If one was asked to define the biggest difference between secular and religious Zionism, it would probably be the following.

Secular Zionism was based on the importance of creating a land for the Jewish people, a land where Jews will no longer be a minority, subject to the whims, caprices and animosity of others but rather in control of their own lives and destinies. 

The creation of Israel, therefore, satisfied that desire. And so the aim of secular Zionism has evolved from ‘creating a country’ to ‘keeping a country’ — an ever-present fight against those who continue to seek Israel’s destruction. 

Religious Zionism also has that aim but has a further element which secular Zionism lacks. For religious Zionists, the creation of a Jewish state in the historical land of Israel was not an end in itself but only the means to a far greater end — the coming of the Messiah and rebuilding of the Temple.

This ambition is not hidden. It is visible in the way religious Zionists refer to Israel in prayers for the State — Reishit Smichat Geulateinu, “the beginning of the flowering of our redemption”. 

If Israel’s creation was step one, step two concerns the site of Israel’s greatest anomaly. 

The Jewish people hold authority over the land of Israel. They control Jerusalem, the country’s physical and spiritual capital. And yet Judaism’s holiest site, in the heart of that city, is not under Israeli control.

Contrary to numerous incorrect reports from Western media organisations, the Western Wall is not Judaism’s holiest site. That honour belongs to the Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount, where both the first and second temples were located. 

In 1967, when the Israelis gained control of Jerusalem and the West Bank after responding to Jordanian attack, the Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, along with Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, decided to return control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf, the Islamic authority responsible for maintaining it for centuries.

The legendary message of ‘Har Habayit Beyadeinu’ (‘the Temple Mount is in our hands’) gave way to a simple calculation — that while the Muslim world might be able to live with Jewish control over its newly acquired territories (at least for a time), it would never accept Jewish control over the Temple Mount, the third holiest site in Islam.

That decision was to have ramifications which continue until this day. 

For more than fifty years, the Israeli government has walked a perilously narrow road with regard to the Temple Mount. On the one hand, it has had to deal with an Arab population whose paranoia regarding Jewish intentions towards the site has at times turned murderous, such as with the the Second Intifada.

On the other, it has had to deal with a number of attempts in the 1970s and 1980s by Jewish extremists to destroy both the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque — and, more recently, increasingly vocal religious Zionist demands for better access to the Temple Mount. 

Any attempt to change the status quo is furiously resisted. The Israeli authorities only allow an extremely limited number of openly religious Jews to visit the site, with the waqf even more hostile to their presence.

In summer 2017, attempts by Israeli authorities to install metal detectors at the entrances to the compounds in response to a terror attack led to mass protests and a humiliating climb-down by the Israeli government. 

According to all mainstream orthodox halachic (Jewish law) authorities, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, as well as the Israeli chief rabbinate, it is forbidden for Jews to visit the Temple Mount until the time comes to rebuild the Temple.

This prohibition is based on the risk of entering an area which used to be part of the inner courtyards of the Temple, something strictly prohibited. 

Traditionally, all but the most extreme religious Zionist rabbis also forbade going to the Temple Mount. The spiritual leader of Religious Zionism, Rav Kook, was vehemently opposed.

Today, religious Zionist authorities such as Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva — very far from being liberal — have also reiterated the prohibition against ascending the Temple Mount. Last year, he even went as far as to state that it is forbidden to learn Torah with someone who has visited the Temple Mount.

But increasingly, religious Zionist rabbis, particularly those based in Judea and Samaria, are encouraging their followers to go. 

Inevitably, perhaps, there were clashes on the Mount on Sunday, with police attempting to keep the few hundred Jews separate from the thousands of Muslims present on the site. The situation was not helped by Sunday simultaneously being the Jewish fast of Tisha Ba’av and the beginning of the Islamic festival of Eid al Adha.

There is no day in the Jewish calendar more painful than Tisha Ba’Av, where Jews mourn for the destruction of the first and second temples. And every day, each silent recitation of the Amidah, integral to every prayer service, ends with a plea for the “rebuilding of the Holy Temple, speedily in our days”. 

I cannot find it in myself to criticise religious Jews who visit the Temple Mount on Tisha Ba’Av, who have the overwhelming desire to experience the place which is holiest above all.

But the fact there is absolutely no way to resolve the status of the Temple Mount without incredible hurt to either Jews or Muslims just gives us another reason to mourn.