Next Year in Jerusalem: A Netzarim Vision of Restoration

Tisha B’Av asks us to remember. We remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the devastation of Jerusalem, exile, persecution, and the generations of Jewish suffering bound up with those memories. We mourn the people who died, the communities that disappeared, and the worlds that could never be recovered. That grief deserves our attention.

But when we turn from mourning toward hope, we must ask what we mean by restoration. What are we seeking when we pray for Jerusalem, for the future of Israel, and for the coming of the Messiah? What would redemption actually restore?

For me, as a Netzarim Jew, the answer begins with the covenant and the kind of life it calls us to build. I long for a Jewish people living faithfully before God, for Jerusalem at peace, and for a world increasingly shaped by justice, compassion, and the knowledge of the Eternal. I do not believe that fulfilling this hope requires rebuilding a sacrificial Temple or returning to the religious institutions of ancient Israel.

This position follows from how Netzarim Judaism approaches religious authority. We look to the Tanakh as our binding scriptural foundation. We study Jewish tradition, including rabbinic literature, for its wisdom and insight, but we do not accept the Oral Torah as an independently binding divine revelation. The Talmud, the Mishneh Torah, and later authorities may inform our understanding; they do not settle a question simply by declaring an answer.

The responsibility to study, interpret, and live Torah belongs to each of us. A rabbi can teach, explain, challenge, and guide. The individual must still exercise conscience and accept responsibility for the resulting choices. That conscience needs education, humility, and honest examination. It must remain open to correction, especially when its conclusions conveniently serve our own interests.

We bring that responsibility to the question of the Temple.

The Written Torah establishes the sanctuary, the priesthood, and a detailed system of offerings. Many sacrifices were explicitly commanded. They served several purposes, including thanksgiving, communal worship, ritual purification, and certain forms of atonement. It would be inaccurate to describe the entire system as an alien corruption of Judaism, or to imagine that every offering involved an animal dying for someone’s moral wrongdoing.

Our ancestors worshipped within that world. We can recognize the sincerity of their devotion and the place of those practices in Israel’s history.

Yet Netzarim Judaism understands the application of Torah through its historical setting and its enduring ethical demands. We ask how a practice served the covenant in its own time, and how we should embody covenantal faithfulness now. The presence of an institution in ancient Israel does not, by itself, establish that restoring it should be the goal of contemporary Jewish life.

The prophets give us compelling reasons to ask these questions. Micah places justice, lovingkindness, and humility at the center of what God requires. Hosea declares God’s desire for goodness and devotion above sacrifice. Isaiah calls the people to cleanse their conduct, defend the vulnerable, and pursue justice. These demands make the treatment of other people central to the meaning of worship (Micah 6:6–8; Hosea 6:6; Isaiah 1:16–17).

I understand this prophetic emphasis as guidance for the continuing development of Jewish religious life. The covenant calls us to become more truthful, more compassionate, and more accountable. Religious practice should cultivate those qualities and help us express them.

This reading requires honesty about the full biblical record. Ezekiel’s vision of restoration includes a sanctuary, priests, and animal offerings. Isaiah’s description of a house of prayer for all peoples also includes sacrifices accepted on an altar. We cannot quote only the parts that fit our conclusions and conceal the rest (Ezekiel 43–46; Isaiah 56:7).

I read those visions in their historical setting, where sanctuary, priesthood, and offerings expressed the restoration of communal life and divine nearness. I understand their enduring promise through the healing of Israel’s relationship with God and the renewal of a just society. That is an interpretation; the passages themselves do not explicitly announce the abolition of sacrifice. Jews who read them as promises of a future sacrificial service have a scriptural basis for doing so.

My Netzarim conclusion comes from considering those passages alongside the broader ethical demands of Torah and the prophets. I do not regard a return to animal sacrifice as spiritually necessary or as the future toward which our religious life should move.

God remains accessible to us through prayer, repentance, study, and faithful action. When I have harmed someone, my responsibility is to acknowledge the wrong, seek forgiveness, make restitution where possible, and change my behavior. When I have acted dishonestly, I must become honest. When I have neglected someone in need, I must respond to that need. These obligations bring repentance into the circumstances of an actual life.

I do not believe that access to God’s mercy depends upon the death of an animal. The absence of an altar does not prevent sincere return to God.

Jewish life after the destruction of the Second Temple bears powerful witness to that conviction. Prayer, learning, home observance, and communal responsibility already existed alongside the Temple. In the centuries that followed its destruction, they sustained Jewish communities and took on even greater importance. Rabbis, teachers, families, and ordinary Jews preserved and developed ways of living the covenant amid radically changed circumstances.

Netzarim Jews can appreciate that achievement while retaining our own understanding of authority. We can learn from rabbinic Judaism without treating every rabbinic ruling as binding. We can cherish inherited customs and examine them thoughtfully.

A Shabbat table, a congregation at prayer, a person studying Scripture, a neighbor caring for someone who is ill: these are places where Jewish holiness is lived. Their religious worth does not depend upon their eventually being supplemented by a functioning altar.

Nor does our personal relationship with God require a hereditary priesthood to stand between us and the Eternal. Teachers and communities have vital roles, but spiritual responsibility belongs to every Jew. We are called to bring holiness into our homes, our work, our relationships, and our treatment of strangers.

For these reasons, I reject a return to Temple-based Judaism as the goal of Jewish restoration. My objection reaches beyond personal discomfort with animal sacrifice. I believe that the path before us calls for deeper repentance, wiser interpretation, greater compassion, and fuller responsibility for one another.

That understanding also shapes my messianic hope. I do not claim to know every detail of the future. I do believe that peace, justice, faithfulness, and human dignity must be central to any credible understanding of redemption.

Isaiah pictures peoples seeking instruction in God’s ways and nations turning weapons into tools for cultivating the earth. The vision joins devotion to God with an end to war. It gives us a demanding measure of what restoration should accomplish in human life (Isaiah 2:2–4).

I hope for messianic leadership that brings people closer to God, protects the vulnerable, reconciles divided communities, and teaches us to live with greater wisdom. Reconstructing ancient institutions would have little spiritual value if cruelty, exploitation, and hatred continued to govern our relationships.

Our present responsibilities follow from that hope. We can feed people, teach Torah, support families, welcome those who sincerely join the Jewish people, care for the sick, and resist injustice. We can practice these things while acknowledging how far the world remains from redemption.

I therefore oppose efforts to make rebuilding the Temple a contemporary religious obligation. I do not believe we should restore animal sacrifice, and I reject the use of sacred longing to justify coercion, dispossession, or violence. Human lives must carry more weight in our deliberations than the desire to realize a religious construction project.

Jerusalem deserves reverence, and that reverence should make us more careful about the people who live there. A vision of holiness must include concern for their safety and dignity.

This does not require withdrawing from public life. Torah has profound implications for how we treat workers, strangers, the poor, and those who lack power. Our ethical responsibilities often call for public action. But no political party, state, or nationalist movement should become the object of our faith or the final authority over our conscience.

That distinction explains why I describe myself as non-Zionist.

I support the right of the State of Israel to exist, the right of Jews to live in the Land of Israel, and the right of its people to live in safety. Israeli Jews are part of my people. Disagreements with a government, its policies, or its religious institutions do not dissolve that relationship.

I also distinguish criticism of Israel from hostility toward Jewish existence and security. A person can oppose a government’s decisions, challenge injustice, or argue for political change without wishing harm upon Jews. Those disagreements deserve to be addressed on their merits. Calls for expulsion, destruction, or violence demand a different response. I cannot accept the treatment of Jewish lives as expendable.

The same moral responsibility requires concern for Palestinian lives, safety, and dignity. My solidarity with Jews does not release me from the duty to recognize the humanity of our neighbors. A hope for peace must make room for people to live securely without demanding that either people disappear.

At the same time, I do not identify the modern State of Israel with the fulfillment of the covenant or the arrival of the messianic age. Its importance to Jewish life does not make its government sacred. The Knesset is a parliament. A prime minister is a political leader. State institutions remain subject to moral judgment.

The relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel carries historical, religious, and emotional significance. That relationship does not confer divine approval upon every policy enacted by a government in the land.

The same principle applies to religious authority. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel does not become the spiritual authority over every Jew simply because it operates within a Jewish state. Its judgments do not automatically bind Netzarim communities. Neither geography nor government recognition can replace the work of studying Scripture and exercising informed conscience.

We may respect a teacher’s learning and still disagree with that teacher’s conclusions. We may adopt a custom because it deepens our practice, while recognizing that another Jew may make a different choice. Our communities need thoughtful teaching, mutual responsibility, and room for sincere disagreement.

This is the sense in which I want Judaism to remain independent of political ideology. Each of us may reach political judgments and participate in civic life. Those judgments must remain open to examination under the ethical demands of Torah. Love of a people, a land, or a country should deepen our responsibility.

And so I return to Tisha B’Av and the question of what we mourn.

We mourn real losses. People were killed. Families were uprooted. Sacred places were destroyed. Generations carried grief they had never chosen. We need not describe that destruction as a blessing in order to recognize the religious creativity and endurance that followed it.

We can honor the Temple’s place in Jewish memory without making its reconstruction our religious purpose. We can grieve for an ancient world while accepting responsibility for the world in which we now live.

When I speak of restoration, I hope for Jewish communities where people can live openly and safely. I hope for Torah studied with seriousness and freedom, for converts welcomed with compassion, and for disagreements handled without humiliation. I hope for homes in which children learn that holiness includes honesty, kindness, and responsibility.

I hope for a Jerusalem whose residents can live without fear. I hope for Jews and Palestinians to have futures shaped by security and dignity. I hope for religious devotion that makes us more attentive to suffering and more willing to relieve it.

That is what I bring to the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

For me, they express hope for a renewed people and a more faithful way of living before God. They carry the longing of generations, together with the responsibility to decide what we will make of that inheritance.

I will continue to pray, study Torah, keep the mitzvot, and stand with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I will listen to teachers while accepting responsibility for my own conscience. I will remember the suffering of our people and remain attentive to the suffering of others.

I do not pray for the return of blood to the altar. I pray that our return to God will be visible in the lives we lead: in the wrongs we repair, the people we protect, the kindness we practice, and the peace we help make possible.

“Next year in Jerusalem” can hold that hope.

May Jerusalem know peace. May Israel live faithfully before God. And may our worship help us become worthy of the future for which we pray.