Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal (1885–1945) was a Hungarian rabbi and scholar whose life and
work offer profound lessons for contemporary Jewish thought, particularly regarding the
relationship between the Jewish people, the Land of Israel, and the Temple Mount. Initially an
opponent of Zionism, Teichtal’s experiences during the Holocaust led him to advocate passionately
for Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, a transformation encapsulated in his seminal work, Eim
HaBanim S’meiha, first published in 1943. Today, his writings resonate as both a historical critique
and a forward-looking call to action, challenging modern Jewish attitudes toward redemption,
settlement, and the Temple.
Teichtal’s Life and Ideological Shift
Born into a distinguished rabbinic family, Teichtal studied in yeshivot across Hungary and Poland.
He served as the rabbi and head of the rabbinic court in Piešťany (now in Slovakia) for 20 years,
where he founded the Moriah Yeshiva. Rooted in Hungarian Orthodoxy’s anti-Zionist tradition, he
initially believed that the Redemption would come solely through divine intervention. However, the
Nazi atrocities he witnessed prompted a radical reassessment. While in hiding, he wrote Eim
HaBanim S’meiha, arguing that active settlement in the Land of Israel was essential for Jewish
survival and redemption—a stance shaped by the Holocaust’s devastation. His son clarified that
Teichtal never endorsed Secular Zionism or any specific movement, focusing instead on a religious
imperative for settlement. Teichtal also authored Mishneh Sachir, a book of responsa, and other
works, some unpublished. Captured in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, he was killed in January 1945
during a transport to Mauthausen, defending a fellow prisoner over a piece of bread. His legacy
endures through the Mishneh Sachir Center in Bnei Brak and his transformative writings.
Eim HaBanim S’meiha: A Post-Mortem and Preemptive Vision
Eim HaBanim S’meiha serves as a post-mortem of Hungarian Orthodox anti-Zionism, dissecting its
flaws in light of the Holocaust. Yet, its arguments—grounded in Biblical, Mishnaic, Medieval, and
later Rabbinic sources—suggest that the case for settling the Land could have been made long
before the catastrophe. This mirrors the sages’ depiction of Jeremiah’s authorship of Lamentations,
written during Jehoiakim’s reign, years before the first Babylonian exile and even longer before
Jerusalem’s destruction. Teichtal’s work thus bridges past and present, urging Jews to act
proactively rather than await divine redemption passively.
Contemporary Relevance: The Temple Mount Debate
Today, Eim HaBanim S’meiha finds echoes in debates over Jewish ascent to the Temple Mount.
Recently, I hosted yeshiva students and asked about their institution’s halachic policy on the
matter. They reported that their faculty, after deliberation, concluded that arguments against
ascending the Temple Mount today parallel those against settling Palestine a century ago—
arguments that history, and perhaps divine will, has discredited. The pseudo-halachic prohibition
on Temple Mount ascent is a modern reincarnation of the earlier resistance to settling the Land,
both reflecting self-destructive tendencies with biblical precedents. The Jews of ancient Babylonia,
who, until the Parthian era, declined to return to their land, are blamed in the Talmud for delaying
the redemption in the Second Temple period. Similarly, the Ten Tribes’ rejection of the Temple
under Jeroboam and his successors led to the Assyrian conquest and their exile. Today, this
reluctance persists, entrenched in Israel’s political and religious establishments, thwarting unity
and redemption.
Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s Perspective
In a timely article for Israel’s Independence Day, which many treat as a solemn, though not biblical,
religious holiday, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed reinforced Teichtal’s views. He wrote, “The process of
redemption will unfold in such a way that initially, Israel will return to their Jewish identity, ascend to
the Land, and settle it,” emphasizing that “it must occur through natural means.” He identifies the
delay in redemption as stemming from “the national negligence in organizing the ingathering of the
exiles and the settlement of the Land, and the negligence of each individual Jew in ascending to
the Land, and settling it.” With 80 years of hindsight, Melamed sees the tragic fate of European
Jewry—who clung to the Diaspora—as validation of Teichtal’s shift. Sometimes, I would suggest,
God Himself seems to shape halacha, despite the principle that “the Torah is no longer in Heaven.”
A Future Analog to Eim HaBanim S’meiha?
It could very well be that a scholar from the anti-Temple Mount camp will one day write an analog
to Eim HaBanim S’meiha, perhaps before the consequences of this stance lead to disaster. In the
1930s and 1940s, Jews largely resisted Zionism, preferring the Diaspora, with catastrophic results
for European Jewry and upheaval for those in Africa and Asia. Abandoning the Temple Mount for
decades may invite similar peril—widespread persecution of religious institutions by both Diaspora
and Israeli authorities. Synagogues and battei midrash could face destruction, and public prayer and Torah study might be brutally suppressed, as history warns.
A Hypothetical Prologue Inspired by the 1983 Edition
Drawing from Machon Pri Haaretz’s introduction to the 1983 printing of Eim HaBanim S’meiha, a
future work might include these words in the preface:
The upheaval was monstrous, eliciting two responses: some buried their heads in disbelief,
fearing to confront the new reality or examine past errors; others awoke, reevaluating core
questions. The author, shaken by the religious community’s devastation, questioned all
prior assumptions. He didn’t reject his teachers but embraced a Talmudic method preferred
by Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon: ‘the words of the master versus those of the student:
whose are heeded?’ When older sources in the Torah and Talmud supported building the
Temple and ascending the Mount, they took precedence over later prohibitions. His mission
became clear: to awaken the Jewish people to this neglected halachic realm… The
distinction between “Exile” (forced removal) and “Diaspora” (normalized exile) is key.
Initially captives in Babylonia, Jews later thrived in a comfortable Diaspora, yet refused to
return when able, triggering a cycle of respite and hostility. The sages link this to the sin of
the ten spies, who rejected Canaan—a divine “measure for measure” judgment. Just as
Rabbi Teichtal saw the Holocaust as the fruit of rejecting the Land, so too the author saw
that rejecting the Temple today distances Jews from both it and the Land, echoing the
losses of the First Temple era… Unity is the cornerstone of rebuilding the Land and Temple,
countering the baseless hatred that caused their loss. Rabbinic leaders must foster this
unity through unconditional love, yet current halachic divisions—rooted in Exile—erect
artificial barriers between communities. Separate worship, teachers, and halachic modes
hinder a unified Temple vision. Instead, we risk multiple Temples (Sephardic, Yemenite,
Ashkenazic) catering to fragmented subgroups. Two feedback loops emerge: a Temple
fostering unity and strength, which protect the Temple, or its absence breeding disunity and
weakness, which in turn prevent the Temple from being rebuilt. We’ve lingered in the latter
too long.
Rabbi Teichtal Today
Indeed, Rabbi Teichtal himself, if he were with us today, could write such a book. In several
passages of Eim Habanim S’meiha, he makes compelling arguments that could be logically
extended in support of our thesis. As he notes in the third chapter’s opening, the ingathering of the
exiles and the formation of a true Jewish state through a natural national awakening are
prerequisites for the rebuilding of the Temple. This rebuilding, he explains, occurs in stages: a
physical reconstruction by human effort followed by a spiritual renewal by divine intervention. Thus,
he prioritized the call to return to the Land as the central theme of his work. That is, he left the
ultimate goal of advocating for the rebuilding of the Temple for a later generation that would have
overcome the historical hurdle of the Diaspora.
Rabbi Teichtal cites the example of King David’s contributions to the building of the Temple. The
Bible is replete with David’s personal meditations and prayers concerning the Temple, his yearning
to discover where to build it and that he would merit to actually be there, and explicitly states in
several passages that he donated the vast wealth of the kingdoms he conquered to the Temple
and its treasury. The sages note that in his instructions to Solomon, David mentioned that “in his
poverty” he had prepared everything for Solomon to build the Temple, meaning that he gave all his
worldly possessions to the building of the Temple, and that, although he was king, he ate as a
pauper for lack of funds. Rabbi Teichtal, extending this lesson to his own generation, called for the
Jewish people to forgo all forms of entertainment, recreation, and luxuries and donate the resulting
money saved to the rebuilding of the Land. If this teaching resonated with Rabbi Teichtal in 1943, it
applies even more urgently and accurately today, urging the Jewish people to save and donate
their resources toward rebuilding the Temple, as did David.
A Call to Action
Today, Jews visiting the Temple Mount do so with meticulous halachic care, intent on fulfilling Torah
commandments, and not as political provocation. Yet, restrictions—limited days, hours, group
sizes, time allotted, and bans on religious items—persist, enforced by a political establishment with
so-called religious-party complicity. A halachic approach would allow constant access for the
ritually pure, transforming the Mount into a vibrant center like the Western Wall. The first step
toward rebuilding the Temple is a new national attitude: encouraging Jews to visit, study its laws,
and embrace its restoration’s transformative potential.
In several passages, Rabbi Teichtal cites the Talmudic teaching that, unlike in the days of Moses
and Joshua, many Israelites fell in David’s wars, despite the merit of completing the conquest of
the Promised Land and bringing about the ensuing national security and prosperity that led to the
Solomonic golden age, because they did not demand the building of the Temple. It was David
himself who brought the idea to the attention of his prophet, who approved of it and even brought
him God’s promise of an eternal dynasty for being the first major Jewish leader to initiate such a
task. The sages relate that, by the time David was old, he overheard some of his subjects
wondering aloud about when he would pass away so that they could proceed with building the
Temple, showing that it was to David’s credit that the people realized the importance of building the
Temple in practice. Rabbi Teichtal used this teaching to argue that, just as in David’s days, God
repeatedly brought tribulation upon the people to awaken them, so too, during the period of the
great wars, God brought tribulations on the Jews to alert them to return en masse to the Land.
Today, having repopulated the Land, we must take this lesson to heart even more urgently and in
its original context, recognizing that our current tribulations stem from neglecting this supreme
national obligation of building the Temple.
Next, Rabbi Teichtal’s comparison of immigration to and settlement of the Land with the building of
the Temple clarifies what it means to demand (Hebrew, lithbo’a) its construction. For Jews in the
Diaspora, it was not sufficient to declare a desire to return to the Land or to pray for such, though
these are necessary, nor was it sufficient to be involved in appropriate Zionist activities. Actual
immigration and settlement of the Land were necessary. So too, for one to be considered as
demanding the building of the Temple, it is not sufficient to pray for its restoration or declare such a
desire. Rather, one must do whatever he can to “seek His domicile and go there” (Deut. 12:5), to
donate his resources toward the construction of the Temple and participate in the physical work, as
Maimonides ruled (Laws of the Chosen Temple 1), and press political leadership to prioritize the
Temple’s construction. In a democratic system, casting votes for politicians and parties that
explicitly call for the abandonment of the Temple Mount to a foreign entity for administration, thus
removing any chance of fostering a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, let alone constructing
the Temple, should be completely out of the question.
Rabbi Teichtal’s Eim HaBanim S’meiha remains a clarion call, urging us to learn from history, unite,
and reclaim our sacred heritage—before it’s too late. In much of the self-declared Religious Zionist
world, particularly among the heirs to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda
Kook, a pervasive idea—already implicit in Rabbi Kook’s statements from a century ago—holds
that the Jewish people should actively pursue the physical settlement and rebuilding of the Land,
rejecting the passive policy of exile that awaited the miraculous, supernatural arrival of the Messiah
before taking concrete national steps. Yet, regarding the rebuilding of the Temple, it is incumbent
on the Jewish people to bide their time and wait for a supernatural event to restore the Temple.
This contradiction lacks precedent in Jewish tradition and is irrational, and granted that pragmatic
arguments can be made in any situation, yet this distinction is treated as dogma today, as though
received from the prophets. Who is to declare which of our national goals, if any, should be put on
hold and which others should be pursued? Rather, if history demonstrates that the initial stages of
Redemption arose not through divine intervention alone but through human action within natural
processes, then we should, at the very least, consider acting—out of doubt if not certainty—to
advance the next stages of Redemption.
