One of the most mysterious structures in all of Jewish history is the Mishkan, known in English as the Tabernacle. It was crafted to be mobile — packed up and carried from place to place — so that it could be a sacred home for the Divine Presence in the middle of a restless, wandering nation as they traversed the Sinai desert.

But here’s the curious part: when the Israelites finally entered the Land of Israel, and the need for portability supposedly ended, the Mishkan didn’t disappear or get replaced by something more permanent. Instead, it settled in one spot — the town of Shiloh, a modest location in the territory of Ephraim, about twenty miles north of Jerusalem — where it stayed for 369 years.

Think about that. The Mishkan was in Shiloh for nearly four centuries. And yet — how often do you hear anyone talk about Shiloh with the same awe as they do about Temple Mount? Almost never. To be honest — I was no different. For me, Shiloh was a name, a footnote, and nothing more. But last week, I went there, and everything changed. And now, I can’t stop talking about it.

Standing there among the ruins, where scattered stones seem to whisper the stories of ancient priests and trembling pilgrims, where you can almost hear Hannah’s desperate prayer for a child, where the Ark of the Covenant once rested in a humble sanctuary beneath nothing more than a cloth roof — I found myself wondering: Why have we forgotten Shiloh? 

Why has this place, which housed the Mishkan for 369 years, faded from Jewish consciousness? After all, it was here that Samuel the prophet was raised. It was here that the transition to a monarchy first took root. It was here that Jewish life had its first true national center.

The Mishkan was destroyed by the Philistines after the disastrous battle at Eben-Ezer, when the Ark was captured, Eli the High Priest died, and Shiloh was reduced to a ruin. Eventually, King David brought the Ark to Jerusalem. 

His son Solomon built the First Temple on a modest hilltop surrounded by higher peaks — Mount Scopus to the north, so named because you could “scope” Temple Mount from its peak, and the Mount of Olives to the east, from where the people witnessed the sacred Yom Kippur rituals unfold.

Solomon’s Temple stood for 410 years before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian forces in 586 BCE. Seventy years later, a Second Temple was built by Ezra and Nehemiah. This more modest temple was later expanded — first by the Hasmoneans, following their miraculous victory in 164 BCE, and then dramatically enlarged and beautified by Herod the Great, the architect-king whose building projects across Judea rivaled those of Rome. 

Despite Herod’s reputation for paranoia and cruelty, which earned him the disdain of the Talmudic sages, the Talmud records a remarkable statement (Bava Batra 4a): “Whoever has not seen Herod’s Temple has never seen a truly beautiful building.”

But this edifice was also destroyed — by the Romans in 70 CE — just like Solomon’s Temple and the Mishkan at Shiloh before it. Which brings me back to Shiloh. Because even though the Mishkan was razed to the ground, and even though there are no grand Herodian stones or giant underground catacombs in Shiloh, there is something profoundly moving about the site. Something… pure. 

It was never meant to be permanent, and yet it endured. It was simple and rudimentary, but it worked. And its memory has lasted — at least for those who choose to remember it.

Unlike Temple Mount, where access remains restricted for various reasons, there is no controversy regarding walking freely on the site where the Mishkan once stood. Archaeologists and historians are reasonably sure about the exact location, although some debate remains over whether the Holy of Holies was on the eastern or western side of the site. 

But think about it: you can literally walk on the very ground where the priests once carried out their sacred duties. Where sacrifices were offered. Where the Menorah was lit each day. Where the Ark of the Covenant rested.

Once the Mishkan was destroyed and the Ark relocated, the holiness of Shiloh was gone forever. Interestingly, according to the great medieval commentator Raavad, the same is somewhat true for Temple Mount — at least until the Third Temple is built. Maimonides famously ruled that the sanctity of Temple Mount is eternal, based on a Mishnah in Eduyot (8:6), meaning that even today, entry into sacred zones carries a severe penalty. 

But Raavad, in his gloss to Rambam’s Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Beit HaBechira 6:14), sharply disagrees: “This is his own opinion, and I do not know from where he derives it… it has been revealed to me as a secret of God to those who fear Him: one who enters there today incurs no penalty whatsoever.”

Nevertheless, despite Raavad’s lenient view, we tread carefully. We don’t walk where we are sure the Temple once stood — out of both awe for the hallowed location and respect for the more stringent opinion. 

But the Temple Mount area is far larger than just the footprint of the Temple itself. Herod expanded it into a massive trapezium-shaped platform — roughly 37 acres in size — and it includes vast areas that are unquestionably outside the original sacred zones. Visiting those areas is absolutely permitted. 

Thankfully, more and more Jews are going there. Over Pesach this year, more than 6,500 Jews ascended Temple Mount — an unprecedented number in modern history. And among them was me — not once, but twice.

I’ve visited Temple Mount several times before, but for the first time in my life, I was finally able to pray there, together with my sons — unhindered by the intolerant Jordanian guards and anxious Israeli border police. 

We walked the carefully charted permitted path around the perimeter, singing Hallel and offering heartfelt prayers. We sang joyously — zeh hayom asah Hashem, nagilah venismecha bo — “this is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” — acknowledging that we were witnessing prophecy come to life before our eyes.

The world can deny it, and politicians can ignore it. But the slow, steady reclamation of Jerusalem — of our historic rights to the site of our holiest structure — is happening. And no amount of international indignation can change that.

It all began in Parshat Shemini, where we read about the original dedication of the Mishkan — assembled for the first time by a newly liberated people still finding their way. Then, Moshe and Aaron were at the helm. It was a key spiritual moment that set in motion a chain of events stretching through time: to Joshua and the conquest of the Land; to the Judges and the prophets; to the kings of Israel and the builders of Jerusalem; to Ezra and Nehemiah; to the Hasmonean heroes; to Shimon HaTzaddik and the Great Assembly; to the sages of the Sanhedrin, who once deliberated on Temple Mount. 

This is our story. This is our legacy. And it is coming back into focus.

To be clear, prophecy won’t be realized through passive longing. It can only happen through meaningful action. Through visiting Shiloh. Through ascending Temple Mount. Through reconnecting with the real places where Jewish history unfolded — and where Jewish destiny is being rewritten in our time. 

Because Judaism is not merely nostalgia for a glorious past. It’s about doing what has to be done to ensure a glorious future.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.

The post The Mishkan — and the Torah’s Directions for a Brighter Future for Judaism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Oswiecim, Poland — Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz, the infamous former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, for the first time on Thursday, joining Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the annual March of the Living.

The march from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau — the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II — took place on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and included 80 Holocaust survivors, many of whom were also death march survivors, to mark 80 years since the liberation of the camps. 

March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman addressed the survivors, who were seated next to the gate bearing the notorious inscription, “Work sets you free.”

“It’s a strange thing to say, but we welcome you to Auschwitz,” she said. “You are the true heroes. We will treasure your legacy forever.”

Standing outside the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz I, recently released hostage Eli Sharabi said, “The Holocaust was unlike anything else — we will never forget and never forgive.”

“But our presence here is the triumph of the Jewish spirit. The Jewish people sanctify life, not death. I endured horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life. That gives me hope to get up each morning and begin rebuilding,” he added. 

Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, was released in February after nearly 500 days in captivity. His emaciated appearance as he was paraded through Gaza on his release led to comparisons with concentration camp survivors. 

Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran broke down after seeing Sharabi. The two embraced for several minutes. “Seeing him in real life, in this place, just made it all suddenly seem very close. This is no longer something that happened 80 years ago; it’s continuing until this day,” Shukran told The Algemeiner.

In remarks to reporters prior to the march, Herzog called the return of the hostages a “universal human imperative.”

“With a broken heart, I remind us all that although after the Holocaust we vowed, ‘Never again,’ today, even as we stand here, the souls of dozens of Jews again ‘yearn within a cage,’ ‘thirsting for water and for freedom,’ as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity,” Herzog said, referring to the hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion who remain in captivity.

His Polish counterpart, President Andrzej Duda, said the march was “a dramatic call of ‘never again.’ No more hatred, no more discrimination, no more antisemitism.”

He called for “all wars in the Middle East to end,” and for a two-state solution, which he said was the “most rational solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] that gives hope for achieving stable and lasting peace.”

The two leaders signed the visitors’ book and laid a wreath at Auschwitz’s Black Wall, where the Nazis executed prisoners.

At the march’s opening ceremony, the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, lit one of six candles — representing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis — and addressed rising antisemitism in the world.  

“Jews all over the world fear walking streets with a kippah and it’s unacceptable. College students are being attacked verbally and physically,” he told The Algemeiner. 

He praised US President Donald Trump for “combating this scourge.”

“There’s a new sheriff in town. It’s my hope the rest of the world can look to him to see how to support and defend the Jewish community against these vile attacks,” he said.

In Block 5, where thousands of victims’ eyeglasses are displayed behind glass, Laly Dery told a delegation of Israeli teenagers from the national civil service about her son, Sgt. First Class (res.) Saadia, who fell in battle in Gaza in June.  

“Just like my son, who served the country with every fiber of his being, you have earned the enormous privilege of serving the state of Israel,” Dery said. 

Derai’s words resonated with Sara Bisan, the only member of the national service delegation not wearing an Israeli flag. Instead, Bisan wore the distinctive multi-colored flag of the Druze community to which she belongs.

“I feel her pain, and it hurts,” Bisan said, reflecting on the death of her own friend from the northern Druze village of Kfar Yarka, who was also killed in Gaza.  

“But our people, the Druze and the Jews, share a lot, including a love of Israel. I also feel that serving the state of Israel is a privilege,” she added.

Twelve thousand participants marched the 1.7 miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau for the main ceremony, which was cut short this year due to heavy rain.

As thunder echoed overhead, released hostage Agam Berger played the theme from “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin rescued during the Holocaust. Daniel Weiss, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri whose father was murdered on Oct. 7 and whose mother was abducted and later killed in Gaza, performed a musical rendition of the psalm Shir Lamaalot alongside her.

“The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul,” Weiss sang, his voice quavering.

The post ‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”

“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”

“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.

According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”

LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.

In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”

“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.

In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”

“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.

“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”

Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.

Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”

In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”

Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.

“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”

France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.

The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.

“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.

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