Record Crowd Of Jews On Temple Mount, But Sephardic Chief Rabbi Scorns Them

Uneasy Balance: A Jewish man prays near an entrance to the Temple Mount. Right-wing Israelis are demanding access to the holy site, which could tip an uneasy balance between faiths. Image by getty images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Sephardi chief rabbi and Jordan’s foreign minister criticized the record number of Jews who visited the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av.
In a public message on Tuesday afternoon, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said, according to Israel National News, that on ninth day of Av, the day the Temple was destroyed, “it is imperative to recall that the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount is forbidden by Jewish law. Those Jews who ascend to the Temple Mount desecrate its sanctity.”
By the end of visiting hours that day, some 1,300 Jews had visited the site. On Jerusalem Day, in May, some 900 Jews visited the Temple Mount, setting the previous record.
On Tuesday, at an emergency Executive Committee meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi criticized the large number of visitors and said more unrest at the Temple Mount was likely.
“The number of extremists who stormed Al-Aqsa today stands at a record number, greater than any other since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967,” Safadi told the meeting in Istanbul, which included foreign ministers from 57 countries.
“Many more dangerous crises will erupt as a result of continued Israeli violations if Israel does not uproot the sources of the tension, if the occupation doesn’t end, if East Jerusalem is not independent and not the capital of the sovereign Palestinian State along the 1967 lines,” Safadi also said, The Times of Israel reported.
The mass influx of visitors comes after nearly two weeks of tensions roiled the site over increased security measures, including metal detectors, following an attack on the Temple Mount that left two Israel Police officers and their three Arab-Israeli gunmen dead.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Fast Forward Jewish Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky reportedly to retire after 26 years in office
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.