Mideast Report

JERUSALEM (JPS) -- A ceremony dedicating a symbolic cornerstone of the future Third Temple took place Monday near the City of David. The Temple Mount Faithful group, and 100 of its supporters, gathered in the parking lot below Jerusalem's Old City walls, where the four-ton stone was displayed on the back of a flatbed truck. A half-dozen ritual objects of brass, copper, and gold for use in the rebuilt Temple, including a water pitcher, water bucket, large pot and a trumpet, were placed next to the stone. "We are here to finish what our forefathers started," Gershon Salomon, head of the Temple Mount Faithful, told the crowd. He added that "there will be no peace as long as Jews cannot pray on the Temple Mount."He said the Arabs who are in control of the Mount "are causing terrible destruction and removing traces of the two Temples."

While Salomon spoke, hundreds of participants in the Jerusalem march walked by on the street above the parking lot, with some pausing to survey the scene.

Undaunted by the naysayers, the Faithful walked from the parking lot to the Silwan Pool, the place where the Simchat Beit Hasho'eva (Feast of Water Drawing) took place during Temple times.

Members of the Temple Mount Faithful continuously waved 20 Israeli and organizational flags, and a few men blew the shofar through the course of the morning's stops.