Apr 20, 2009 21:32 | Updated Apr 20, 2009 22:45
By Matthew Wagner

Moshe Feiglin, head of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership Movement) said last week that if he was elected prime minister, he would try to rebuild the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.

"I don't know if I will have the merit of doing something that is the aspiration of every Jew," said Feiglin. "But if I become prime minister I will take away control over the Temple Mount from the Wakf [the Islamic trust] and reinstate Jewish sovereignty over the entire mount and, hopefully, rebuild the Temple."

Feiglin said that rebuilding the Temple and all that it symbolized was the essence of a Jewish state.

Feiglin made the comments during the second annual Ramle Conference, sponsored by the religious Zionist settler movement Komemiut and a small group of young rabbis who are involved in outreach in Ramle.

The subject of the conference was "Between Israel and the Nations of the World."

Speakers who included Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu and Rabbi of Hebron-Kiryat Arba Dov Lior managed to draw only a few dozen people to the event. The conference, which took place at Ramle's community center, was also broadcast on Arutz 7's Internet site.

Feiglin said that Israel's political leadership since 1967 had missed the chance to "realize every Jew's aspiration."

"I am not saying that I will fulfill this dream, but I am saying that if I get the chance I will do my utmost to bring our hopes in line with reality. It may seem altogether disconnected from reality to talk about rebuilding the Temple, but imagine how an Auschwitz survivor would have responded if he were told in 1945 that the Jewish people would have a state of their own with a Jewish army," he said.

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