Good G-d, am I the only one who sees the extreme irony in that sentence?
"If you don't use it, you lose it," explained Nachman Kupietzky when asked why he brings Jews to the Temple Mount.
The Chief Rabbinate is on record as banning Jews from treading on the mount due to its sacredness, but Kupietzky, like other observant Jews who habitually visit there, says he is careful to avoid that part of the mount which includes the Dome of the Rock, traditionally delineated as the area that contained the ancient Temple.
Channel 2 reported Monday that the present and past chief rabbis had reiterated the standing Chief Rabbinate ban on Jews ascending the mount, though spokesmen said they were not aware of any such declaration.
The Temple Mount was closed to non-Muslim visitors last August at the onset of the Aksa Intifada. Since the Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims, tourists and Jews have made 65,000 visits, according to police.
The Muslim Wakf does not permit Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Rabbi David Elboim, head of Yeshivat Torat Habayit in Geula and a Israeli police humiliate Jews as they check them for contraband prayer books, pulling out papers and asking if they are not prayer sheets.
He said that Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi's warnings that unspecified Jewish extremists might attack the site to upset the political process were driven by the desire for more funds and personnel.
"In the year since the Temple Mount reopened, there hasn't been as much as the sound of a flea. Instead of giving us a medal for good behavior, Hanegbi besmirches our good name. Jews around the world face the direction of the Temple Mount when they pray, yet on the site itself we are not allowed to pray."
Kupietzky says that he asks the groups he leads to wear caps and to look as much like tourists as possible. "Once my son joined one of my groups, and his kippa wasn't covered. We were delayed 20 minutes until a special police escort was found."
The years in which Jews were banned from visiting the Mount were the same ones in which Wakf construction wreaked havoc on the ancient site, said Elboim, pointing out that piles of destroyed antiquities could still be seen.
Elboim is one of the few haredim who ascend the Temple Mount, but he insisted that many rabbis do permit Jews to go up, so long as they immerse first in a mikva (ritual bath) and wear non-leather shoes.
He noted that even as mainstream a figure as Rabbi Moshe Tendler, son-in-law of the late leader of American Orthodoxy Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, planned to visit the Temple Mount next week.
From the kitchen in her Mount of Olives home, where she can see the Temple Mount as she cooks, Zipporah Piltz agrees with Elboim that there has been a discernible rise in the number of observant visitors to the mount. But she would like to see a greater representation of women.
Among those rabbis that do allow their congregants to ascend the mount, a majority do not allow women to do so, notes Piltz, because the rules of purity regarding their ascent are more complex.