The leader of the group was Rav Brand, once again he of haredi hilltop settlement fame, and his goal is to increase awareness and haredi presence on Har Habayit to the point where we will be able to bring the korban pesach in the coming years.
Here is Rav Brand giving a shiur on his group going around Har Habayit:
For more pictures and video of the group on Har Habayit, see Kikar Shabbos.
In addition, one of the rabbonim in the group, openly did "hishtachavaye", or full prostration. It is unclear how he got away with doing it so openly. Perhaps the police are allowing more than they used to, or maybe they made a personal exception..
From the Arutz 7 article on the visit:
Temple Mount activist Yosef Rabin told Arutz Sheva that the event is a significant one. “There has been a long running effort to bring hareidim to the Mount and now it is starting to take root,” he said.
Rabin noted that ever since the liberation of the Mount in 1967, hareidi-religious Jews have usually preferred to avoid ascending it, and that the ones who went up to the holy site were Jews of the national-religious ilk. However, he said, “the image of the type of people that go to the Mount is starting to crack. It seems that everyone has followed the hareidi lead when it comes to Har HaBayit [Temple Mount], and now that hareidim are starting to go, we might start seeing a tremendous wave of all types.” Most of the renowned hareidi rabbis are against going up on the mountain, as was Rav Avraham Shapira zt"l of the zionist flagship Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, for fear of treading in places that are forbidden.
The group of Jews was led by Rabbi Yitzchak Brand of the city of Emanuel and Rabbi Yisrael Ariel of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem. The rabbis say they intend to bring ever-larger groups of Jews to the Mount with the purpose of eventually holding a Passover sacrifice there.
I know Yosef Rabin, and he's right about a lot of things, but I can't agree with him on this one.
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