By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz AUGUST 27, 2026

Jewish access to the Temple Mount on Shabbat was not always restricted. Fried, who has interviewed dozens of witnesses and reviewed the historical record, said Jews prayed and visited the site on Shabbat under British Mandate rule and continued to do so after the Six-Day War in 1967, when the Mount came under Israeli control. “I personally went up to the Temple Mount for the first time in 1991,” Fried said. “Not many Jews went up to the Mount then, but it was open on Shabbat. I have taken testimonies from many people who told me they went up on Shabbat, because there was much less scrutiny back then.”

That access ended in September 2000, after then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount and the Second Intifada erupted. The Mount was sealed to Jews entirely for nearly three years. “We were much weaker then than we are today, both numerically and in terms of political power,” Fried said, noting that former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin staged one of the only public protests over the closure, in 2001, at the Mount of Olives.

The Mount reopened to Jewish visitors in late 2003, after then-Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi overruled the objections of the Jerusalem District Police Commander and ordered it done. But the reopening came with a permanent asterisk: access on Shabbat was not restored. “We asked ourselves, there is no demand; once there is demand, we will open it,” Fried said. “But we were not significant enough at the time to push for it. And a status quo formed.