The recent violent incidents on the Temple Mount and its surrounding areas, which occurred in part because of the decision by some Jews to go up to the holy site, have sharply divided the national religious Jews and the ultra-Orthodox community. While ultra-Orthodox Jews cite halacha (Jewish law) to explain their resolute opposition to visiting the site, parts of the religious Zionist community support going up to the Temple Mount for nationalist reasons. From the ultra-Orthodox perspective, some religious nationalist rabbis have produced questionable halachic rulings to serve their desire to go to the Temple Mount, when Jewish law actually forbids it.

According to a Mishnah (section) in Masechet Kelim (Tractate of Vessels), ascension to the Temple Mount is permitted only after immersing in a mikvah (ritual bath). But within certain sections of the Temple Mount compound, additional levels of holiness are needed in order for one to enter them, for which ritual immersion is not sufficient. For instance, these include the Hacheil area (part of the temple surrounding some of its courts) and the Holy of Holies. Access to the latter was restricted to the high priest on Yom Kippur. Although the Temple no longer stands, most of the Jewish law adjudicators from the 12th to 14th centuries — mainly the Tosafists and Maimonides (Rambam) — ruled that the sanctity of the site still prevails and the prohibitions apply to this day. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Temple Mount question became relevant, most of Israel’s rabbis ruled that Jews should not ascend to the Temple Mount even after ritual immersion. This was because they felt that the locations of the Holy of Holies and Hacheil sections were not definitive enough. Thus, there was real concern over committing a severe religious transgression by stepping anywhere on the Temple Mount.

In recent years, some rabbis of the religious Zionist sector began to appeal this ruling. They argue that they have accurately identified the exact site of the Temple by relying on measurements taken on the spot by Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren after the Six-Day War. (Goren accompanied the Israel Defense Forces troops who first arrived in Jerusalem's Old City in 1967.) Another argument given is that it is important to encourage Jews to visit the site, as part of the commandment of conquering the Land of Israel. They claim that the more Jews who are frequenting the holy site, the more the State of Israel will strengthen its sovereign jurisdiction and supervision over the place. This is, for instance, the claim of Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the rabbinical college of Har Bracha. He is one of the prominent religious Zionist rabbis who support the ascension to the Temple Mount, for this reason.

Opponents of ascension to the Temple Mount reject this argument. They claim that even if we can precisely pinpoint the site of the Holy of Holies, Maimonides prohibited a “needless” ascent to the Temple Mount in any case. Another advocate of this latter view is Jerusalem’s current Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern, who actually belongs to the National Religious stream. Stern opposes pilgrimages to the Temple Mount. In an interview he gave in November 2014 to the Kikar Hashabat ultra-Orthodox news site, Stern adhered to his view forbidding ascension to the Temple Mount. He holds that ascension today to the holy site may well transgress religious law, because we are not sufficiently familiar with the exact borderlines of the most sanctified sections.