I've heard it said a number of times by Muslims that Jews are planning (late at night at the yearly graveyard gathering no doubt) to build a Temple/synagogue on the Temple Mount currently occupied by al Aqsa Mosque. I thought I would take the time to make a thread about some of the reasons that this couldn't be true.
1. Israel is a secular state. Its Jewish nature is cultural not religious. Its hard enough to get them to clear a plot to build a synagogue anywhere else in the country, let alone in such a controversial spot.
2. Most religious arbitrators of Jewish Law, including all ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and many National Religious Rabbis prohibit ascending the Temple mount altogether. The reason is two-fold:
A) It instigates Muslims to kill Jews.
B) Unlearned Jews, not realizing that the others are purposely circumventing certain areas, may unknowingly enter areas that are for purity reasons, off-limits to all Jews (more on this in a bit).
3. We do not have the exact placement and dimensions of all structures on the Temple mount. Certain areas of the Temple are as stated above off-limits for purity reasons and other areas are off limits for certain classes (ie. Israel, Levite). Building a new Temple on the wrong site will cause people to inadvertently transgress these prohibitions.
By way of explanation, purity reasons refer to the fact that Jews either are or are suspect of being impure by virtue of contact with a dead human. The only way to remove this impurity is through the ashes of the
red heifer. The only way to get the ashes of the red heifer is to have an altar in the Temple. Ergo, we wait for Elijah to bring us the remains of the last one as there is currently no way to remove this impurity.
4. There is no commandment fulfilled by building a Temple and without an altar in the Temple proper we are not required to bring sacrifices. There is absolutely no mention of the Sages that lived after the destruction of the Temple offering sacrifices on the altar even though they had access to red heifer ashes.
5. When ritually impure by means of contact with dead bodies, it is not permitted to bring private sacrifices. Similarly, public sacrifices (which may be brought while impure)require either most Jews to chip in for it, or through the Sanhedrin. Since there is no longer a Temple tax or Sanhedrin, sacrifices public sacrifices can't be brought. The only sacrifice that doesn't fall under either of these categories (and likewise the only possibility under serious discussion because of these reasons) is the Passover sacrifice. Which still has all the other problems listed here.
6. Sacrifices require that a priest offer the sacrifice. During the Temple era, people kept meticulous documentation of their genealogy in books called "book of geneology (ספר יוחסין)". These books are long lost. All the priests today are called "priests by way of probability". From the perspective of Jewish Law we make an assumptions both ways stringently: they can't eat the priestly gifts (which are prohibited to Israelites and Levites) in case they aren't priests, but we do perform the redemption of the firstborn through them in case they are priests (because at worst nothing happened). For our discussion, this means that according to many Rabbis priests can't serve in the Temple until the Messiah comes and works it out.
Some of the reasons we don't rely on priests are the possibility of a mistake in transmitting one's caste to descendants (purposely or accidentally), transference of disqualified priesthood to descendants and rape of priest's wife by non-Jews (not so uncommon at some points) and attributing the child with the priest status.
7. Even according to those Rabbis who maintain that a "probable priest" can perform the Temple service, Temple service
can only be performed while wearing the priestly garments. This relates to three problems:
A) The belt the priest wore needs to have a certain amount of threads dyed "techeleth (ch like the German Bach)". This dye was normally acquired from the hilazon - an animal we can no longer identify. There are two popular modern day suggestions for the identity of this animal but without knowing if it is the correct one, the priest would be at risk of transgressing the prohibition of performing Temple service without the priestly garments.
B) The belt also had another red dye called "argamon". The number of arguments to the nature of this color would require that the priest wear thirteen different belts in order to fulfill every possibility. This is problematic because the belt had to be worn around the waist at elbow height and was approximately 3 inches wide, not leaving enough room for more than one belt. Let alone an additional prohibition against wearing non-priestly clothing (that would be the 12 wrong ones) during Temple service.
C) There are three different opinions as to how the hat worn by the priest was made.
To sum, because of the lack of clear identification of certain parts of the priestly garments, the priest would be at risk of either transgressing 1. wearing non-priestly clothing 2. not wearing priestly clothing 3. wearing too many clothing. And that's only if he's really a priest, otherwise he transgresses performing service by a non-priest in the Temple.
These are all the reasons I can think of. I'm sure there are others of which I'm not aware. But we can see from here clearly, that building a Temple/synagogue would be virtually impossible without transgressing Jewish Law and would be purposeless as the Temple service can't actually be performed.
