Today’s holidays: Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Otis Campbell (Church of the SubGenius), Feast of Osiris (Thelema).
Greetings.
I know I am doing a bad job about blogging lately. I am absorbed in reading Atlas Shrugged, I am feeling guilty about not writing about some of the stuff I have been reading in the New Testament, and I have started to watch Mahabharat, a dramatization of the great Indian epic Mahabharata. Not to mention I am getting distracted by the need for me to do job-hunting.
Last Wednesday I planned to go to the Temple Mount again. I had actually planned to go during Sukkoth, but I got sick and had to postpone the trip. I decided to go on Yiṣḥaq Rabbin Memorial Day, the anniversary of his assassination. Why? Because it is a quasi-holiday which has no positive significance for observant Jews and no direct connection with the Temple Mount; to be blunt, it strikes me as nothing less than an abomination due to the all-too predictable disaster of Oslo. This video should give a good idea what I am talking about. Given this deliberately mismatched symbolism, I presumed it would be a great opportunity to catch the Waqf and police off-guard and engage in my creative interpretation of civil disobedience more easily. (I intended to try to get the police officer and Waqf official who would follow me around over piles of rubble.)
There was a snag in my plans. When I got there, I found these signs posted:
These signs say that from November 6 to 9 the Temple Mount would be closed to visitors because of the Muslim holiday, namely ‘Īd al-’Aḍḥá. That’s right: someone in the government or the police thought a Muslim holiday was a valid reason to close the Temple Mount to non-Muslims, as if non-Muslims particularly cared if it was a Muslim holiday or not or Muslim intolerance was any more excusable on a Muslim holiday.
I also went to the Chain Gate, which Jews are not supposed to use to visit the Temple Mount.
I did not expect to be admitted—and I was not—but I decided to try anyway as part of my campaign to let the police and government know that the Temple Mount does matter to observant Jews. The guards had nothing useful to tell me about the closure: “It’s closed” and “It’s a Muslim holiday”. They could not give me any cogent reason whatsoever that the Temple Mount should be closed to non-Muslims on a Muslim holiday. All I can infer is that the police would rather give in to Muslim delusions of grandeur rather that do their job and enforce tolerance. That is pathetic.
Oh, for the record, whoever is responsible now owes me 32.50 sheqels for bus fare, 5 sheqels for use of a miqweh (yes, they charge), and 7,777 US dollars in wasted time and suffering.
Now I have to go reschedule my trip again, which is not going to be this week due to rain. And get around to writing about Acts and Romans. And a bunch of other stuff…
Peace.
’Aharon/Aaron
