Harold B. Lee & the Holy of Holies

In about 1970 I read a news article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer posted by a newsman of an American press service. He reported a tour of excavations underneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The tour guide took the group to a point where he stated no further work would take place. When asked why, he said they believed this was near the entrance to the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple. To enter the Holy of Holies was restricted to the High Priest; however the Jews did not have a High Priest.

Deeply impressed by this news story, I filed it away, but carried a copy on my trip to the Middle East that would include Jerusalem.

On or about September 7, 1972, Palestinian commandos had captured the Israeli athletes at the Munich summer Olympics. I was then in Teheran, Iran ready to fly to Tel Aviv, Israel on September 8th. A cable came to my hotel from the President of the Central National Bank in Cleveland instructing me not to go to Israel but to return home.

Since I had been anxiously anticipating going to Jerusalem and seeing the sites of Jesus' life and crucifiction, I pretended that it had not been received. The flight to Tel Aviv on September 8th was routine. Clearing customs was not difficult.

The following day I visited several Israeli banks, the last being Bank Leumi le Israel. The men at Bank Leumi engaged me in converstion about my going to Jerusalem Thursday afternoon, September 10th, Rosh Hoshana, the first of the 10 high holy days. They gave me a book about Jerusalem authored by former Mayor Teddy Kollech. I think they learned that I was LDS, because later the Jerusalem Manager knew it. On the bus ride to Jerusalem I read the book that told of the history of the old and new city.

Not long after I arrived in the Inter-Continental Hotel on the Mount of Olives, the local manager mentioned that the President of our church would be arriving there in a few days. I thanked him and then reviewed the information in the book about the 10 high holy days, which were in process at that very day. Then I observed that President Harold B. Lee would arrive on Yom Kippur, the highest and most holy day, when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, the Day of Atonement, to make an offering for the sins of the children of Israel. I was greatly awestruck that the great High Priest in the world, President Lee, would arrive just on Yom Kippur. I wondered if this meant that some significant event would take place, like permission for missionaries to serve in Palestine. Some years later I leaned that Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley had traveled with him to Jerusalem.