Middot: Measurements and Memories of the Temple

#YourTorah

Shira Eliassian opens up masekhet Middot, taking us on an audio-visual tour of the Temple, and exploring how studying this masekhet serves as a psychological surrogate for making our pilgrimage there.

• Entry on Temple in Rabbinic Literature on JewishEncyclopedia.com - This article includes an overview of Har HaBayit and the Azarah with labels in English.

• Overview of the Azarah with labels in Hebrew.

• Virtual Tour of Temple on YouTube - There's sappy music in the background and doesn't include labels, but helps to visualize the entire Har HaBayit.

• BONUS: Digitized version of Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, courtesy of the Polonsky Foundation and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. This is a manuscript authored by Maimonides himself, and is the first recorded attempt to translate the text of Middot into diagrams. The link will direct you to the beginning of his commentary on Middot.

Shira Eliassian is currently pursuing a Masters in Religion at University of Chicago's Divinity School. Her studies focus on how religion is expressed through literature and visual culture. Shira has created programming and online education for JOFA and is currently editor of The JOFA Blog. This March she visited the UK as JOFA UK's Be'er Miriam scholar.