| Stuff | [Jul. 7th, 2008|01:25 pm] | ||||||||||
  
So yesterday I ended up in an underground storeroom, examining a hoard of gold cups people were frantically trying to finish making before the Messiah came back. But I guess I'll start from the beginning. The Temple of Solomon was the center of Judaism for a thousand years. If you look in the Torah, there's chapter after chapter of God describing exactly how to build it. Everything must be this many cubits high and this many cubits wide and made of this precious metal and so on. Judaism being what it is, God spends more time in the Bible describing exactly how to make the washing bowl in the Temple than He does creating the world. But the Temple was important. It was supposed to be the literal home of God on Earth. According to legend, when the Temple existed, ten miracles occurred there every day (the only one I could find specifics about was that the smoke from the altar always rose in a straight line, even if it was windy). People came to the courtyard of the Temple to pray. But they didn't go inside. Inside was the Holy of Holies, which, as its name suggests, was really holy. Anyone who went in would probably be burnt to a crisp by the sheer divine power there. The exception was the High Priest, who on the holiest day of the year, after various complex purification rituals, was able to go in and stay in just long enough to say one or two prayers. If I'm remembing my Bible right, some of them even came out alive. In the Holy of Holies was the rock on which God created Adam and (by one of those Biblical coincidences) Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac. This rock was the table. Placed upon the table was the Ark of the Covenant, currently best known for its Nazi-blasting prowess in Indiana Jones, but also famous for its extreme holiness, its tendency to kill anyone who came near it, and its having the original stone tablets God gave to Moses inside. (a digression: the Bible goes on and on and ON about how to build the Ark of the Covenant. It involves a lot of plated metals in odd configurations. Some guys built a replica Ark a few years ago, and claimed that it was a very powerful static electrical generator, and that if you moved around with it enough, little lightning bolts would flash around it. They theorized that this was responsible for a lot of the legends surroundig the Ark, if not for the whole Jewish religion. Predictably, most serious archaeologists want a lot more evidence.) Anyway, the Babylonians demolished the Temple in 586 BC, and the Ark was lost. The Jews built a Second Temple around 500 BC, but the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD, leaving the Temple Mount bare except for one wall that stayed standing, the so-called "Western Wall". The Western Wall is the holiest site in Judaism, and Jews from all over the world come to Jerusalem to pray in front of the Wall, to put pieces of paper petitioning God inside, and to mourn the loss of the Temple. (another digression, this one a joke I heard recently: a guy visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and saw an old Jew praying zealously. A few months later, he visited again, and there was that same old Jew, still praying. He interrupted the man and asked him if he prayed there every day, and the old man said yes. "I've lived in Israel since the beginning of the Zionist movement," explained the old man, "and every day I come here and pray that God will bring peace between the Jews and the Palestinians." "Wow," said the guy. "That's an incredible story. You must have been praying for decades. How does that make you feel?" "I feel," said the old man "LIKE I'M TALKING TO A @#!$ING WALL!") I went to the Western Wall yesterday. I prayed there for about five seconds before I was interrupted by a guy dressed like an Orthodox Jew (who might or might not have really been one) who literally grabbed me and asked me to give him some money ("for charity"). Of course I had to say yes, because God was RIGHT THERE watching me (which I'm sure was what he'd counted on.) So I tried to pray again, and after about five seconds, another guy grabbed me and made the same demand. This time I told him in no uncertain terms to go away; God did not strike me down with a lightning bolt, although, disappointingly, He didn't strike the other guy down either. I finally hid out in a corner and managed to pray for a few minutes before leaving, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. Then there's the Temple Mount, the actual spot where the old Temple used to be. It's a big elevated platform on top of the old Mt. Moriah, where all sorts of things (including the first step in the Creation of the World) supposedly happened. After the Temple was destroyed, it was left along for a few centuries until the Muslims invaded. They built a mosque, the Dome of the Rock, on top of the rock table in the old Holy of Holies. Going up to the Temple Mount, I passed by the only official government-issued sign I've ever seen warning that your soul was in danger if you proceeded. The Israeli authorities were worried that someone might accidentally wander into the site of the old Holy of Holies and incur the wrath of God for not being sufficiently pure. Luckily, I'd read an articly by some archaeologists who'd determined which spot on the Mount the Holy of Holies had been, so I was prepared to avoid it. The Dome of the Rock is the most beautiful building I've ever seen. You've probably seen the pictures; if not, see them now (http://www.bibleplaces.com/images/Dome_of_Rock_from_west,_tb042403.jpg) There is a bit of a problem, however. That being that, now that the Jews control Israel again, some of them want to build a Third Temple. Rabbis have been studying the Tanakh and Talmud trying to figure out what to do, and there's a split: some of them think the Temple can't be rebuilt until the Messiah arrives; others think it needs to be rebuilt right away so that God can have a home again and be properly honored. So far the "wait for the Messiah crowd" has won out, helped by the Muslims' threat to be absolutely ENRAGED if anyone demolishes the 1400-year-old Dome of the Rock (which would be a necessary first step). Still, the Temple Mount is ringed with guards, metal detectors, and other security measures just in case anyone tries to take matters into zir own hands. On my way back from the Temple Mount, I came across an entrance to a building called the Temple Institute, which offered tours for 20 shekels. I decided to check it out. What it was, was a group of Jews who have been dutifully remaking all the decorations and ritual objects for the Temple, so just in case the Messiah comes back soon all the Temple objects will be ready for him. It's a really, really difficult task, because as I mentioned before, the Bible is VERY precise about how these things need to be done. They can't even dye the clothes with normal methods, because the Bible specified the dye had to come from a certain shellfish. So they had a presentation about how, for two centuries, rabbis had debated which shellfish the Hebrew word in the Bible meant, then scientists had had to figure out how to harvest the shellfish, and so on, so that just ten years ago they'd finally made this shellfish dye and gotten some tunic for the High Priest (which needed to be dyed with shellfish-dye) ready. When I asked them about their timetable, they just said "Before the Messiah gets back, we hope." You can see their website at http://www.templeinstitute.org/ I'm probably off to Tiberias in a few hours; Haifa seems too expensive to be worth it. |
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