Post by Moses on Jan 5, 2005 0:43:26 GMT -5
www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=73311
Members of Reestablished Sanhedrin Ascend Temple Mount
16:52 Dec 09, '04 / 26 Kislev 5765
In a dramatic but unpublicized move, members of the newly established Sanhedrin ascended the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, this past Monday.
Close to 50 recently ordained s'muchim, members of the Sanhedrin, lined up at the foot of the Temple Mount Monday morning. [The word s'muchim comes from the same root as s'michah, , rabbinic ordination.] The men, many ascending the Temple Mount for the first time, had immersed in mikvaot (ritual baths) that morning, and planned to ascend as a group. Despite prior approval from the Israeli police who oversee entry to the Mount, the officers barred the group from entering the Mount all together, and allowed them to visit only in groups of ten.
Given the newly-mandated restrictive conditions, many of the s'muchim refused to ascend at all, especially as a group of over 100 non-Jewish tourists filed past the waiting rabbis and up towards the holy site. “It is unconscionable that on the eve of Chanukah, which celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple, we should once again be barred from worshipping – by our own people,” Rabbi Chaim Richman of Jerusalem’s Temple Institute told IsraelNN’s Ezra HaLevi.
The Sanhedrin, a religious-legal assembly of 71 sages that convened during the Holy Temple period and for several centuries afterwards, was the highest Jewish judicial tribunal in the Land of Israel. The great court used to convene in one of the Temple’s chambers in Jerusalem.
This past October, the Sanhedrin was reestablished for the first time in 1,600 years, at the site of its last meeting in Tiberias.
“There is a special mitzvah [commandment], not connected to time, but tied to our presence in Israel, to establish a Sanhedrin,” Rabbi Meir HaLevi, one of the 71 members of the new Sanhedrin, told Israel National Radio’s Weekend Edition. “The Rambam [12th-century Torah scholar Maimonides] describes the process exactly in the Mishna Torah [his seminal work codifying Jewish Law]. When he wrote it, there was no Sanhedrin, and he therefore outlines the steps necessary to establish one. When there is a majority of rabbis, in Israel, who authorize one person to be a samuch, , an authority, he can then reestablish the Sanhedrin.”<br>
Those behind the revival of the Sanhedrin stress that the revival of the legal body is not optional, but mandated by the Torah. “We don’t have a choice,” says Rabbi Richman. “It is a religious mandate for us to establish a Sanhedrin.”<br>
The Sanhedrin was reestablished through the ordination of one rabbi agreed upon by many prominent rabbis in Israel and approved as “fitting to serve” by former Chief Sefardi Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and leading Ashkenazi Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. That rabbi, who is then considered to have received authentic ordination as handed down from Moses, was then able to give ordination to 70 others, making up the quorum of 71 necessary for the Sanhedrin.
“Even Mordechai HaYehudi of the Purim story was accepted, as it is written, only ‘by the majority of his brethren,’ and not by everybody," Rabbi HaLevi explained. "Anyone who deals with public issues can not be unanimously accepted.”<br>
The rabbis behind the Sanhedrin’s reconstitution claim that, like the State of Israel, the old-new Sanhedrin is a work-in-progress. They see it as a vessel that, once established, will reach the stature and authority that it once had.
Members of Reestablished Sanhedrin Ascend Temple Mount
16:52 Dec 09, '04 / 26 Kislev 5765
In a dramatic but unpublicized move, members of the newly established Sanhedrin ascended the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, this past Monday.
Close to 50 recently ordained s'muchim, members of the Sanhedrin, lined up at the foot of the Temple Mount Monday morning. [The word s'muchim comes from the same root as s'michah, , rabbinic ordination.] The men, many ascending the Temple Mount for the first time, had immersed in mikvaot (ritual baths) that morning, and planned to ascend as a group. Despite prior approval from the Israeli police who oversee entry to the Mount, the officers barred the group from entering the Mount all together, and allowed them to visit only in groups of ten.
Given the newly-mandated restrictive conditions, many of the s'muchim refused to ascend at all, especially as a group of over 100 non-Jewish tourists filed past the waiting rabbis and up towards the holy site. “It is unconscionable that on the eve of Chanukah, which celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple, we should once again be barred from worshipping – by our own people,” Rabbi Chaim Richman of Jerusalem’s Temple Institute told IsraelNN’s Ezra HaLevi.
The Sanhedrin, a religious-legal assembly of 71 sages that convened during the Holy Temple period and for several centuries afterwards, was the highest Jewish judicial tribunal in the Land of Israel. The great court used to convene in one of the Temple’s chambers in Jerusalem.
This past October, the Sanhedrin was reestablished for the first time in 1,600 years, at the site of its last meeting in Tiberias.
“There is a special mitzvah [commandment], not connected to time, but tied to our presence in Israel, to establish a Sanhedrin,” Rabbi Meir HaLevi, one of the 71 members of the new Sanhedrin, told Israel National Radio’s Weekend Edition. “The Rambam [12th-century Torah scholar Maimonides] describes the process exactly in the Mishna Torah [his seminal work codifying Jewish Law]. When he wrote it, there was no Sanhedrin, and he therefore outlines the steps necessary to establish one. When there is a majority of rabbis, in Israel, who authorize one person to be a samuch, , an authority, he can then reestablish the Sanhedrin.”<br>
Those behind the revival of the Sanhedrin stress that the revival of the legal body is not optional, but mandated by the Torah. “We don’t have a choice,” says Rabbi Richman. “It is a religious mandate for us to establish a Sanhedrin.”<br>
The Sanhedrin was reestablished through the ordination of one rabbi agreed upon by many prominent rabbis in Israel and approved as “fitting to serve” by former Chief Sefardi Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and leading Ashkenazi Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. That rabbi, who is then considered to have received authentic ordination as handed down from Moses, was then able to give ordination to 70 others, making up the quorum of 71 necessary for the Sanhedrin.
“Even Mordechai HaYehudi of the Purim story was accepted, as it is written, only ‘by the majority of his brethren,’ and not by everybody," Rabbi HaLevi explained. "Anyone who deals with public issues can not be unanimously accepted.”<br>
The rabbis behind the Sanhedrin’s reconstitution claim that, like the State of Israel, the old-new Sanhedrin is a work-in-progress. They see it as a vessel that, once established, will reach the stature and authority that it once had.