Jerusalem in Judaism

The Temple Mount, known in Hebrew as Har HaBayit, anchors Jerusalem’s sacred status as the location of the First and Second Temples and a spiritual center of the Jewish people.[7] Jerusalem’s importance encompasses worship, collective memory, and national identity: Jewish belief associates the Temple site with the Divine Presence, while the Temple became a center of Jewish national and religious life.[3][8] The city’s centrality therefore includes communal gathering and political life as well as prayer and sacred space.[9][10]

Jewish attachment to Jerusalem continued after the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of many Jews from the land.[4] Prayer, study, and ritual preserved the city as both a remembered place and an ideal associated with redemption, perfection, and wholeness.[4] The longing for a rebuilt Jerusalem became linked to messianic expectation, while everyday religious practices repeatedly directed attention toward the city.[4]

Jerusalem’s place in Judaism is expressed through the historical worship of the Temples, pilgrimage festivals, the orientation and language of prayer, and commemorations of destruction.[5][4] The Western Wall is a continuing focus of Jewish prayer, while the Temple Mount retains its holiness in Jewish belief even without a standing Temple.[3] Jewish legal and interpretive traditions also rank the sacred spaces of the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Holy of Holies.[11]

The biblical accounts describe David’s capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and Solomon’s construction of the Temple there.[12] Jewish religious and national memory connects David’s establishment of Jerusalem as his capital around 1000 BCE with the subsequent building of the Temple by his son.[1] David placed Jerusalem and the monarchy at the center of the kingdom’s national life, while Solomon’s Temple became a center of Jewish national and religious life.[8]

The Torah does not explicitly name Jerusalem; later interpretation understood Deuteronomy’s recurring expression “the place that God will choose” as referring to the city.[12] Jewish tradition associates Mount Moriah, or the Temple Mount, with the Binding of Isaac.[1][13] One historical chronology dates the First Temple’s inauguration to around 960 BCE, and Jewish belief associates the site with the permanent dwelling of the Divine Presence.[3]

The dedication narrative in 1 Kings 8 brings together the Temple’s public, sacrificial, and devotional roles.[9] Solomon assembles Israel’s elders in Jerusalem to bring the Ark from the City of David to the Temple, and the chapter depicts a major festival gathering accompanied by sacrifices.[9] It reports offerings of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep, presenting the dedication as an event involving Solomon and the assembled Israelites.[9]

Solomon’s dedication prayer asks God to hear prayers directed toward the Temple, including those of Israelites living in exile who turn toward the city and the House built for God’s name.[9] The same prayer includes a foreigner coming from a distant land to pray toward the House and asks that the foreigner’s prayer also be heard.[9] The biblical narrative thus places prayer toward Jerusalem alongside sacrifice at Jerusalem within the Temple’s religious significance.[9]

The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 BCE, beginning the Babylonian exile.[8] Psalm 137 portrays captives by the rivers of Babylon weeping as they remember Zion and refusing to relinquish Jerusalem even in moments of happiness.[2] The Babylonian period also marked the development of a Jewish religious framework and way of life outside the Land of Israel.[8] Jerusalem remained a point of attachment within that life beyond the land.[2][8]

Returning exiles built the Second Temple on the site of the First, and it was completed in 515 BCE.[3] The rebuilding of the Temple and Jerusalem’s walls marked the beginning of the Second Temple period; Jerusalem also housed the leadership of the Great Assembly, a religious and judicial body of the Jewish people under Persian rule.[8] The rebuilt Temple again served as the central place of Jewish worship.[3]

The Temple’s purification in 164 BCE followed Seleucid desecration of the sanctuary, restrictions on Jewish practice, and the revolt led by the Hasmonean family.[8] Hanukkah annually commemorates that purification.[8] Later, Herod rebuilt the Temple, with the rededicated building inaugurated around 18 BCE, and enlarged the surrounding Temple Mount compound.[3][5] The expanded esplanade accommodated greater numbers of worshippers by the end of the first century BCE.[5]

Roman forces destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE.[3] Afterward, the synagogue became the central place of Jewish prayer and worship, the rabbi became more prominent in communal life, and the role of the priesthood diminished.[14] Jewish religious life underwent a broader movement from a system centered on sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple toward one emphasizing the observance of religious laws in daily life.[15]

One account traces antecedents of synagogue prayer to gatherings during the Second Temple period: while groups of priests traveled to Jerusalem for service, those who remained in outlying districts gathered for prayer at the hours associated with Temple sacrifices.[16] It describes these gatherings as subsequently becoming public, year-round occasions incorporating Torah readings, and argues that by the Mishnah’s redaction the core of Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma’ariv was nearly the same as today.[16]

Jewish religious life in Jerusalem also continued through settlement and the establishment of institutions.[4] Nachmanides arrived from Spain between 1265 and 1267 and established a synagogue that became a nucleus for the later Jewish Quarter.[4] In 1844, Jerusalem had 7,120 Jewish inhabitants, making Jews its largest single community and almost half its population.[4]

Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot are the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, for which the Torah called on Israelites to travel to the place God would choose and bring offerings.[5] During the First and Second Temple periods, these festivals brought Jews to Jerusalem and made the Temple a center of recurring communal gathering.[6] Pilgrimage reinforced communal identity, the community’s covenant with God, and the sanctity of Jerusalem and the Temple site in Jewish religious consciousness.[5]

The festivals combined agricultural and historical meanings.[5] Passover marked the Exodus and the beginning of the spring planting season; Shavuot was an agricultural harvest celebration, with its association with the giving of the Torah developing after the biblical period.[5] Sukkot recalled the Israelites’ desert wanderings and marked the final harvest before the winter rains.[5] These themes formed part of the setting for journeys to Jerusalem and the presentation of offerings there.[5]

In the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, pilgrims came from Jewish communities across the ancient Mediterranean.[5] Their journeys supported markets, currency exchange, and lodging in Jerusalem.[5] Herod’s expansion of the Temple Mount esplanade provided more space for worshippers, and the Western Wall formed part of the supporting structure of that enlarged compound.[5] The available evidence does not provide verifiable annual totals for the numbers of pilgrims.[5]

After 70 CE, the pilgrimage festivals continued primarily through synagogue worship, with prayers taking the place of sacrifices and their agricultural and historical themes becoming more prominent.[5] They retained their designation as pilgrimage festivals despite the loss of the Temple service.[5] Many people in Israel regard visiting the Western Wall as a way of following in the footsteps of earlier pilgrims.[5]

The present Western Wall is part of the retaining structure of the Herodian Temple Mount compound, not a surviving wall of the Temple building itself.[11] It has become a major focus of Jewish prayer and aspiration, while the Temple Mount remains Judaism’s holiest site.[3][7] A 2022 study identified the Western Wall as the principal Jewish worship site in Jerusalem.[17]

Jewish prayer near the Temple Mount took place at different accessible locations in different periods.[11] Accounts by the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, who visited in 333, and Jerome describe annual Jewish visits to mourn at the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av.[11] These accounts belong to the history of Jewish mourning at the Temple site rather than to the later history of the present Western Wall prayer area.[11]

Medieval evidence records prayer at several locations, including the Mount of Olives, the Temple Mount’s eastern wall, and the Mount’s gates.[11] An eleventh-century Cairo Geniza pilgrim guide describes circuits around the Mount with prayers at its gates, while a fourteenth-century account places Jewish prayer at the eastern wall.[11] Access and restrictions changed repeatedly across these periods.[11]

Clear evidence of prayer at the present Western Wall location dates from the seventeenth century, beginning with individual prayer and followed by reports of public prayer, especially on the Ninth of Av.[18] The neighboring Jewish Quarter and an earthquake that exposed more of the wall appear to have helped establish it as a preferred prayer site.[18] The custom of placing notes between its stones developed in the nineteenth century and became more firmly established after British authorities prohibited engraving names on the wall.[18]

Another account places the formal development of a prayer area at the Wall in the sixteenth century and reports that Sultan Suleiman instructed his court architect to prepare one there in 1550.[11] It describes earlier use of the Wall as less frequent than today, including Sabbath prayers and prayers and elegies before Tisha B’Av, and finds no evidence of regular three-times-daily services there before the twentieth century.[11]

Jews were barred from approaching the Western Wall for nineteen years after Jerusalem’s Old City came under Jordanian control in 1948.[11] During the 1967 war, Rabbi Shlomo Goren sounded a shofar on the Temple Mount and then prayed Mincha at the Wall, a service identified as the first there in nineteen years.[11] Regular Jewish prayer at the Wall resumed in 1967.[11]

The Amidah, traditionally recited three times daily while facing Jerusalem, includes a blessing asking God to return to the city and rebuild it, concluding, “Blessed are you Lord, builder of Jerusalem.”[4] Traditional daily services take place in the morning, afternoon, and evening, with a fourth service added on the Sabbath and holidays.[14]

The orientation of prayer follows a progression through increasingly sacred places: a person in the Diaspora turns toward the Land of Israel, a person within the land toward Jerusalem, one in Jerusalem toward the Temple, and one within the Temple toward the Holy of Holies.[19] The tradition also expresses this orientation as directing one’s heart toward Jerusalem.[19] Synagogue arks containing Torah scrolls customarily face the city.[6]

The practice has accommodated differences in geography and circumstance.[19] Ancient synagogue orientations sometimes varied with the terrain, and some synagogues did not face Jerusalem.[19] Rabbinic authorities held that a person who did not know the correct compass direction should direct the heart toward Jerusalem or toward God.[19] The religious orientation thus includes inward intention as well as physical direction.[19]

References to Zion, the Land of Israel, and Jerusalem occur throughout the Bible, prophetic books, Talmud, and siddur.[20] The siddur preserves Jewish belief and historical experience, with its basic structure and core liturgical content codified for worship by the early rabbinic period, around the sixth century CE.[20] Jerusalem is also recalled in a blessing in the grace after meals, extending its liturgical presence beyond synagogue services.[21]

The Passover Seder and the concluding Yom Kippur service include the declaration “Next year in Jerusalem.”[6] The phrase expresses a continuing bond with the city and the hope for return.[1] Jerusalem is therefore recalled both during daily worship and at major annual occasions in the Jewish religious calendar.[4][6]

Psalm 137 gives this attachment a particularly direct expression: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.”[2] The vow continues by promising to keep Jerusalem in memory “even at my happiest hour.”[2] Its setting among exiles in Babylon connects remembrance of the city to displacement, while its language also makes Jerusalem part of moments of personal happiness.[2]

At Jewish weddings, breaking a glass recalls the destruction of the Temple and is connected with Psalm 137’s vow not to forget Jerusalem.[4] Wedding customs can also include reciting verses from that psalm.[21] Mourning customs invoke the city through the condolence formula referring to the “mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” and through the traditional tearing of clothing when approaching Jerusalem and the place where the Temple stood.[21]

Tisha B’Av is the designated day of mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem and both Temples, and its observance includes the reading of Lamentations.[4] The traditional account of Rabbi Akiva at the ruined Temple links the fulfillment of a prophecy of destruction with confidence that prophecies of Jerusalem’s restoration will also be fulfilled.[22]

One educational account interprets the remembrance of Jerusalem as extending beyond formal worship into weddings, homes, and the comforting of mourners.[22] It describes leaving part of a home unfinished as a reminder of the destroyed Temple and connects such customs with continuing hope for return and restoration.[22]

The synagogue service itself is modeled in part on the Temple’s daily service.[4] Even as worship moved away from sacrifice and toward prayer, the memory of Jerusalem remained embedded in the forms and language of religious life.[5][4]

Jewish belief understands the Temple Mount’s holiness as enduring because the Divine Presence dwells there permanently.[3] Its sacred status is therefore not dependent solely on the survival of the Temple building.[3] Jewish traditions of sacred space place Jerusalem and the Temple within an ascending hierarchy of holiness.[11]

One study illustrates this hierarchy through a midrash ranking the Land of Israel above other countries, the Temple above other places in the land, and the Holy of Holies above other parts of the Temple.[11] It argues that the Temple on Mount Moriah remained the central place of Jewish worship even when synagogues existed in other communities during the Second Temple period.[11]

Jerusalem also acquired an ideal and heavenly dimension in Jewish interpretation.[4] In Rabbinic Judaism, Jerusalem represented redemption, perfection, and wholeness, and the hope for rebuilding was connected to messianic expectation.[4] Jewish tradition includes the expectation of a third Temple in the messianic age.[13]

The traditional account of Rabbi Akiva at the ruined Temple explains the relationship between destruction and hope.[22] Akiva’s companions weep when they see a fox in the area of the Holy of Holies, but he takes the fulfillment of the prophecy of destruction as a reason for confidence that the prophecy of Jerusalem’s restoration will also be fulfilled.[22] The account connects that response to the continuing remembrance of Jerusalem in prayer, weddings, and consolation.[22]

Jerusalem’s significance has also been political, economic, and cultural across a history of approximately three millennia.[10] It remained an object of Jewish veneration both in exile and during periods of Jewish sovereignty.[10] The term aliyah, literally “going up,” is used for going to Israel or Jerusalem and for being called up to bless the Torah.[10]

One modern essay argues that longing for Jerusalem persisted across diaspora communities despite the difficulty of visiting or settling there.[23] It distinguishes the crystallization of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity from the earlier Israelite culture whose texts and physical traces, including the Temple Mount, extend across the preceding millennium.[23] The essay cautions against treating the relationships of different religions to Jerusalem as interchangeable.[23]

Yom Yerushalayim commemorates the events of 1967 and is observed by many Jews with special prayers and celebrations.[22] Liturgical additions often used in morning and afternoon services include Isaiah 62:1–7, Psalm 116:13, and Judah Halevi’s poem “My Heart is in the East.”[20] The observance places modern national commemoration alongside longstanding biblical, poetic, and liturgical expressions of attachment to Jerusalem.[22][20]

Jewish authorities differ over entry and prayer on the Temple Mount.[7] The Chief Rabbinate of Israel and many other rabbinic authorities prohibit visits because of concerns about ritual purity and the risk of entering forbidden sacred areas; other rabbis permit visits or prayer in parts of the compound.[7][13] Uncertainty about the precise location of the Holy of Holies is an important element in restrictive rulings.[13]

The administrative arrangement assigns overall security control to Israel and day-to-day management to the Islamic Waqf, with Jewish visits permitted at specified times but Jewish prayer prohibited under the described understanding.[7] A 2022 study covering developments from 2015 through 2022 documented increasing religious Jewish visits, prayer services, and Torah lessons, particularly among the national-religious public, in tension with the Chief Rabbinate and important Haredi authorities.[17] The study identified the Western Wall as the principal Jewish worship site and recommended restraining worship on the Mount.[17]

Historical-critical discussion distinguishes traditional accounts of Jerusalem’s primordial sanctity from what can be established about its earliest religious character.[12] Ancient rabbinic references to a “Western Wall” also do not necessarily identify the retaining wall used for prayer today.[18] Contemporary disputes extend to worship arrangements and archaeology: present restrictions on mixed-gender prayer at the Wall differ from Ottoman-period practice, while critics of some underground archaeological projects have objected to their emphasis on Jewish history.[18][24]