacle to have been cleared. The next objection to be advanced is the following: exact measurements and topographical details of the Temple-courts, halls, altars etc. are given in the Talmud and codified in the Cod. Maim. Their precise interpretation, however, is uncertain. We cannot, therefore, rebuild the Temple. Kalischer, on the other hand, argued that sacrifices, though they must be offered on the traditional site of the Temple (this is the ultimate terminus of the old battle between the sanctuary in Jerusalem and the "high places"), do not require the actual existence of the Temple buildings or the altar. Maimonides in fact ruled (Cod. Maim. Beth ha-Behirah vi. 15) that sacrifices could be offered even without the Temple. Knowledge and, obviously, possession of (or at least access to) the site is sufficient for the performance of the ritual.

At this point, however, a new difficulty arises. The Temple area may be approached only in a state of levitical purity. In case of serious ritual defilement (which is held to be the case today: practically everybody has at one time or another been in contact with a dead body or has visited a cemetery) the purification ceremony includes sprinkling with water containing the ashes of a red heifer (cf. Nb 19). This rite has fallen into desuetude and can hardly be renewed today for legal reasons some of which will soon be mentioned. It is a well-known fact that orthodox Jews never set foot on the Temple area and never visit the Haram-esh-Sharif even when the Moslem authorities allow infidel tourists (including Jews) to visit the shrine, as this would involve them in mortal sin. The site is, therefore, halakhically inaccessible. ( Jews pray at the Western Wall because it is the outer wall of the Temple area.)

Some authorities have challenged this ruling,e.g. Maimonides' opponent Rabad of Posquieres (cf. Cod. Maim. Beth ha-Behirah vi. 14, and Rabad's gloss ad loc.). They maintain that with the destruction of the Temple all sanctity vanished from the site and that, consequently, the prohibitions against ritual impurity are no longer in force. More exactly: the dedication of the Temple and its site was meant to cover only the period of its existence. The site is therefore accessible now. When God will build the third Temple he will invest it with a new and everlasting holiness. As against this, Maimonides contends that the dedication of the second Temple invested the site with an indelible character of sanctity and that to visit it would be a mortal sin.

But even if we take Rabad's view and hold the site to be halakhically accessible, other problems still need to be solved. For levitical purity is a conditie sinequa non not only for access to the Temple (we have just disposed of this difficulty — for the sake of argument — according to Rabad) but for the performance of any levitical or priestly function whatever. Nobody could therefore offer sacrifice or perform any of the prescribed rites. Kalischer suggested that this difficulty could be obviated by appealing to a talmudic rule which lays down that public sacrifices (such as the regular morning and evening burnt-offerings, feast-day offerings etc., as against private voluntary offerings, sin-offerings etc.) suspend the rules of levitical defilement. In connection with the prescribed public sacrifices priests may minister even when in a state of impurity and similarly Israelites may enter the Temple courts.

However this is not yet the end. The regulations governing the collection of the funds out of which the public offerings are provided are not satisfied by present conditions. The only offering that would escape this objection is the Passover-lamb which has the character of a public offering but which is nevertheless brought by every family separately, i.e. from private means. It would therefore appear that the whole controversy is, in the last resort, about one offering in the whole year only.

A further grave problem is that of the status of the priesthood itself. According to the halakhah the rites can be validly performed only by "the priests the sons of Aaron". Whether such a thing ever existed, speaking strictly historically, is not our concern here. It is not our present critical views on the origin of Israelite priesthood which matter here, but the traditional rabbinic ideas on the subject. The traditional view is that there was an unbroken line of direct descent, not an apostolic but a "biological" succession as it were, which somehow got lost in the first centuries of our era. There are traditions of priesthood among many families, and these are accepted as far as present-day synagogue ceremonial (i.e. giving the priestly benediction) is concerned. But they do not possess that character of evidence which is required in order to qualify for ministering in the sacrificial ritual. The argument on the other side would, of course, try to show that the implicit belief in the reliability of the family traditions that is accorded for the purposes of synagogue ceremonial could also be extended to the Temple.

The above summary of halakhic argumentation may appear strange and abstruse, yet it may give the general reader a fair idea of the manner in which the "canon law" of orthodox rabbinic Judaism approaches a problem of this kind. The theologian or student of ecclesiastical law will not even find it strange or abstruse. From a more general and less technical point of view, the interesting thing is the fact that an issue that one would expect to be charged with symbolic and emotional dynamite and to be replete with eschatological references should be argued in such a pettifogging manner. In this connection it also seems significant that in the whole course of Jewish history, with so many pious rabbis settling in the Holy Land, the question should not have been raised more often. To the present writer's knowledge only one of the Tossafist rabbis (13th century) ever announced his intention to sacrifice the Passover-lamb in Jerusalem, but the opposition from his colleagues to this revolutionary idea was so violent that in order to avoid scandal on the one hand and, on the other hand, to be at peace with his conscience, he chose, on arriving in Palestine, to stay away from Jerusalem. In the 19th century the aforementioned Rabbi Kalischer, one of the precursors of religious Zionism, was an ardent advocate of the idea of the resumption of the sacrificial cult. But he was playing a lone hand, and practically all the rabbinic authorities of his day disagreed and advanced the objections mentioned above.

That which God alone can accomplish.

One conclusion seems to emerge from all this legal ingenuity. Sacrifice, even among the orthodox, does not at the moment play a major and dynamic role in Jewish religious aspirations. It is in no way the great vision, the realization of which would crown the military and political achievement of the State of Israel. One would expect more clan and enthusiasm in a matter which in Bible and liturgy is so heavily charged with significance. Instead of enthusiasm one finds a hesitating reluctance which expresses itself in ingenious legal argumentation and in efforts to defer the whole matter until God himself or his Messiah will intervene. One cannot help feeling that this is the way in which people deal with secondary, marginal issues, and not with the core and heart of their religious life. It is the kind of arguments which one suspects to be rationalizations and a symptom of volitional attitudes (viz. of lack of volitional attitudes) rather than a genuine reason. But however this may be, it appears that halakhic opinion is, to say the least, not such as to encourage the rebuilding of the Temple and the resumption of the sacrificial ritual. The orthodox rabbinic attitude is one of extreme reluctance, the liberal one is definitely negative. The biblical, aggadic and liturgical texts may still have significance as imagery or as symbolic utterances expressing a historic consciousness that joins the image of a past Golden Age to the vision of a messianic future, but for all practical purposes sacrificial ritual seems to have ceased, at present, to be a central and dynamic Jewish aspiration. But perhaps the proviso "at present" should be emphasized. The historian of religion may try his hand at guessing, but he certainly cannot predict future developments. The fact that the Old City of Jerusalem, and with it the Temple area, is now within territory administered by the sovereign State of Israel is so unprecedented and unexpected that religious consciousness, conservative and backward-looking as it always is in practice, has hardly had time to catch up with it and fathom its possible implications. For aught we know the novel situation may open up new springs of enthusiasm and give a new orientation to religious and national sensibilities...

... The hesitant rabbinic attitude described above has been reiterated in an impressive and dignified manner by Chief Rabbi Nissim. Although the Chief Rabbi is anything but a moderntheologian, his statement evinces a truly "dialectical" understanding of Jewry's uniquely paradoxical situation: we could enter the Temple area if we wanted, but we renounce doing so.

The spiritual dimension of this renunciation is strict fidelity to the halakhah on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the realization that with the liberation of Jerusalem the divine fullness of redemption is not automatically given; Israel still has to wait for God's saving act. "We have done all that human hands can accomplish. Now there remains that which only God can accomplish. For thus have we received from our Masters: the third Temple will be built by God himself."

Earlier in this article the rabbinic attitude was described as "hesitating reluctance". The historian of religion may well wonder whether Chief Rabbi Nissim has not sublimated, or rather transformed this hesitating reluctance into a genuinely spiritual interpretation of both the triumphs and the limitations of the present Jewish experience.