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Sept. 7, 2007
Recreating the Holy Temple
Israeli-Canadian craftsman spends months building the model.
SHARON KANON ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE
No one needed a GPS in ancient times to find Jerusalem. The gleaming
white marble of the city's holy Temple was one of the most magnificent
wonders of the ancient world, a magnetic draw for kings and pilgrims.
A new model of the Second Temple, originally raised by the master
builder Herod, displays the awesome grandeur of the sacred edifice
and its multi-purpose function and symbolism as the centre of Jewish
religious and national existence.
"I felt that I was not alone, as if there was an invisible
hand directing and guiding me," said Chaim Rosenberg, 55, a
logistics administrator at Elta Electronics, an Israeli radar communications
company, and a secular Jew. "I felt that I was creating a holy
work, particularly when I worked through the night."
"It took me six months to decide to do it," said Rosenberg,
formerly of Montreal, after fellow worker Yosef Zaklas, a Canadian-born
engineer and an enthusiastic Chabad supporter, saw Rosenberg's model
of an American battleship – consisting of more than 14,000
matchsticks – and suggested the idea to him.
"I didn't know anything about the Temple when the project was
first suggested to me," said Rosenberg. "Then I began
collecting material, reading books and attending lectures."
He pulled out a striking illustrated book about the Temple written
by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel of the Temple Institute.
"Daniel Michelson, an applied maths professor at the Weizmann
Institute of Science, has been researching the Temple for 10 years,"
said Zaklas. A virtual model, "with the correct dimensions"
of the Temple appears on his website – www.truthofland.co.il
– along with many articles. "I thought to myself, how
could Chaim go wrong?"
Rosenberg's daughter, Riki, an architect who is now studying for
an advanced degree, provided the precise drawings for the Second
Temple reproduction – a 1:100 replica (2.3 by 1.3 metres).
"I began work around 5:30 each evening, after getting home
from work, and often worked through until 3 a.m.," said Rosenberg.
"Once I started something, I had to finish it. I wanted every
piece to be accurate." One particular project that required
great precision was the making of more than 220 Corinthian columns.
One of Rosenberg's first jobs was to build the walls which enclose
the Court of the Women, which was actually an open plaza used for
various activities on festivals (the women were located in the balcony
on the second tier). In its four corners were four enclosures –
a chamber where the priests sorted wood, a chamber for lepers who
had been healed, bathed and declared clean by the priests, a chamber
where oil and wine were preserved and a chamber for those who had
fulfilled the vow of the Nazarites and shaved their heads.
To make the model – from oak, white Chinese pine, spring timber
and maple – Rosenberg looked for just the right saw. "I
like symmetry and precision. Curiously, I found the saw I needed
in a fish shop," he said, demonstrating his skill with it by
cutting a semi-circle free-hand.
Fifteen semicircular steps at the western side of the Women's Court
led up to Nicanor's Gate. "On these steps, the Levites, who
assisted the Kohanim, sang the beautiful Shir Hama'alot psalms,"
said Rosenberg.
According to a midrash in the Talmud, when storms threatened the
ship on which Nicanor was transporting the heavy doors for the Temple
from Alexandria, Egypt, to Israel, the captain decided to throw
one of the doors overboard. When high waves continued, the captain
threatened to throw the second door overboard. "If you throw
the door overboard, you will have to throw me too," said Nicanor.
When the ship finally arrived in the port of Akko in Israel, Nicanor
found the second door miraculously attached to the ship.
On the inside of the door, Rosenberg has placed two golden cherubim
– angel-like figures with upward wings (seeking a higher Godly
purpose), one male and one female, symbolizing the importance of
Torah and human interaction. This motif was used both on the ark
in which the Torah tablets were originally placed and repeatedly
in the tabernacle.
The area on the other side of Nicanor's Gate had three sections:
the court of the Israelites (for Jewish men only), the altar for
sacrifices and the court of the priests. On the upper level were
cubicles where the Sanhedrin court met. They were also used as rooms
for the priests, and as a geniza (an archive of Hebrew manuscripts).
"The Temple was a grand structure on a raised platform in the
centre of the Temple Mount and stood 50 metres high – an impressive
sacred area," said Rosenberg. Josephus wrote that its outer
walls were covered with massive plates of gold and that it was divided
into three parts: a foyer, the holy room with the golden menorah
(until it was stolen); the showbread and a gold altar; and a separate
room for the Holy of Holies.
Taking pride in the details, Rosenberg pointed to the niche where
a priest blew the trumpet to signal the approach and the end of
the Sabbath.
"He who has not seen Herod's Temple in Jerusalem has not seen
a beautiful building," said our sages in the Talmud. (Bava
Batra 4a) To his credit, Herod followed halachah in constructing
the project – although it should be noted that Herod (a non-Jewish
king appointed by the Romans; he probably paid for the position)
– had taxed the Jews highly for other projects and had killed
many priests. The Temple may have been a gesture to the Jews, but
it also enhanced his own reputation.
One of the largest man-made sacred compounds in antiquity, the Herodian
Temple extended over a 36-acre area. The Western Wall is one of
the four retaining walls that was built to enlarge the Temple Mount
and was double the size of Solomon's Temple. It was also a major
improvement over the poorly reconstructed Temple built by Zerubbabel
when the Jews returned from Babylon with Ezra and Nehemiah. According
to sources, it had taken seven years to build Solomon's Temple;
it took 46 to 80 years, according to different estimates, to build
Herod's Temple. Some 180,000 people made pilgrimages to the Second
Temple during each of the festivals. Non-Jews were also allowed
within the walls, up to a point.
It was built on Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple Mount, where
Adam and Eve were created, sinned and repented by bringing a sacrifice;
where Abraham brought Isaac in the fateful test of faith; and where
the holy Temple in Jerusalem, the abode of the Ark of the Covenant
in the First Temple, was a sacred focal point of the Jewish people.
Imagine a visit to the Temple 2,000 years ago. It was the religious
and judicial centre of the Jewish world. People came to the Sanhedrin
courts to plead their cases and pay their half-shekel taxes, to
the mikvahs to wash before entering the Temple compound and to the
Temple, which teemed with activity, and to pray – the preferred
place for prayer during the Second Temple period. (Today, outside
of Jerusalem, it is customary to face the city three times a day
during prayers; in Jerusalem, prayer is said facing the Temple Mount.)
It was here that the Kohanim made their ritual offerings and the
people brought their offerings to give thanks and expiate their
sins, and where they celebrated the Sabbath and special festivals
with dancing and song. Here, too, the shofar was sounded on Rosh
Hashanah and the first fruits were brought at harvest time. One
of the happiest celebrations was Simchat Beit Hashoeva (Rejoicing
at the Place of the Water-Drawing), performed every morning throughout
the Sukkot festival, which involved pouring water from the pool
of Shiloach in the City of David on the altar in order to invoke
God's blessing for rain. On Yom Kippur, the Kohain Hagadol
(the High Priest) entered the Holy of Holies to ask for divine forgiveness
for the people's sins.
Bezalel was only 13 years old when God chose him to supervise construction
of the elaborate portable tabernacle, a pre-Temple that the Jews
carried during their wanderings in the desert. Empowered with miraculous
divine abilities, with "Godly spirit, wisdom, insight and knowledge
and with every craft," (Exodus 31:3) Bezalel carried out the
enormous project, detailed in three chapters. He rested only on
Shabbat.
The year-long experience of building the Temple model also had a
remarkable impact on the secular Rosenberg: "I want people,
especially secular Jews, to understand what the holy Temple really
was; to know that we came from this place, to know our roots, our
destiny," he said. "The Temple sent out a message of confidence
to the nation. It is a message we need today."
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