Loose Translation from the Hebrew!
When we davened for two thousand years begging to return to Zion, we mainly meant returning to the Bais Hamikdash , the Har Habayit, but when we finally did return, we left it neglected and forgotten.
The picture of the Har Habayit is present in every house in Gaza, but almost impossible to find in Jewish homes.
Last Friday, Hezbollah supporter Sheikh Akrama Sabri eulogized Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on the Har Habyit without anyone stopping him, but Jews who dare bow on the Mount, or dare dance and sing there, or dare sneak tefillin into its area, who dare sneak in a Shofar or lulav or even if they just deviate slightly from the specific path permitted to observant Jews, are immediately detained, and often arrested and banned for long periods.
The Temple Mount – the object of dreams of many generations of Jews –have ten gates, nine of which only Muslims can enter , but there is only one open to non-Muslims (Shaar Hillel).
Unlike the other 9 gates, this one gate is open only five or six hours a day, and only five days a week. Observant Jews are not allowed to ascend the Mount freely even during the few hours of entry, but are required to wait for a close and supervised escort by the police • On the other hand, the mountain plaza serves as the playground of four Muslim schools. No wonder Muslims watch football matches on the Har Habayit almost every day.
According to Jewish law, ascending to the Temple Mount is permitted only after immersion in a mikveh, without leather shoes, and around the site of the Temple and not to the place of the Temple itself.
The Mishna in Mesactas Keilim teaches that the sanctity of the Temple Mount is expressed in the fact that unclean people who have not been purified in the Mikveh are not allowed to ascend to it.
According to the Mishnah, the The Har Habayit is an exact square of 500 by 500 cubits, about 250 by 250 meters, but the Har Habayit today is a square that is not equal to all sides, and its area is much larger:
The length of the Western Wall alone is almost half a kilometer, Because Herod expanded the area of the mountain south, west and north.
Only Herod did not touch the route of the eastern wall of the mountain, the one facing the Kidron River and the Mount of Olives, and it therefore contains remains from the First Temple period, and more precisely from the time of King Hezekiah .
The construction of the Western Wall – the most well-known and popular of the walls of the mountain – had not yet been finalized when Titus arrived and destroyed the Temple in 70 AD .
By the way, According to Prof. Dan Bahat, who was the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the first evidence of prayer at the Western Wall itself dates back to 1625, "only"399 years ago.
Jewish prayer on the Har Habyit itself took place over long periods of time in the two-thousand-year-old exile, especially during the early Muslim period .
Rabbi Pesachyeh of Regensburg, 12th century, wrote about the early days of Muslims in the Holy City:
"And Pritzim came and informed the king of the Ishmaelites (Caliph Omar, A.S.) and said:
'There is one old man among us who knows the place of the heichal and the azarah'; And the king pushed him away until he showed him. This king loved Jews and said:
'I want to build a heichal there so only Jews can daven there,' and he built a hall out of marble stones, a beautiful building made of red and green marble stones and all kinds of colors."
The description of the "beautiful building" corresponds to the appearance of the Dome of the Rock known to us, a building made of marble in a variety of colors built according to the accepted practice in 691. According to this description, the dome was originally built for the Jews.