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Beit HaMikdash

A scholar of Temple law

You have studied Mishnah Middot all your life. Now you walk the courts.Reconstruction educational simulation: A choice this site made to draw or model something the sources do not fully specify. About 7 minutes
Reconstruction: fifteen curved steps rise to the Nicanor gate with its open copper doors; barefoot Levites in white linen hold lyres; beyond, the Sanctuary's square front with its doorless opening and stacked oak lintels.

  1. Scene 1 of 6

    Study as service

    For generations the laws of the Temple were studied though they could not be practised. The Talmud: whoever engages in the law of the offerings is as if he offered them.

  2. Scene 2 of 6 · The Fifteen Steps

    Counting steps

    You count: fifteen steps, curved like half a threshing floor, just as Middot says.

  3. Scene 3 of 6 · The Azarah (inner courtyard)

    Measuring the court

    Eleven amot, eleven amot, then the altar's thirty-two. The numbers you memorised as a child are now distances you can walk.

  4. Scene 4 of 6 · The Azarah (inner courtyard)

    A disagreement in stone

    Seven gates or thirteen? Middot records both. You notice which view the builders followed, and that the other is still studied.

  5. Scene 5 of 6

    Ezekiel's questions

    Some of Ezekiel's measurements you still cannot place. You remember what the Talmud says of one such passage: that Elijah will explain it in the future.

  6. Scene 6 of 6 · The Court of Israel

    Where you stand

    At the edge of the Court of Israel you stop. The next strip belongs to the priests. Knowledge does not grant entry.