Endnote 5 – Kaufman Responds to Jacobson

Ezekiel 8:16 is very emphatic: “Then He brought me into the Inner Court of the House of the Lord, and there, at the entrance to the Holy Place of the Lord, between the Porch and the Altar, were about twenty-five men, their backs to the Holy Place of the Lord, and their faces to the east, and they were bowing down to the sun in the east.” Sukkah 5.4 relates that in Second Temple times, during the festival of Tabernacles, two officiants made their way from the upper gate that leads down from the Court of Israel to the Court of the Women to the gate that leads out to the east: “They reached the gate that leads out to the east, they turned their faces to the west and said: ‘Our fathers who were in this place [turned with] their backs to the Holy Place of the Lord, and their faces to the east, and they were bowing down to the sun in the east.’”