The Ka’ba is only for Muslims while Jerusalem’s Temple is for Everyone

The One and Only God designed Judaism and the covenant He made with the descendants of Jacob-Israel to be an ongoing non-universal religion, because all the Prophets before Prophet Abraham had not succeeded in establishing an ongoing, imageless, monotheistic community.

Eighteen to twenty centuries after Prophets Moses, Aaron and Miriam (Exodus 15:20) Islam was designed by God to be an universal, ongoing, imageless, monotheistic community. So it would be expected that the Ka’ba would be open to all those who wished to worship there, and the Jerusalem Temple would be open only to Jews,

But it is exactly the opposite, as the Hebrew Bible states in 1 Kings 8:41 that at Prophet King Solomon dedication he proclaimed: “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name— 42 for they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, 43 then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.”

The seven day harvest festival of Sukkot played a major role in the processes of building both the first and second temples. 1 Kings 8:2 recounts how Solomon intentionally dedicated his newly built Temple during the holiday of Sukkot, thus imbuing the nationalistic meaning that Sukkot already held for the Israelites with renewed significance.

Similarly, in Ezra 3:4 the Second Temple was dedicated on Sukkot, and in Nehemiah 8:18, the celebration over the completion of the Jerusalem wall and the public reading of the Torah ends with a Sukkot celebration.

The connection between Sukkot and the Temple is clear in Prophet Zechariah’s description of the messianic era, which focuses on the universal temple worship within the framework of Sukkot, proclaiming that all nations who survived the period of destruction that precedes the messianic era will unite to serve God and come to the Jerusalem Temple to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot (Zechariah 14:14-17).

Similarly, Prophet Haggai exhorts the people on the twenty-first of the seventh month (the last day of Sukkot) not to despair about the state of the Second Temple, because God promises that it will eventually be even greater than the first (Haggai 2:1-9). Like Zechariah, this passage is located within a context that is describing the ultimate restoration of the Temple’s glory during the messianic era.

Prophet Zechariah in chapter 14 foresees a day when many gentiles will celebrate Sukkot alongside Jews, not by building booths on their diaspora residences, but by converging annually upon Jerusalem to worship God at a time when “Adonai will be one, and his name one” (Zechariah 14:9).

Survivors from the non-Jewish nations flock to Jerusalem annually to observe Sukkot; those who do not suffer from drought; (14:16). “All who survive of all those nations that came up against Jerusalem shall make a pilgrimage year by year to bow low to the King YHWH of Hosts and to observe the Feast of Booths.”

And Prophet Isaiah states (2:2) “In the days to come, the Mount of YHWH’s House shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the hills; and all the nations shall gaze on it with joy. And 2:3 many peoples shall go and say: “Come, Let us go up to the Mount of YHWH, to the House of the God of Jacob; that He may instruct us in His ways, and that we may walk in His paths.”

Perhaps before the Messianic Age arrives it will be possible for non-Muslims to visit the Ka’ba during Umra and fulfill the vision of Prophet Joel (2:28-29) “Then I will pour out my Spirit on all people: Your sons and daughters will prophesy,  your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on (all) my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”