CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - Haredi (ultra-Orthodox ) rabbis are seeking to renew the ban prohibiting Jews from visiting the Temple Mount.

In a letter to Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, three haredi rabbis asked that the 40-year-old decree banning Jews from entering the Temple Mount, be reinstated.

Ultra-Orthodox rabbis believe that Jews are forbidden to walk on the Temple Mount for fear that they might inadvertently enter the Holy of Holies, whose exact location is unknown.

One of the letter's signatories, Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, asked Rabinovich to post guards as well as notices in the area to warn Jews that it is forbidden to walk there.

Following the 1967 Six Day War, when the Western Wall complex came back under Israeli sovereignty, rabbis posted warnings of divine retribution to any Jew entering the Temple Mount.

Over the years, most national religious rabbis have changed their position on visiting the Temple Mount, especially in view of Muslim efforts to deny any Jewish presence in the place where the First and Second Jewish Temples stood.

Many of these rabbis believe that Jews should enter the Temple Mount to affirm Judaism's historic connection to the area and to counter Muslim claims that Islam has sole rights there.

While Muslims gather on Friday to pray there, Jews are forbidden to pray overtly on the Temple Mount, which according to Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, includes moving their lips in prayer.

Source: Haaretz