On Tisha B'Av of 1934, Berl Katznelson was shocked by news that one of the youth movements had gone to summer camp exactly on the fast day commemorating the destruction of the Temple. The shock gave birth to his famous article "Destruction and Uprootedness." Berl wondered in his article, "What is the value of a liberation movement that has no rootedness and has forgetfulness with it? Had Israel not known how to mourn for generations over our destruction," Berl wrote, "there would not have arisen for us... neither Herzl nor Max Nordau... Yehuda Halevi could not have created 'Zion, will you not ask,' and Haim Nahman Bialik could not have written 'The Scroll of Fire.'"
Nearly 90 years later, when Tisha B'Av as a day of fasting and mourning still suffers from lack of popularity among the general public and many wonder, even if not aloud, what they have to do – living in a sovereign Jewish state – with mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple 2,000 years ago, it seems the time has come to take another step in dismantling the "uprootedness."
The Temple Mount can help with this. After Temple Mount movements broke through in Sisyphean work, over about three decades, the prohibition on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, and tens of thousands of Jewish worshippers reach it every year, the time has come to connect the broader circles of the public to the holiest place for the Jewish people – the Temple Mount, the place where the Temple stood and was destroyed, the place where the seven-branched menorah was placed that became the symbol of the State of Israel.
This is a task for the education system, and for Education Minister Yoav Kisch. Israel's students are already required, according to a Ministry of Education decision, to visit Jerusalem at least three times during their studies (elementary, middle school, and high school). They come to the Western Wall, Yad Vashem, and other places in the capital, but they do not visit the Temple Mount, where Jewish prayers and visits have undergone a process of normalization in recent years.
It's worth remembering that the Western Wall, the western wall of the Temple Mount, is the substitute for the Mount; it is the "after the fact," which the State of Israel and its rabbis turned into "ideally," due to a halakhic prohibition that many are already lenient about today. The habit has so established the Western Wall as the holiest place for the people of Israel, that many have forgotten that the Western Wall is a derivative of the Mount – that the Mount is what bestows its holiness on its surroundings and on its walls, particularly on the Western Wall, and the substitute has become the source for many.
The way to change this, and to connect to the place of the Temple, to the story of the destruction, and also to the day of Tisha B'Av, is to get to know the Temple Mount through the feet. All of Israel's children can already come there, too. Particularly the secular ones. The Temple Mount is not the exclusive domain of the religious. It's possible and feasible to organize tours there for them.
A roots trip with the family to Morocco or Poland is worthwhile, but the real roots tour is on the Temple Mount, a journey of consciousness, study, examination, and acquaintance with maps and history books. Not a demonstration. Study. This requires training teachers and investment, which can be achieved through collaboration with them on the Mount, accompanied by archaeologists, historians, rabbis, academics, educators, and students. Afterwards, the students can participate in this process on Tisha B'Av, Hanukkah, or any other occasion.
The story of the Temple Mount – the Knesset Education Committee proved years ago (then, headed by Sharren Miriam Haskel) – needs to be and can be a story that crosses camps. The committee called to include the Temple Mount as a mandatory subject in the curriculum, but the Ministry of Education did not take up the gauntlet. Even Emily Moatti (Labor Party) and Moshe Tur-Paz (Yesh Atid), who are distant in their views from the Temple faithful, joined the committee's decision then, because they internalized that regarding historical knowledge and learning the history of the place, the story of the Temple Mount is not sectarian. This is also how Mapam leader Yaakov Hazan behaved in past years, and Temple liberator Motta Gur and the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, who refused to turn their backs on the Mount and its history. This connection of the general public, and particularly children and youth, to the Temple Mount, is also part of the "complete victory" over Hamas, which 22 months ago massacred us, and also to throw us out of there.
