The Temple Mount

Today we went back to the Old City to see the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount was where the first and second temples were located. The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque are located on the Temple Mount as well. Because of the two buildings on the Temple Mount right now are holy to Muslims, there are certain visiting hours at which the public can wonder. However, unless you are Muslim you are not allowed in the either the Dome of the Rock or the Al Aqsa Mosque. So we couldn't go in either Mosque because we are Jewish, not Muslim. Very religious Jews think that nobody should walk on the Temple Mount because they might on accident walk on top of the original Holy Ark.

Walking around on the Temple Mount was quite interesting. The visiting hours today were from 7:30am to 10:30am. (The security guards rushed us out at 10 though.) We arrived at the security point at around 8:45 but didn't get through security until 9:15. It was just like the airport! We thought that we had arrived at the end of the line, but we were quickly in the middle of line as huge tourist groups lined up behind us. Once we got through security and walked onto the Temple Mount it seemed like there were no tourists. It felt peaceful and empty. We took our pictures from the front of the Mosques and then walked to the back of the Al Aqsa Mosque to keep exploring all parts of the temple mount in the hour that we had. We saw an open door on the side of the Al Aqsa Mosque and walked over to it to look in. We stood for about 30 seconds and then a guy came over to put something in the door. We backed up, because then somebody else shut the door but then shortly after opened it. When he saw we were walking back to look some more, he quickly shut it. Guess they didn't want tourists! After that incident we continued walking around the Walls of the Temple Mount to be sure to look at everything possible. Part way down our walk we heard a guy yelling saying, "get out! get out!" We weren't sure who he was yelling at because it was 9:45am, so it wasn't time for people to leave, and he was pretty far away from us. As we watched him he got continually closer to some people about 20 feet in front of us who were about to go up some set of stairs. When he caught up to them he yelled at them a lot and made them go back to where the rest of the tourists were. We thought that maybe he might come after us next so we walked back up to the beaten path where the tourists were. As we were taking pictures of the Dome of the Rock from a set of stairs that might have been considered off the beaten path, the same man started walking over and yelling at me because I was standing at the base of the steps. I quickly ran up the stairs so that I wouldn't be thrown out or fined or something worse. Though we weren't there for very long, our day at the Temple Mount was just as interesting as our first day in the Old City looking at other holy sites.