Are we rebuilding the temple?

3/6/2026

“May it be Your will, Hashem our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, that the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.”

These are the concluding words of the Amidah, the central Jewish prayer recited three times every day by millions of Jews.

It was shortly after the destruction of the first Jerusalem Temple by the Babylonians, as the holy seat of Jewish life lay in ruins, that Ezra, the leader of the Great Assembly, began to compile the words of the liturgy we still use today.

The words of this prayer allude to the prophecies in Isaiah, which tell of an end of days, a Messianic age, when there will be no more wars, peace and unity will reign on earth, the world will be filled with knowledge of the Divine, and the Temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt.

It would have been amusing if it wasn’t alarming when a leading antisemitic pundit suggested this week that Chabad was behind the current war with Iran in an attempt to eventually destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Temple on its ruins.

While it is unquestionable that the current joint effort by the United States and Israel is removing a real threat of annihilation to millions of Jews, it is laughable and ludicrous to suggest that the war’s goal is to bring about the Messianic age, and that Chabad is in any way responsible for it.

The belief in the rebuilding of the Temple is so central to Judaism that not only is it included in our prayers three times a day, but Maimonides, the great 12th-century codifier of Jewish law, includes this belief as one of the thirteen fundamental principles of Jewish faith.

But if Israel wanted to destroy Al-Aqsa, it has had every opportunity to do so in the nearly sixty years since Jerusalem came under Israeli control after the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel has no intention of destroying the mosque, and certainly neither does Chabad.

The Third Temple, according to Jewish belief, will be rebuilt only in the Messianic age, through direct intervention of G-d, and not through wars waged by modern militaries.

In 1983, Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, the director of Chabad in Washington, DC and a leading Chabad Rabbi, was asked by a journalist about Chabad’s Messianic goals.

Here’s the piece from the Washington Post:

“Asked if he was working to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem — which pious Jews believe will coincide with the coming of the Messiah — Shemtov smiled. ‘We have to build a better world,’ he replied with an impish twinkle in his eyes. ‘G-d will take care of the Temple.’”

The Messianic age described by the prophets will come not through military campaigns, but through divine intervention, and it will be brought about not by warfare, but by the good deeds and mitzvot we perform every day.

There’s a song I like to sing to my kids as I put them to sleep at night, which goes like this:

Way up high in the skythere’s a building still unfinished

Way up high in the skythere’s a Mikdash Hashlishi (third Temple)

And for every mitzvahthat we do so carefully

Hashem adds a brickto the Mikdash Hashlishi

May Hashem guard and protect the brave American and Israeli soldiers. May the sacrifices of the fallen be remembered for a blessing. And may it be the will of Hashem to rebuild the Third Temple speedily in our days, ushering in a time when there will be no more wars and only peace will reign on this earth.