**Special Notice: Your humble servant will be in transit from May 17-24 and will update this blog as possible. Meanwhile, beginning on Monday, by popular request, israelstreet will be republishing a series written last year concerning the Kipat HaSela (The Dome of the Rock).
TODAY’S BLOG
6 pm Israel time, Monday, May 18 2015
Part 1:
When you picture Jerusalem, dear reader, what image first comes to your mind’s eye?
More than likely, that image involves the Dome of the Rock atop the Temple Mount. It is the picture that is continually disseminated all over the world by every instrument of international media.
The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. The problem is that no one “sees” the Temple Mount, and few know the history of the Dome of the Rock.
Even pictures of the Kotel (Western Wall) are most often used when the Dome of the Rock (with minaret) looms over it.
Most pictures of the Kotel are actually centered on the Dome of the Rock and not on the Western Wall.
Pictures like these falsely perpetuate the idea of a Muslim Jerusalem.
Pictures like these conceal the fact that the Dome of the Rock is built on the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples–which stood on the site for a thousand years–and that the Dome of the Rock was built at least partially with stones from those Jewish Temples.
Pictures like these say nothing about the two Christian churches used as a model for the Dome of the Rock which, by the way, is always presented as a quintessential model of Islamic architecture.
Pictures like these show a Dome of the Rock which extremely few people realize was home to Jewish religious practices in the years after the building was constructed.
Your humble servant hopes that by exploring some of the history implied and stated in the above points we will actually begin to change the way we see the Dome of the Rock, and thereby change the way we see Jerusalem. But more than this, as we come to the end of the last part of this blog some days from now, other images of Jerusalem will be offered to put the Dome of the Rock into perspective and to help us re-image Jerusalem.
Part 2:
The holiest spot in Judaism: the Foundation Stone.
Why is the Dome of the Rock called the Dome of the Rock? Simply because it contains the holiest spot in Judaism, the rock which Jews have known as the Foundation Stone for thousands of years.
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In fact, from time immemorial, Jews have revered the Foundation Stone as the first part of the world that God created; as the site of the material from which Adam was created; as the place where Cain, Abel, and Noah made sacrifices to God; and the place where Abraham readied to sacrifice his son Isaac.
All of these events are believed by Jews to have taken place on the site from more than 5000 years ago to about 3800 years ago.
Skip ahead to another point in Jewish history. It was this Jewish Foundation Stone that the Torah says was purchased by King David from Auranah the Jebusite. When David’s son Solomon built the first Jewish Temple in approximately the year 950 BCE, the Foundation Stone is where he placed the Ark of the Covenant.
An ancient Jewish midrash expresses it well:
As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,
so is the land of Israel the navel of the world…
situated in the centre of the world,
and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,
and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,
and the ark in the centre of the holy place,
and the Foundation Stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded.
This will be our stopping point today at the building of the First Jewish Temple–built with its Holy of Holies directly over the Jewish Foundation Stone and built some 1,520 years before Mohammed was born and some 1,640 years before the Dome of the Rock was built.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.