Temple Mount - What the rabbis say

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/temple-mount-what-our-rabbis-really-say-598372

 The issue of whether or not it is permitted to go up to the Temple Mount today is hotly debated. The majority of leading rabbis say it is outright forbidden or at least practically not advisable.

Leading rabbis, including previous chief rabbis Ovadia Yosef and Mordechai Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, chief rabbis of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern and Shlomo Omar, Asher Weiss, Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, have all said that it is forbidden to go up. The reasons they cite are that we are not 100% sure of the exact areas that are permitted to enter and that there is the concern that, by permitting ascending the Temple Mount, many who don't know or practice the complicated laws will come to transgress them – which will desecrate the holiest site in the Jewish religion and turn it into a tourist attraction.

Other rabbis, such as Moshe Feinstein, said that it was theoretically permitted, but not practically advisable in our generation. The leader of American Modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Herschel Schachter said it would only be permitted if the Israeli Rabbinate permitted it, which they have not done. Other leaders of mainstream Orthodoxy in Israel, including rabbis Aharon Lichtenstein and Yehuda Amital, did not support going up to the Temple Mount at the present time.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the previous leader of American Orthodoxy gave a very practical response - To ask the police and security forces if it was advisable. Beyond the black-and-white question according to Jewish law, Soloveitchik determined that maintaining law and order is a prime concern.

Despite this, other well respected rabbis have followed Goren's line, arguing that since we do know the precise measurements of where it is permitted to ascend, it is permitted according to Jewish law. These rabbis, often from the right-wing of the religious-Zionist community, include rabbis Nahum Rabinovitch, Dov Lior, Eliezer Melamed, Yaakov Medan and Moshe Tendler.