Jewish worshippers pray, sound shofar on Temple Mount on Rosh Hashanah

Hundreds of Jewish worshippers visited the Temple Mount early on Sunday morning to recite Jewish prayers, with several individuals sounding shofars on the second day of Rosh Hashanah—the only day the ritual was performed this year due to traditional religious restrictions on the Sabbath.

The visitors who sounded shofars “were removed from the site, and administrative proceedings were initiated against them regarding their removal from the Temple Mount,” according to an Israel Police statement.

“Any violation of the visitation rules at the Temple Mount is addressed by police officers. The Israel Police works to facilitate freedom of worship for members of all faiths at holy sites, while maintaining the rules and procedures governing visits,” the statement added.

Israel’s formal status quo on the Temple Mount prohibits non-Muslims from praying on Judaism’s holiest site. However, in practice, restrictions on Jewish presence and prayers in recent years have been gradually eased, with other restrictions staying in place.

Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron and No. 12 on the Otzma Yehudit Party slate for the upcoming Knesset elections, visited the Temple Mount on Sunday and recounted the experience.

Roughly 300 to 400 worshippers ascended the Temple Mount, Fleisher told JNS on Tuesday.

“It was very orderly. When we finished after almost four hours of prayer, almost four hours, which is also unheard of, four hours on the Temple Mount... the only thing that happened was the people who blew the shofar... were escorted out,” he said.

Small silver trumpets were also sounded, he continued, which according to Jewish law are commanded to be sounded by priests on the Temple Mount.

“It was clear that the police... were certainly not going out of their way to stop the shofar and trumpet blowing,” he said, adding that police officers allowed the individuals to complete the ritual.

He further related that before visiting the site, police handed the visitors pre-approved prayer books, which are slightly different from general prayer books.

“So this prayer book had the correct Temple Mount additions; and that’s very helpful because actually the regular siddur, the regular [Jewish traditional] prayer book doesn’t have these things, and so it’s sometimes confusing, therefore the prayer book that they gave to us was... a simple but very useful prayer book,” Fleisher noted.

Fleisher described the event as a “liberated prayer experience.” Having not visited the site for at least a year, the spokesman said that this time “it was a totally different experience. There [are] really revolutionary changes that are happening on the Temple Mount after years and years of fighting for normalization,” he added.

“It was a great step in securing equal rights for Jews on the Temple Mount,” he said.

Ten worshippers detained

Yeshivat Har Habayit (The Temple Mount Yeshiva) was responsible for preparing the prayer booklets that were approved by the police and handed to the worshippers, according to Hebrew-language outlet HaKol Hayehudi.

The prayer on the compound included singing, prostrations, and shofar and silver trumpet soundings, similar to the custom that existed in the eras when the First and Second Temples stood, the report said.

Eight worshippers who sounded the shofar and trumpet were detained, as were at least two more due to prostration in places not permitted, the report added.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry in an Arabic-language statement on Sunday condemned the “incursions by extremist settlers” that took place “under the protection of the Israeli occupation police.”

The ministry’s spokesman, Ambassador Fuad Al-Majali, was quoted in the statement as emphasizing that “Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied city of Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian holy sites.”

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, a holy Muslim site, and the Dome of the Rock shrine, are situated on the Temple Mount compound. The site has been a source of religious disputes for decades. Historically, Israel has managed the overall security at the site, while the Jordanian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf handles day-to-day religious administration.

The Islamic Christian Committee for the Support of Jerusalem and Holy Sites, a Palestinian Authority commission founded in 2008, condemned on Monday the presence of Jewish worshippers on the Temple Mount, according to the Palestinian Al-Quds newspaper.

The body said that the Jewish High Holidays were being used as a pretext to establish a “new reality” on the Temple Mount and divide it “temporally and spatially.”