waiting for the messiah? 533
despite the obvious difficulties of immersing a student in study of such
a difficult text without extensive preparation in Hebrew and Aramaic
and biblical studies from childhood. New yeshivot have been set up to
cater to those who need to acquire these skills.^7
The religion to which these Jews ‘return’ bears little resemblance
to the religion ascribed to Moses in the Bible from which it purports to
derive. Polygamy has disappeared, as has slavery. The regulations in
Leviticus for dealing with mildew on the walls of houses and concerns
about divination and soothsaying have long fallen into abeyance, as
have the laws of the Jubilee that were devised to ensure social justice
among the people of Israel. And just as the requirements of the Torah for
relations between individuals have changed to reflect these new social
realities, so too have the main ways that Moses is reported to have stipu-
lated for worship of God, through incense, libations, meal offerings and
animal sacrifices. None of this is a concern to the baalei teshuvah for
whom authentic Judaism is located not in the desert of Sinai over 3,000
years ago or in the pilgrimage city of Jerusalem a thousand years later
but in the yeshivot and shtetls of eastern Europe in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. For them, as for most religious Jews, a return to
worship as stipulated in the Torah must await the messianic age, and
even then its reintroduction will depend on the divine will.
But a few religious Zionist haredim are less patient and have begun
to plan for the immediate rebuilding of the Temple on its original site,
where the Dome of the Rock now stands. The Temple Institute in Jeru-
salem has been preparing the ritual items required for the Temple
service, following closely the descriptions of these objects in the biblical
sources as interpreted by rabbinic tradition. The breastplate and the rest
of the special uniform of the High Priest, including his crown, are
already complete, and much effort has been expended on developing
building plans for the reconstruction of the building. Such plans are
highly controversial within the haredi community, with most rabbis
adamantly opposed even to setting foot on the Temple site in case of
sacrilege. Up to now any practical plans to reinstate sacrificial worship
have in any case been delayed by the inability of the Temple Institute to
find a completely red heifer from whose ashes, as stipulated in the book
of Numbers, must be derived the purification necessary to enter into the
sanctuary (heifers identified as suitable in 1997 and 2002 proved to be
insufficiently monochrome).^8
These are unprecedented times for the Jewish people, with a revived
state pulled in different directions by religious as well as political forces