Aug 14
Temple Mount Blogburst
Judith is running a blog-burst centreing around Tisha B’Av. This blog is proud to be helping with this effort.
Temple Mount blogburst: Introduction and Index
Tisha B’Av – which begins tomorrow evening – commemorates the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnetzar (which led to the founding of the influential Jewish community of Babylonia), and again in 70 CE, by the Romans. It also serves as a catch-all day of mourning for other major Jewish historical calamities (such as the massacres of the Crusades), but its central text – Jeremiah’s Eicha, or Lamentations – is an unflinching description of the horrors inflicted upon Jerusalem by Nebuchadnetzar’s seige and massacre.
So now is also an appropriate time to revisit the condition of the Temple Mount, site of the holiest places in Jewish ritual, a topic I wrote on in my first weeks at Kesher Talk, and several times since.
This blogburst has several sections:
Temple Mount blogburst: Introduction (this page)
Temple Mount blogburst: Tisha B’Av
Temple Mount blogburst: Israel past present and future
Temple Mount blogburst: Jihadism and reality
Temple Mount blogburst: The Mount since 1967
Temple Mount blogburst: Poetry pierces the iron curtain
