The Temple Mount is one of the most contested and volatile plots of land in the world, the focus of religious and national confrontation. In this lecture which was recorded live on Tisha B’Av 2017, Rabbi Gideon Weitzman focuses on the archaeological destruction perpetrated by the Islamic Waqf’s renovations there and the subsequent initiative to sift through recovered earth from the site in search of ancient remains. We will discuss the political background that enabled this violation to take place and will use the artifacts as teaching aids in briefly tracing the holy esplanade’s history.
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Rabbi Gideon Weitzman is director of the Puah Institute, rabbi of the Merkaz Modiin Synagogue in Modiin, and visiting associate principal in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He writes a weekly column in the Torah Tidbits on medical ethics and has published three books on the philosophy of Rav Kook.
