What is the logic in what he says?
Seemingly, his assumption is that there is no obligation to keep the Torah, and then of course it makes sense…

Before Passover my daughter’s school organized an event of waving the two loaves. It started with several Levite children blowing long trumpets. After that, several priestly children carried trays representing the two loaves. Then two live sheep appeared. One priest, the father of one of the children, was asked to wave one sheep. Then they asked the audience to hold the second sheep. I went to hold it. They told me to wave it. I’m a Levite, but it was only for demonstration, so I tried to wave it. In the middle of lifting it, I felt the sheep resisting me, so I put it down. After that they asked priests to recite the Priestly Blessing without the blessing formula beforehand (not as part of the cantor’s repetition). I answer amen and the sheep goes “baaa.” After that a discussion developed whether when the presenter said “these are peace-offering sheep” he had consecrated them or whether it was only for practice. After that we went to thresh wheat.

*Before Shavuot

Yishai,
If I understood correctly, his technical reasoning (although he was brief on the halakhic explanations and dealt mainly with issues of feeling and connection, so take this with a grain of salt) is that only part of the Oral Torah was written down, and an important and significant part remained as an oral tradition. Therefore, when the part that remained oral was lost from the tradition, you can’t use the written instructions to reconstruct the commandment, because essential bodies of Torah that were supposed to be transmitted in the unwritten tradition are missing.

Roni,
So I understand that he has 2 separate claims.
One is about feeling and connection, and about that what I said is correct.
Second, that the Oral Torah we have is limited, and therefore one can rely only on what has practice behind it. Aside from the fact that this claim is strange and we haven’t really heard of this loss, its implication is unclear. If apparently one should put tekhelet on, why should the lack in the Oral Torah change that? The worst that can happen is that you didn’t do the commandment fully. (Unless he argues that there is a deficiency in the white strings, and I know someone who argues this and claims that because of the inability to decide how many tekhelet strings are needed, there is automatically concern for a deficiency in the white strings [which is a strange claim in itself—what is different about tekhelet, where one supposedly can’t decide, unlike other disputes?], but that claim has nothing at all to do with a lost oral tradition.)

Yishai, if I understood correctly, he doesn’t see this as two claims, but as two sides of the same coin. What was lost to us with the loss of tradition is precisely those bodies of Torah responsible for the fine-tuning of the commandment to life and its patterns. And the lack of connection and the not knowing exactly what one is doing are intertwined.
The argument “the worst that can happen…” is not a halakhic argument. The claim “if it won’t help, it won’t hurt” is not common in the Talmud, and besides that he argues that there is also harm—the lack of connection.
But it would be better if you asked him. There’s no point dealing in guesses and conjectures about what he holds. If this were my view, I’d explain it, but it isn’t.

That is completely a halakhic argument. If there is apparently an obligation, then one only has to check that there isn’t something against it. You can always say maybe we’re mistaken. For that you need some basis for doubt, and even then, if there is no opposing concern, then a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently. (One could argue not with regard to positive commandments, but he didn’t say that.)

Yishai, according to his approach, the rules that a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently—and not only actual doubt but even a mere concern, which is certainly treated stringently on a Torah level (even according to Maimonides)—were said only in a place where there is a living tradition, because tradition is the infrastructure for a life of Torah and commandments.
(I completely agree with you, I’m only explaining what he said.)

It seems to me that this is the essence of the dispute between “Haredi Judaism” and “Religious Zionism,” or between Rashi and Maimonides, over whether the Third Temple will descend from Heaven or be built by human hands. Religious Zionism sees redemption as something placed in our hands, and the beginning of redemption has already been carried out by us, therefore one should work to complete the redemption by building the Temple and offering sacrifices.
Haredi Judaism follows Rashi: the whole matter of redemption is miraculous. The reason is that the Judaism we received does not include a form of government suitable for our time and does not include the offering of sacrifices. What form of government are we to maintain? Democracy, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the kingship of Israel, or monarchy as in the days of David? No Jewish halakhic form of government developed that adapted itself to the times. And we have no halakhic tradition that developed in accordance with reality in the matter of sacrifices. Trying to offer them today is like trying to establish a monarchy. The wonder is that in that same Religious Zionism which submissively accepts fashionable universal values such as feminism, etc., they work to establish a Temple, than which nothing is stranger and more abhorrent in the world of today’s values. I expect to see online videos of slaughtering the daily offerings; they will probably be in the same category as ISIS videos…

Yaakov M., the end of what you wrote is rather strange. Those in Religious Zionism who support feminism are not the same people who support establishing the Temple nowadays, etc. These are two extremes within the Religious Zionist public that you apparently are not aware of.
As for videos of slaughtering the daily offerings: actually, videos of the Samaritan Passover sacrifice are very popular on YouTube, and thousands of Israelis travel every year to Mount Gerizim to see the sacrifice (it doesn’t fall on the same date as our Passover), out of curiosity.

Amir,
Actually, those who go up to the Temple Mount are also more open from a feminist standpoint and the like. And the more conservative ones also avoid going up to the Temple Mount.
There are many technical problems in building a Temple (the first of them being the location of the altar). The Temple Institute is apparently dealing with them, and still I suspect it will take time until they deal with everything. But I would not be complacent. People also thought there would never be a Jewish state, and then suddenly seventy years ago it appeared (even if in the format of the kingdom of Ahab). The Temple may yet arise here much faster than people think. Only a year ago, during the magnetometers affair, foreigners were prevented from entering the Temple Mount for two weeks. Something that had not happened for two thousand five hundred years since Jeremiah asked, “Strangers roar in Your sanctuary; where are Your awesome deeds?” His awesome deeds are already on the way. Something will happen spiritually and the foreigners will be prevented from entering the Mount. We are living in a frightening period, and I would avoid complacent predictions.

With God’s help, 20 Av 5778

Without making any definitive ruling about Rabbi Shmuel Nadel’s remarks, which I have not had time to examine, I would note that there are commandments that require emotional maturity and fitness beyond merely being thirteen and obligated in commandments. For example, people would wait in fulfilling the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying until age 18 (and nowadays even later than that), because a boy of 13 and a girl of 12 are still not mature enough for the responsibility of married life, and therefore the Torah does not obligate them in what they cannot handle.

There is a similarity between standing before God and a state of marriage: in both there is an aspiration to reach a state in which “the Divine Presence is between them,” and the responsibility is not simple. Are we capable of meeting the purity requirements demanded by the Temple service? Are we capable of meeting the severe demands of “reverence for the sanctuary,” not to behave frivolously before God (something that is not simple for us even in a “miniature sanctuary”…)? Are we capable of meeting the demands of unity and peace required in the Temple?

Not for nothing did the Torah make the building of the Temple conditional on a state of “And the Lord gives you rest from all your enemies, and you dwell securely” (Deuteronomy 12:10). The First Temple was built after there stood a king who united all Israel and was moved to build it, and even he had to wait until Solomon reigned, in whose days the people would dwell securely without wars. In the Second Temple there was no king, and presumably for that reason many thought that “it is not the time for the House of the Lord to be built,” until the prophet Haggai aroused them and made clear to them that the time had come.

In our generation, after the Six-Day War, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim of blessed memory addressed the question (having been asked about it by the Attorney General Meir Shamgar, in connection with the “Association for the Establishment of the Temple,” which sought to register). After bringing views to both sides of the question whether it is possible to build the Temple without a king or prophet, Rabbi Nissim concludes:

“From all that has been said it follows that when the majority of the Jewish people are gathered in their land, and that majority agrees to build it, then the matter of building is not entrusted to the will of an individual or a few individuals. When we merit this—then the rabbis of Israel will assemble and they will discuss and decide the matter.

In any case, this matter, which is the greatest matter of Judaism and the purpose of our lives, and for which we have prayed and toward which our eyes look every day and every hour—that this mighty and awesome act, than which there is nothing comparable, should not even be imagined as being done by a few people, but rather that the entire nation from one end to the other should awaken for it and it should be done by its direction…”

(Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, For the Community and the Individual—Fixed Laws, vol. 1, Jerusalem 2018, pp. 49–50)

It seems that the Temple is the connection of all Israel to its Creator, and therefore it should be done when most of the nation is in its land and out of the desire of the majority of the people and its sages. It seems, then, that besides involvement in the laws of the Temple, as the Chafetz Chaim urged, the more we awaken the people’s love for its land and increase love and unity among the parts of the nation, the more we will bring near, with God’s help, the building of the Temple.

With blessings,
Shatz Levinger

Shatz—you wrote יפה things, and one could say that you moderated Rabbi Shmuel Nadel’s words, who expressed himself more sharply [“to offer sacrifices nowadays is madness,” “foolishness,” and other sharper expressions of opposition, more or less].

Y.D.—you may be speaking specifically about figures like Yehuda Glick, whose positions are unique and different from most of the activists involved in ascending the Mount [I am not one of them, but I know the people and the styles involved in the whole issue]. Most of the Temple Mount activists and those who go up are really not from the liberal camp within the Religious Zionist public. Those you wrote about who refrain from going up are mainly from the circles of Har Hamor [though not only], but not all the conservatives in the Religious Zionist public come from this school—for example, the students of Rabbi Dov Lior, who are far from the liberal group and do go up to the Mount, and there are others.

Shatz Levinger and Amir—what does the Temple have to do with this? Sacrifices can be offered even without it. Why does all the Jewish people need to become emotionally ready in order for me privately to offer a sin-offering for my inadvertent Sabbath desecration?

D,
The verse says: “I will lay your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas.” From here they learned that any sacrifice that is for “a pleasing aroma” cannot be offered without a Temple. They checked and found that only the Passover sacrifice is not “for a pleasing aroma.” In the course of my brilliant research, the author of Drishat Tzion and the author of Ha’amek Davar argued that even after the destruction they still offered Passover sacrifices on the altar, and only after the Bar Kokhba war was the altar destroyed and they stopped offering Passover sacrifices. A sin-offering is for a pleasing aroma, and therefore it cannot be offered without a Temple.

To Shatz Levinger:
In Turkey they decided to revive the Muslim legal ruling allowing girls from age 9 and up to marry:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12766/child-brides-turkey

Indeed, if Mr. Erdogan has concluded that even minors are mature enough to start a family—then let him go with that strength and build the Temple, and he will be remembered for generations like Cyrus and Darius and Herod, who built the Second Temple. And of him it will be said: “Whoever has not seen the building that Erdogan built has never seen a beautiful building in his life” 🙂

With blessings,
Rajip Tayyip Levinoglu