The World’s foundation stone

Introduction

The Foundation Stone (in Hebrew: אבן השתייה “ha-Shtiyya” or סֶּלַע Selā‛, in Arabic: الصخرة al-Sakhrah al-Musharrafah “The Noble Rock”) is the name of the rock at the centre of the Dome of the Rock in the Temple of Jerusalem. This solid and compact rock of enormous dimensions has a small opening in the southeast corner that enters a cave, known as the Well of Souls and considered the Biblical site of the Temple called the Holy of Saints the most sacred place of Judaism (Tanhuma, chapter 10).
Jewish tradition considers the Holy of Saints as the spiritual conjunction point between heaven and earth, the axis mundi, and is therefore the direction that Jews face when they pray the Amidah. Rabbis in the Talmud call this rock “the foundation stone” because, they say, the world was born from it. In the sense that the origin of something from nothing happened here, the place where these two elements meet.

The Holy of Holies

In the Holy of Holies chamber of the Holy Temple there were five objects according to the tradition:

1. The aron (ark), which contained the tablets (the second set, as well as the shards of the first tablets).
2. The Foundation Stone, upon which the ark sat.
3. Aaron’s staff (see Numbers 17, 16–26).
4. The jar of manna (see Exodus 16, 33–34).
5. The Torah scroll that Moses wrote immediately before his passing (see Deuteronomy 31, 26).

In the First Temple there were also two ten-cubit-tall cherubim, carved of wood and covered with gold, on the two sides of the aron—and their wings reached out over the aron (I Kings 6, 23).

The aron, Aaron’s staff and the jar of manna were hidden by King Josiah in subterranean tunnels (the subterranean Temple) beneath the Temple Mount (see II Chronicles 35, 3) several decades before the destruction of the First Temple. As such, these elements were not present in the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple.

I am asleep, but my heart is awake
(Song of Songs 5, 2)

The sages of the Jewish tradition teach us that “when King Solomon built the Holy Temple, knowing that it was destined to be destroyed, he built a place to hide the Ark, hidden, deep and tortuous passages “note1. It was there that King Joshua placed the Ark twenty-two years before the destruction of the Temple, as we read in the Book of Chronicles. note2

The Holy Temple of Jerusalem was built by King Solomon in the year 2928 after its creation (833 BC), and was destroyed 410 years later, on the ninth day of the month of Av, by the armies of the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar. Seventy years later it was rebuilt; the second temple stood for 420 years, until its destruction by the Romans, also on the ninth day of Av, in 3829 (69 A.D.). Since then, 9 Av has been a day of fasting and repentance, a day of mourning destruction and praying for the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah), when the third and final Temple will be restored in its place as the divine epicenter of the universe.

In “GOD’S House”

The Holy Temple was GOD’s House, the place where He chose to manifest His omnipresent truth to the World. It was destroyed by human hands, but only by Divine will, to bring to completion the plan of redemption of the Holy People. A Temple initially built already with the knowledge and foresight of what would happen on the 9th of Av.

The fact that the hiding place of the Ark was built in the Holy Temple from the beginning also has another implication: it means that the first, the second and the third temple are not three different structures, but the continuation of a single building. The Ark contained the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the hand of God, which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. It was the most sacred object of the Temple, kept in the inner chamber of the Temple, the Saint of Saints. Indeed, sages define the Ark as “the resting place of the Shechinah (divine presence) “note3.

In the twenty-eight centuries since it was built, the Holy Temple has never ceased to perform its fundamental function as the seat of the Divine presence in the world. There were times when the entire structure stood in all its splendor on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, times when it existed in a reduced form (as in the era of the Second Temple), and times when it was almost completely destroyed. But a certain part of the Holy Temple was never disturbed, and there its heart never stopped beating.

When the Third Temple is built and the Ark is restored in its surface chamber, it will not be a new building, or even a “reconstruction,” but a revelation and reaffirmation of what has been present all along.

“Because we have sinned before You . . . our city was destroyed, our Sanctuary laid waste; our grandeur was banished, and the glory departed from our House of Life; no longer are we able to fulfill our duties in Your chosen home, in the great and holy house upon which Your name is proclaimed . . .^{note 4}

As these words suggests But human weakness against sin was only allowed so that GOD could grant His people to do evil only to allow them to rediscover the power of good and love: “the greatest light that comes from darkness “^{note 5}.

For centuries the Sacred Temple has remained desolate, its essence contracted into a deep underground chamber beneath its glorious ruin. But this terrible descent is, in truth, the drive for an even higher ascent into the future, an even greater good, an even more universal perfection, than that which shone from the Temple in its first and second incarnation.
The paths that lead to this chamber are hidden, deep and tortuous, and this is not the straight and true path of the righteous, but the stealthy and twisted path of the one who “returns” (baal teshuvah), a path that plunges into the depths of his soul to release the most powerful forces buried there.^{note 6}

 

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Note

1. Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Holy Temple 4:1, from Talmud, Yoma 53b.
2. II Chronicles 35:3; Mishneh Torah, loc. cit.
3. Nachmanides’ commentary on Torah, introduction to Exodus 25. See Likkutei Sichot, vol. 4, p. 1346, note 24.
4. From the Mussaf prayer for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh.
5. Ecclesiastes 2:13 (as interpreted by chassidic teaching).
6. Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Chazon 5741/1981 (Likkutei Sichot, vol. 21, pp. 156–163).

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Bibliography

• Friedlander, Gerald, Pirkê de rabbi Eliezer, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & co. Ltd., London, 1916, p.221
• Responsa 691.
• A. Benisch, Travels of Petachia of Ratisbon (with English translation), London 1856.
• The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages; (English translation originally published by Joseph Simon/Pangloss Press in 1993, ISBN 0-934710-07-4).
• Avraham Ya’ari, Igrot Eretz Yisrael, Ramat Gan 1971.
• Rav lshtori HaParchi (14th Century), Kaftor VeFerach, Provence, France.
• Emek HaMelech, Preface, paragraph 9.
• “Fig. 6. The Southern System (237 K)”. Templemount.org. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
• “The Hidden Secrets of the Temple Mount”. Templemount.org. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
• Ritmeyer, Leen, The Quest (2006), pp. 263-268.
• Tractate Middot 4.7