Rabbi Kalner Condemns Temple Mount Ascents as Undermining Rabbinic Authority
Rabbi Yosef Kalner, head of the Bnei David preparatory academy, sharply criticizes the growing phenomenon of Jewish ascents to the Temple Mount in a newly published booklet titled "Return the Temple to Its Place," compiled by his students. He argues that the halachic debates over permitting or forbidding entry to the site serve as a smokescreen that obscures a serious breach of the rabbinic judicial hierarchy in Israel, which he believes leads to the destruction of Torah authority.
Kalner specifically attacks organizations promoting ascents, claiming their halachic permissions not only disregard the majority of leading rabbinic decisors who forbid entry to the entire Temple Mount area but also show contempt for the great sages of Israel. He stresses that violating this consensus constitutes a severe biblical transgression. Drawing on the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, including "Etz Hadar," Kalner emphasizes the fundamental Torah principle of obeying the great rabbis and warns that accepting rulings from isolated rabbis against the majority risks fragmenting Torah into "countless Torahs."
The booklet also quotes Rabbi Kook’s "Midbar Shur," which entrusts decisions regarding the Temple and Temple Mount to the "elders of the generation, the unique great geniuses of the world." Kalner criticizes rabbis and yeshiva heads who permit ascents, accusing them of placing themselves above a line of prominent decisors such as Rabbis Kook, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Isser Yehuda Unterman, Yitzhak Nissim, Ovadia Yosef, Avraham Shapira, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Eliezer Waldenberg, and Ovadia Hadaya.
The booklet’s editors clarify that Kalner does not consider himself a halachic decisor and does not issue rulings on the matter; his critique focuses on the educational and communal consequences of the phenomenon and the damage it causes to the authority of halachic rulings in Israel. The publication also addresses claims that ascending the Temple Mount is permitted under laws of conquest and includes recordings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and testimonies from his students, who identify as Neturei Karta and oppose practical rebuilding of the Temple.
Additionally, the booklet presents videos of ascenders who allegedly do not perform ritual immersion before ascending and who enter areas forbidden even by some lenient opinions. It includes a letter from Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl stating that the prohibition to enter the Temple Mount is well-known and that there is no permission to enter with ritual items such as goats or the "two loaves," warning that such actions may delay the building of the Temple and cause public harm.
