We All Want The Temple Rebuilt Poem by gershon hepner

WE ALL WANT THE TEMPLE REBUILT

"We all want the Temple rebuilt? " asked the pastor.
What then should be done to a Judaic caster
of doubt, who declares in a poem or blog
that he sees no problem with his synagogue,
as Michal was thinking perhaps when she sniffed
observing the king dance in his mini-shift,
opposed to his plans to develop the land
for a Temple for which there was little demand.

There'd be lots of rituals they'd have to restore
in a Temple, producing so much blood and gore
that there'd be campaigns to destroy it again.
When he hears "We want the Mashiah! " "Amen! "
is not what he answers. With such lack of faith,
the Temple is better off as a weird wraith,
not allowed to come back to the earth like the Ghost
which ended up turning Prince Hamlet to toast.

Inspired by an article in the 7/11/11 issue of the LRB by Diarmaid MacCulloch ("The Chief Inhabitant") :

The city of Jerusalem is notorious for inducing the Jerusalem Syndrome, which currently reduces around a hundred people a year to a state requiring urgent psychiatric attention, as the complicated and often unwelcoming reality of the place collides with their heightened religious expectations. One such deranged soul, Michael Rohan, an Australian Protestant trying to hasten the end of the world, set fire to the venerable Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, and smiled serenely throughout his subsequent trial; the horrified Israeli government was only too aware that his actions had done nothing to lessen the chances of the world ending. Indeed, if Rohan had lit his kerosene a few decades later, in the era of al-Qaida, he might have precipitated the massacre of thousands. As it was, he destroyed the beautiful 12th-century pulpit which the great Kurdish warrior-sultan Saladin had brought from Aleppo to celebrate the Muslim reconquest of the city from the Crusaders, which symbolism no doubt afforded the arsonist considerable satisfaction. I remember my own alarm when I overheard a South Korean Protestant pastor talking to his flock in the gift shop of Jerusalem's Garden Tomb, a site originally sponsored by that opinionated and self-destructive Victorian Evangelical, General Gordon. The pastor was trying to encourage them to buy models of Herod's Temple; ‘After all, we all want the Temple rebuilt, don't we? ' he coaxed. ‘Oh yes! ' came the enthusiastic chorus.
You might say that the Jerusalem Syndrome began with King David. Once he had escorted Israel's sacred Ark of the Covenant into the city, having conquered its Jebusite inhabitants and proclaimed it his capital, he danced in his exaltation ‘before the Lord with all his might … girded with a linen ephod' - the sort of apron priests wore and so not appropriate for kings. This was a sure sign that he had got religion with a vengeance. Michal, one of his wives, ‘looked through a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.' One can see her point, though the Lord God disagreed and made sure that she remained childless. A good thing too, is the implication in 2 Samuel 6.23.
Diarmaid MacCullough's response was:

Dear Mr Hepner,

I'm most flattered. A chapter of one of my previous books did inspire an English composer to write a cantata, but none of my book reviews has previously to my knowledge spurred such creativity. A most adroit effort, it I may say so, with an extremely serious point to make. I do remember enjoying writing the review very much, actually rather more than I had enjoyed reading the book. And Montefiore's TV series afterwards was a bit of a disappointment, though I appreciated his plagiarism of my Panama hat.

Thanks, and all power to your poetic elbow,

Sincerely,

Diarmaid MacCulloch.


5/4/12 #10,084