This morning, our group traveled from our youth hostel in Bait Vagan to the ruins of the Second Temple. We finally met Rabbi Michael Unterberg, our ICNEXT super scholar living in Israel, who led our journey through the temple’s excavation site. He showed us the rocks that had been pushed off the top of the Temple during the second destruction, the damage they created in the ancient sidewalk below, openings in stone where merchants used to sell goods, and the empty site of a mikvah pool where incoming peasants would literally bask in the glory of the temple as they cleansed themselves.
Rabbi Mike talked about how there was so much empty space when the temple existed, and how King Herod wanted it to be like that. King Herod understood that there would be an “awe factor” having such a large structure followed by a hollow space; the builders of the monuments in Washington DC had the same idea when they built the Mall in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. At the Temple site, we could use the same walkway people walked on to deliver sacrifices to the Temple.
With Rabbi Unterberg, we explored what defines Jews as a nation and how our Judaism connects us to the land of Israel. We reached the conclusion that the Jews are a nation because we call ourselves one, and this is a claim that we have been making for thousands of years. Therefore, the length of time which we have been holding on to our collective identity is what gives us our legitimacy, and in turn, our claim to the ancient land of Canaan.