Travel Tips

Monotheism (one-God-ism) is the belief that there is but one supreme Being, who is personal and moral and who seeks a total and unqualified response from human creatures. This idea first came to fully effective human consciousness in the Bible words: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." [Deut. 6:4-5]. These historic words indicate the Semitic understanding of God, continued in Christianity and Islam.

The Hebrew scriptures ["Old Testament" in the Christian Bible] document the rise of monotheism in constant struggle with polytheism. The god of the Hebrews was originally worshiped as a tribal god, Jahweh of Israel, but the insistent message of the great prophets - Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah - of the 8-6th centuries before the Christian era, was that Jahweh was not only the God of the Hebrews but the Maker of heaven and earth and the Judge of all history and all peoples.Hebrew monotheism arose through the intuitive perception that a God who is righteous first and last must be universal.

God is conceived in the Judaic- Christian tradition as the infinite, self-existent Creator of everything else that exists. In this doctrine, creation means far more than fashioning new forms from an already given material(as a builder makes a house, or a sculptor a statue). It means creation out of nothing.

The conviction that God is personal has always been plainly implied in the biblical writings and in later Jewish devotional and theological literature. In the Old Testament God speaks in personal terms, for example: "I am the God of your father, the God of Avraham, the God of Itzhak, and the God of Yaacov".
The prophets and psalmists address God in personal terms(for example, "Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer").

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- TEMPLE MOUNT -
Jewish tradition teaches that the Temple Mount is the focal point of Creation.
In the center of the mountain lies the "Foundation Stone" of the world.
Here Adam came into being.
Here Avraham, Itzhak and Yaakov served God.
The First and Second Temples were built upon this mountain.
The Ark of the Covenant was set upon the Foundation Stone itself.
Jerusalem was chosen by God as the dwelling place of the Shechinah.
David longed to build the Temple, and Solomon his son built the first Temple here about 3,000 years ago.
It was destroyed by Nevuchadnezzar of Babylon.
The Second Temple was rebuilt on its ruins seventy years later.
It was razed by the Roman legions over 1,900 years ago.
The present Western Wall is a remnant of the Western Temple Mount retaining walls.
Jews have prayed in its shadow for hundreds of years, an expression of their faith in the rebuilding of the Temple.
The Sages said about it: "The Divine Presence never moves from the Western Wall".
The Temple Mount continues to be the focus of prayer for Jews from all over the world.