Living In the Age of the Third Temple

Living in the Age of the Third Temple

Zach Benjamin | Chief Executive Officer, Jewish Long Beach

As I begin writing this edition of my Chronicle column, I sit at the window of “my hotel room/temporary “office,” where to my left and roughly 100 feet below roll the waves of the Mediterranean, gently depositing wetsuit-clad surfers onto the golden sands of the Israeli seashore. To my right rises the ever-expanding urban labyrinth of Tel Aviv, stretching over the horizon toward the Judean Hills and Jerusalem roughly 35 miles to the east.

A visit to Israel is always transformative, and this journey—during which I joined an exceptional group of our community members and supporters for our long-delayed Jewish Long Beach community trip—felt especially meaningful after nearly three years of chaos and uncertainty wrought by the pandemic and its aftermath.

Israel has long been central to my personal sense of place and purpose in the Jewish landscape. While I was raised in an unmistakably Jewish household, it was not until my first visit to Israel nearly 25 years ago, at age 17, that I truly felt linked to the vast history and complex realities of our people. At that time, the new international terminal at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport remained under construction, and so it was still necessary to disembark the airplane via air stairs. As we stepped directly into the Middle Eastern summer, the blast furnace of hot wind welcomed us to a region that, just days later, would further ignite with the eruption of the second intifada.

As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight and heat, I caught my first glimpse of the Magen David (Star of David) flying over the land, just beyond which rose a seemingly endless latticework of cranes and new construction racing to accommodate the rapidly expanding population of the Jewish state.

We can only hope to experience one or two singular moments over the course of a lifetime that significantly and spectacularly reroute our trajectory and purpose. For me, those first steps in Israel constituted that moment, dramatically reshaping my Jewish identity with perspective-altering context that it previously lacked. My Jewish experience to that point was an amorphous primordial soup of typical American Jewish benchmarks: annual family observances of major holidays, conversations

about antisemitism that felt more like vague examinations of someone else’s experience rather than a relevant cautionary exercise, and reluctant twice-weekly religious school attendance that prepared me for a Bar Mitzvah which, in turn, marked the perhaps premature conclusion of my formal Jewish education.

As a Jew growing up in diaspora, a tension existed between my American identity and my Jewish one, the latter of which was deeply important, and yet difficult for me to comfortably position within my broader sense of self.

The moment I set foot in Israel, my understanding of our imperative to ensure the continuity of Jewish peoplehood immediately sharpened, shifting to a central position within my Jewish consciousness. Just as intentionality is necessary to maintain Jewish values and identity within even the most secular of Jewish households, so is it a monumental task of ensuring that the Jewish people remain existentially sustainable in perpetuity. The Israeli flag, the construction, and even the heat that pushed the very limits of human tolerance, all in that moment created an understanding of our people as a resolute and perseverant one, defiantly creating a well-fortified island of safe society in a world that has historically met our very existence with hostility.

I have been fortunate enough to return “home” to Israel nine times. Each visit bears reminders that our shared responsibility to advance Jewish peoplehood exists on a variety of scales. As individuals, we must work to cultivate our own Jewish identities in those ways that inspire us to lead full and fulfilling Jewish lives. As parents and spouses, we curate households that instill our children with Jewish values and develop their sense of Jewish identity. Israel itself plays perhaps the most critical role of all, existing as an insurance policy against threats to Jews worldwide. Israel is also a society that, while decidedly imperfect, we might envision as a form of Jewish household on a global scale. Similarly, perhaps the Jewish communities of the diaspora are akin to grown children who have settled far from their places of birth, and yet who remain faithful to the values with which they were raised.

Despite the persistent threats against us, we the Jewish people nonetheless find ourselves living in what some describe as a golden age. Israel, after all, exists as a sovereign Jewish homeland, exceptionally well-defended and boasting one

of the most vibrant an innovative economies in the history of humanity. We live in an age where any Jew residing in the free world can board a plane, and within a day, lay her hands on the Kotel or stand at the foot of Masada.

In recent years, a troubling fringe movement has developed calling for the erection of a “third temple” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This concept has, thankfully, gained little traction, as it would necessitate the razing of Muslim holy sites and result in the immediate disintegration of the geopolitical legitimacy that Israelis and Jews worldwide have worked and sacrificed so profoundly to develop. It would render Israel a true pariah and not only endanger, but likely ensure the imminent destruction of global Jewry. This concept is also wholly inconsistent with generally accepted perspectives on our evolution to a rabbinic model of Jewish observance.

The smattering of adherents to “Third Temple Movement” fail to grasp the reality that the “third temple” for which they yearn already exists in a strengthened form that even our Zionist forebears might never have imagined. Indeed, the State of Israel itself is the third temple. It is the nerve center of the Jewish people, representing not only the fulfillment of our millennia-long quest for self-determination, but also of our contemporary imperative to serve as a light unto all in an era when we are at our most capable of doing so.

While Jewish peoplehood is by every measure stronger for Israel’s existence, diaspora Jews and our institutions shoulder not only a responsibility, but an obligation to continuously strengthen the cultural and economic bridges between our communities and Israel. It is not enough for Israel to merely exist. Rather, it is utterly crucial that Israel be buttressed by the support and engagement of those in diaspora whom it is sworn to protect.

It is both my personal and professional priority to ensure that Jewish Long Beach and the AJCC achieve excellence as the convener of our community’s relationship with Israel and overseas Jewry. I hope that, through our revived Jewish communal advocacy infrastructure and increased frequency of adult education programs, you will notice a recommitment to this critically important element of our mission in the coming year.