The source library

Seventy bulls of Sukkot correspond to the seventy nations (Rabbi Elazar).

Whoever has not seen the Simchat Beit HaShoevah has never seen joy; also the saying about Herod's building.

Discussion of the Temple being rebuilt; Rashi here states the future Temple will be revealed from heaven.

Rashi: the future Temple, built and perfected, will be revealed and come from heaven (Rashi's reading).

Five things present in the First Temple were absent from the Second: the Ark (with its cover and cherubim), the heavenly fire, the Shechinah, the holy spirit, and the Urim veTumim.

The First Temple was destroyed because of idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed; the Second because of baseless hatred.

The Foundation Stone: a tradition that the world was founded from it.

Josiah hid the Ark (one view in a Tannaitic dispute about its fate).

Ezekiel 11:16 'a small sanctuary' is read as referring to synagogues and study houses in exile.

When the Temple does not stand, reading the order of offerings is considered by God as if they were offered.

Two views: the daily prayers were instituted by the patriarchs, or were instituted corresponding to the daily Tamid offerings.

Worshippers outside the Land face the Land; in the Land, Jerusalem; in Jerusalem, the Temple; in the Temple, the Holy of Holies.

Mar son of Ravina broke an expensive glass at his son's wedding to temper excessive levity; later custom connected wedding glass-breaking with mourning Jerusalem.

Since the Temple's destruction the gates of prayer are locked, yet the gates of tears are not locked.

After the destruction, the sages taught to leave a small area of a plastered home unfinished in remembrance of Jerusalem, and similar measured acts of remembrance.

One who studies the laws of the burnt offering is considered as if he offered it.

A difficult passage in Ezekiel about offerings: 'Elijah will interpret it in the future.'

Chananiah ben Chizkiyah worked to reconcile the Book of Ezekiel with the Torah, because its words seemed to contradict it.

Abraham called the place a mountain, Isaac a field, Jacob a house.

The maamadot: lay delegations that represented the people at the Temple service.

The psalm the Levites sang on each day of the week.

Discussion of offerings brought by non-Jews.

The divine lament over the destroyed House, and the practice of answering 'May His great Name be blessed.'

Rambam's historical explanation of sacrifice as a gradual transition away from idolatrous worship; a famous and contested position.

The commandment to send ritually impure persons away from the Sanctuary areas.

Ramban rejects the purely historical explanation of offerings and explains that the one who brings an offering should see himself in the animal's place, stirring repentance.

Ramban: the glory that rested openly on Sinai rests, concealed, on the Mishkan.

'Make for My Name a house of holiness.'

Malbim reads the same verse as describing a future city far to the south of the Sanctuary, not standing where it stood before.

On one architectural term in Ezekiel's Temple, Rashi writes plainly that he does not know what it is.

Radak reads the city 'on the south' as Jerusalem adjacent to the Temple mount on its south side.

A classic treatise on the form of the future Temple according to Ezekiel, read alongside Middot.

The law of facing toward the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Holy of Holies in prayer.

Remembrance of the destruction in building, meals, jewelry and at weddings.

Detailed first-century description of the Herodian Temple. Historical literature, not halachic authority; some numbers are disputed.

Account of the burning of the Temple in 70 CE.

Herod's rebuilding and expansion of the Temple and its platform.

Greek inscription warning foreigners not to pass the balustrade into the inner precinct. Matches the Mishnah's soreg and Josephus' description.

Hebrew inscription on a parapet stone, read as 'to the place of trumpeting', consistent with Josephus' note that a priest signalled the Sabbath with a trumpet.

Roman triumphal relief showing the Temple menorah and other vessels carried in procession after 70 CE. A Roman depiction; details are debated.

The Western Wall is part of the western retaining wall of Herod's expanded Temple Mount platform, not a wall of the Sanctuary building.

Monumental stairway and blocked gateways on the southern side of the Temple Mount, associated with the Huldah gates of Middot 1:3.

Modern historians date the destruction of the First Temple to 587 or 586 BCE, drawing on Babylonian chronicles; traditional rabbinic chronology (Seder Olam) places it later.

Details of the Menorah, including its height of eighteen handbreadths.

Nothing may interpose between the priest's feet and the Temple floor during service.

Signs of favour in the days of Shimon HaTzaddik, and their cessation in the forty years before the destruction.

One who prays should see himself as if the Shechinah is before him.

A Tannaitic dispute about the Ark's fate: exiled to Babylon, or hidden in its place.

Rashi dates Ezekiel's vision by the Jubilee cycle, counting from the destruction; his translators supply the traditional year 3338 AM for the destruction of the First Temple.