Five red cows, obtained from a Texas ranch in 2022 and now grazing in a pasture somewhere on Israel’s West Bank, may be instrumental in future world events if you believe in one Jewish tradition. The red heifers are said to be a key ingredient in an ancient Jewish purification ceremony that, by tradition, would need to be performed prior to building a third incarnation of Solomon’s Temple.
The first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Babylonians’ conquest of Israel sometime in the 6th century BC. The second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD in response to a Jewish revolt. Faithful Jews have been hoping for the temple’s reconstruction for two thousand years.
And that’s where the red heifers come in. The Old Testament outlines a specific procedure for purifying the land on which God’s Temple can be constructed:
Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “This is the statute of the law that the Lord has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come.” — Numbers 19:1-2
The cows must be without blemish — without even a white or black hair. One cow is then sacrificed ritually as a means of cleansing the land
And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned.
And the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn, and throw them into the fire burning the heifer.
Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. But the priest shall be unclean until evening. The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water and shall be unclean until evening. And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place. And they shall be kept for the water for impurity for the congregation of the people of Israel; it is a sin offering. — Numbers 19:3-9
It’s a grisly end for the cow to be sure.
Thus far one of the five heifers has been declared unfit for the sacrifice, but four remain and, if these are the cows that must be used, one must be sacrificed this year before the animals are too old.
“You can understand that we are very close to the third year of these cows,” said project leader Rabbi Yitshak Mamo, of Uvne Yerusalim, a group dedicated to building the third temple on its original site in Jerusalem’s Old City. “Which means that with the help of God, we will get permission from God and from the people to make the ceremony. And then we can be pure.”
The land on which the ceremony takes place is important too, as it needs to “be exactly at the front of the place that the priest that made this ceremony can see the Holy of the Holy Place,” according to Mamo.
The site picked out by the organizers is on the Mount of Olives, on land owned by Rabbi Mamo, and overlooks the area where the organizers say the temple must be built. Reports say that a large altar on which the ceremony could be performed has already been constructed.
One problem — the site on which the third temple would need to be built is currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites on Earth to 2 billion Muslims. Muslims believe Muhammad was miraculously transported there from Mecca on the prophet’s eventual trip to Heaven, an event referred to as the Night Journey.
“Al-Aqsa Mosque belongs to all Muslims,” Mustafa Abu Sway, the Imam Al-Ghazali Chair at the mosque, told CBS News. “So, you will find reactions from Indonesia to Toronto to New York. Today there are 2 billion Muslims worldwide.”
The imam added that removing either the Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa Mosque would be “unimaginable,” and would amount to “opening a Pandora’s box that nobody can close.”
It’s a serious problem for wannabe temple builders. In fact, a spokesman for Hamas recently mentioned the red heifers in a speech commemorating 100 days since the current conflict with Israel began on October 7 of last year:
We look back 100 days to remember the educated, the complicit, and the incapacitated among the world powers governed by the law of the jungle, reminding them of an aggression that reached its peak against our path (Al-Quds) and Al-Aqsa, with the start of its actual temporal and spatial division, and the bringing of red cows as an application of a detestable religious myth designed for aggression against the feelings of an entire nation in the heart of its Arab identity, and the path of its prophet (the Night Journey) and Ascension to heaven. [Emphasis added.]
Hamas’ operational name for the October 7 terror event was “Al-Aqsa Flood,” which means that the event may be linked to the red heifers being in Israel.
While religious Jews eagerly await the building of the third temple, religious Muslims appear to be equally determined to prevent it, at least on the spot the Jews apparently covet. Christians, on the other hand, appear split: Some side with the Muslims, while certain hardcore evangelicals side with the Jews since they believe that the construction of the temple signals that the second coming of Jesus Christ is imminent.
Christian eschatology claims that the “man of sin,” also known as the Antichrist, will essentially declare himself to be God and “exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sitteth as God in the temple of God, showing himself to be God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4; emphasis added.)
For that to occur, there must be a temple, which is what Rabbi Mamo and his colleagues are apparently attempting to accomplish.
