Activist arrested on suspicion of planning animal sacrifice on Temple Mount
Israeli police on Monday arrested a Jewish activist on suspicion of planning to perform a Passover sacrifice on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
Raphael Morris, the head of the Return to the Mount movement, was detained while driving with his son near Latrun, some 16 miles west of Jerusalem, the group said in a statement.
The activist has in previous years been detained ahead of Passover, in a preemptive move by Israeli authorities to prevent the revival of the ancient Israelite practice of conducting Qorban Pesach, the ritual slaughter of a lamb or a goat at the Temple in Jerusalem on the eve of Passover, which this year falls on Wednesday.
While still practiced by the Beta Israel, Karaite and Samaritan communities, Rabbinic Jews do not perform the sacrifice although there are growing calls to revive the practice. A letter signed by 15 rabbis last month and addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for Jews to be allowed to once again carry out the ritual.
The importance of the reenactment was underscored last year when Rabbi Aryeh Stern, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, ruled that the Korban Pesach (Passover sacrifice) is incumbent upon the Jewish people even in current times, even in the absence of a Temple structure or lacking a Red Heifer to purify Israel. However, the sacrifice may only be performed on the Temple Mount. The only obstacle to performing the Passover service is the government’s refusal to allow it to take place despite Israeli law requiring religious freedom for all. It should be noted that the Sanhedrin ruled that at this juncture, one sacrifice made at the Temple Mount brought in the name of the entire Jewish people would suffice.
The Korban Pesach is of utmost importance. There are only two mitzvot (Biblical commandments) for which non-compliance receives the most severe punishment mandated by the Torah, karet (being cut off from the community or excommunicated): brit milah (circumcision) and the korban Pesach (Passover sacrifice).
The Torah states explicitly that the requirement to perform the Passover is eternal:
And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. Exodus 12:24
Like every other public time-bound sacrifice, the Passover sacrifice must be brought even in a state of ritual impurity.In his commentary on the Bible, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the preeminent 11th-century French Torah scholar known by the acronym “Rashi” stated that the Jewish return to Israel and the end of exile will not be complete until the Passover sacrifice is reinstated in its proper place and at its proper time.
Members of the Samaritan community prepare to start animal sacrifices as they mark Passover at their most sacred site on Mount Gerizim, in the Samarian city of Nablus, April 14, 2014. Photo by Itay Cohen/Flash90.
“We want to offer the Passover sacrifice in its rightful place and at its rightful time despite all the difficulties,” the rabbis said in the letter. “We ask to open the Temple site to allow the emissaries of the people of Israel to renew the sacrifice.”
A request is made every year by the Return to the Mount movement for Jews to gather at the site where the holy Temples are believed to have stood to revive the practice.
Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, told Arab media that the group’s announcement this year was “very dangerous” and vowed that mosque authorities would stop Jews from conducting the ritual.
The calls to perform the ritual slaughter led the Western Wall Chief Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch to introduce a ban on bringing animals to the Mughrabi Bridge entrance to the Temple Mount used by Jews and other non-Muslims.
On Sunday, Ben-Gvir told reporters that he did not support sacrificing animals on the Temple Mount.
“I’m not encouraging people to go there with a Passover sacrifice,” he said.
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