Q&A: Which People Build a Temple?
Which People Build a Temple?
Question
Friends of mine, Torah scholars, go up to the Temple Mount and want to build a Temple now.
I, the undersigned, tell them that a people who build a Temple is a people that increases goodness and uprightness in the world, fights evil, and establishes healthy and good government—not bribery, deceit, and breach of trust.
So there is an order, and it makes no sense to bypass it.
And Sanhedrin 19 supports me: the Jewish people were commanded with three commandments—to appoint a king for themselves (healthy and upright government), to wipe out the offspring of Amalek (to increase good and fight evil, and this is the king’s main role, to break the arm of the wicked, as Maimonides writes), and only then to build the Chosen House…
So until the rabbis are upright and not supporters of corruption, apparently there is not much to talk about.
A. Am I right?
B. After all, in the First Temple they did not destroy Amalek, and when they built the Second Temple there was no king at all?
How is the Talmudic passage ruled as Jewish law when in fact it was never fulfilled?
Answer
This is no more than a homiletical idea. A king is not necessarily healthy government. Amalek is indeed evil, but wiping out Amalek is not the erasure of evil.
Discussion on Answer
*in homiletics
I have often distinguished between a homiletical idea and derash. A homiletical idea is a nice thought, whereas derash is a mode of interpretation parallel to the plain meaning.
So what?
The place of the Temple too is a derash that they learned out.
It’s a location whose basis is in interpretation, not in explicit verses.