Five senior haredi rabbis from Jerusalem published a video with Arabic subtitles calling on Jews not to visit the Temple Mount.
The video was published at the request of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion who was asked to do so by security officials.
Visits to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, are a contentious issue in modern halakhic discourse. While all Orthodox rabbis agree that it is forbidden for Jews to enter certain areas in the complex due to ritual impurity, there is a disagreement about where those areas are.
Several rabbis, including the late Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, worked to calculate and map out the areas that are certainly permitted for Jews to enter. Yet other rabbis, including the Chief Rabbinate and the Rosh Yeshiva of Merkaz HaRav (who was also a Chief Rabbi) Rabbi Avraham Shapira zt"l, choose not to rely on the calculations and continue prohibiting entry to the area as a whole due to possible inaccuracies.
In addition to the halakhic debate, the danger of the visits inciting the Muslim world against Jews has added to the issue's contentiousness and to many rabbis' reasons to prohibit Jewish entry to the site.