KA'BAH MENURUT PERSPEKTIF YUDAISM DAN MASA 40 TAHUN JARAK PEMBANGUNANNYA

Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Dear Rebbe
What Judaism View On Kaaba?.

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 Wa aleikum salaam wa rahmatullah. The Ka'aba is never mentioned in the Torah by name. Some early Rabbis understood that the ka'aba was a source of idolatry. The Rambam writes that by his time, the ka'aba had been purged of any vestige of idolatry and was a the focal point of pilgrims "who's heart was only to heaven".

However we know that the Ka'aba was built forty years before Al-Masjid al-Aqsa (the altar in Jerusalem): "Narrated in al-Saheehayn from Abu Dharr (ra) who said: “I said, ‘O Messenger of Allaah, which mosque was built on earth first?’ He said, ‘Al-Masjid al-Haraam [in Makkah].’ I said, ‘Then which?’ He said, ‘Al-Masjid al-Aqsa.’ I said, ‘How much time was there between them?’ He said, ‘Forty years. So wherever you are when the time for prayer comes, pray, for that is the best thing to do.’” (al-Bukhaari, 3366; Muslim, 520)

We know from the Torah that the difference in time between the altar that Abraham (pbuh) built for Ishmael (pbuh) and the altar that Abraham (pbuh) built for Isaac (pbuh) was forty years:

1 year from Circumcision of Ishmael to Sarah's pregnancy
1 year from Sarah's pregnancy to birth of Isaac.
37 years when Isaac when Abraham made an offering on Mount Moriah
1 change of year due to Rosh Hashana
= 40 years

The Torah says that Ishmael (pbuh) was present when Abraham (pbuh) built an altar and God revealed the commandment of circumcision to him. This was forty years before Abraham (pbuh) built an altar in Jerusalem. If we understand these forty years to be the same as the forty years mentioned in the hadith (that the ka'aba was built forty years before the Temple in Jerusalem), then it is reasonable to assume historically that this first altar was in Mecca.

 
"When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”... On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, and his son Ishmael was thirteen; (Genesis 17:1-2,23-25) On which Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer indicates that an altar was made there: "On the very place where Abraham was circumcised and his blood remained, there the altar was built, and therefore it is written 'all the blood thereof shall be poured at the base of the altar' (Lev 4:30) and scripture also says 'I said unto you, in thy blood live; I said unto you, in thy blood live' (Ezekiel 16:6)

These verses of the Torah then, would refer to the Ka'aba.

On the verse "Abram was ninety-nine years old" (Genesis 7:1), the non-Jewish bookJubilees says that Abramham (pbuh) made an offering on an altar characterizing the renewal of the covenant that God had made with Noah: "During the fifth year of the fourth week of this jubilee, in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram celebrated the festival of the first fruits of the wheat harvest. He offered as a new sacrifice on the altar the first fruits of the food for the Lord, a bull, a ram and a sheep. (He offered them) on the altar as a sacrifice to the Lord together with their (cereal) offerings and the libations. He offered everything on the altar with frankincense... Abram will be one hundred years old in a year" (Jubilees 15:1-2,17)