| For the most part I am just a reader of this notes conference. However, this
subject intrigues me. So I went looking for information, some of which came
from the following web sites:
http://users.aol.com/mkneisler/noah/naredhef.htm
http://www.arabworld.com/jerusalem/htmls/pics/122000.htm
http://www.arabworld.com/jerusalem/htmls/history.htm
Jerusalem Post===> http://www.jpost.co.il/
Following copied without permission from
http://users.aol.com/mkneisler/noah/naredhef.htm
Red Heifer: The Bible
Red Heifer: The Details
Red Heifer: The Rancher
Red Heifer: Israel Today
Hatikva Ministries: The Story
Red Heifer: The Bible
The red heifer provided a means for the congregation of Israel to purify
themselves for presentation to God. It is this strong connection which drives
the Ultra Orthodox Jews of today to prepare and purify themselves for the
coming preisthood and temple services.
The red heifer must meet certain physical criteria and must be sacrificed in a
certain way. Once sacrificed, the ashes are to be mixed with "clean" water and
it is this mixture which is sprinkled over the "unclean". Numbers 19 is the
basis for understanding and the direction from God for the physical
purification. The following bible reference is taken from the King James
Version.
Numbers 19
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
2 This [is] the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red
heifer without spot, wherein [is] no blemish, [and] upon which never came
yoke:
3 And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her
forth without the camp, and [one] shall slay her before his face:
4 And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and
sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation
seven times:
5 And [one] shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh,
and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
6 And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast
[it] into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in
water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be
unclean until the even.
8 And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his
flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even.
9 And a man [that is] clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and
lay [them] up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for
the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it
[is] a purification for sin.
10 And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes,
and be unclean until the even: and it shall be unto the children of
Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them, for a statute
for ever.
11 He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven
days.
12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh
day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then
the seventh day he shall not be clean.
13 Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and
purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul
shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not
sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness [is] yet upon
him.
14 This [is] the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the
tent, and all that [is] in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
15 And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, [is]
unclean.unclean.
16 And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open
fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean
seven days.
17 And for an unclean [person] they shall take of the ashes of the burnt
heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in
a vessel:
18 And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip [it] in the water, and
sprinkle [it] upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the
persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain,
or one dead, or a grave:
19 And the clean [person] shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third
day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify
himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be
clean at even.
20 But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that
soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath
defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath not been
sprinkled upon him; he [is] unclean.
21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth
the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the
water of separation shall be unclean until even.
22 And whatsoever the unclean [person] toucheth shall be unclean; and the
soul that toucheth [it] shall be unclean until even.
Christians should understand the above scriptures represented a "type" of
Christ. For the sacrifice of the "red heifer" was the forerunner to the
ulitimate sacrifice of Christ which could do so much more than "purify the
flesh". Remember that the red heifer was to be "without spot" (Num
19:2). Compare this with the following passage written by Paul in the book of
Hebrews; he explains it well:
Hebrews 9
13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer
sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:
14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God?
Red Heifer: The Details
According to the Bible:
A. The red heifer (Num 19:2):
Must be without blemish
Must be without defect
Must never have worn a yoke
B. The sacrifice (Num 19:3-7):
Must be performed outside the camp
The blood must be sprikled seven times in front of the tabernacle
The ENTIRE heifer must be burned before the priest
Cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet are added to the fire
The priest washes his clothes and bathes
C. The Water of Purification (Num 19:9):
Prepared by a man who is clean
He gathers the ashes
(Implied) He adds water to the ashes (19:17)
He stores it outside the camp in a clean place
The water is for the congregation of Israel
He washes his clothes and bathes
It is this water, The Water of Purification, which is required by the
Israelites today. It is needed to "purify" today's Levitical priesthood and to
"purify" the temple mount in preparation for the Third Temple.
Red Heifer: The Rancher
In the early 1990's, a cattle rancher ran across the scriptures describing the
red heifer. As he pondered what he had just read, he realized that he
indeed had that kind of heifer.
Coming into contact with a group from Israel, he began communicating and
eventually worked a deal to provide them with the biblically defined red
heifer.
The original agreement was to provide 200 pregnant red heifers, which would be
shipped via ocean lined to Jerusalem. Statistically, these pregnant
heifers would produce 100 bulls and 100 heifers. The resultant 100 heifers
would become the "potential" sacrifical stock.
Time went by, and this event did not occur. The interest and motivation had by
no means disappeared but are fervently still there. The plan had now
reached a much grander scale. The goal now is to repopulate the nation of
Israel with this man's breed of cattle stock. So instead of 200 heifers, they
are planning to ship thousands of heifers to Jerusalem.
As you read this, the heifers are grazing in the plains of Nebraska. I have
been told that they are very gentle and a very good breeding stock. They
have never been haltered, worn a blanket and are visually spotless and free
from defect. A rabbi from Israel will be examining them this spring
(1997).
The rancher is Clyde Lott. He has said that they are looking for "prayerful
minded people" to help out with their efforts. He also said that they are
"set on go" and ready for the process of shipment and repopulation to begin.
Most of this information has been obtained from a tape interview of Clyde Lott
by Hatikva Ministries and from telephone conversations with him.
Red Heifer: Israel Today
There is quite a bit of excitement in the air regarding the recent birth of a
red heifer in Israel. This news has rocked the world in a way that it doesn't
fully realize .... yet.
Arutz-7 News: Tuesday, March 18, 1997
HOLY COW!
The birth of a red heifer (cow) in a farm in the religious youth village
of Kfar Hasidim (near Haifa) has excited sectors in the religious
community. A delegation of some 25 experts, including Rabbis Yisrael
Ariel and Yoseph Elboim, visited the farm last week to examine
the six-month old cow, and concluded that it is in fact an acceptable red
heifer, according to Torah requirements. However, the cow must
be at least two years old before it can be used. Until then, the cow will
be carefully watched to ensure that nothing occurs to invalidate its
status. According to Biblical law, the cow's ashes are used for
purification from certain forms of impurity, and is therefore a
prerequisite for the renewal of Holy Temple service.
THE MID-EAST DISPATCH, DAILY NEWS FROM ISRAEL - ISSUE 237 - 16th
March 1997
RED HEIFER SIGNALS THIRD TEMPLE
The birth of a red heifer in Israel is being hailed by religious Jews as
a sign from God that work can soon begin on building the Third
Temple in Jerusalem.
A team of rabbinical experts last week confirmed that the animal, born
six months ago on a religious kibbutz near the north Israeli port of
Haifa, meets the correct Biblical criteria for a genuine holy cow.
According to the Book of Numbers (XIX: 2-7), the animal is needed for
an ancient Jewish purification ritual.
"Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer
without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came
yoke," says the fourth book of the Old Testament, also part of Jewish
holy scripture, the Torah.
The heifer will be slaughtered and burned, and its ashes made into a
liquid paste and used in a ceremony which religious Jews believe
they must undergo before they can enter the old Temple site in Jerusalem
to start building a new structure.
Since Herod's Temple was destroyed by the Roman emperor Titus in AD
70, no flawless red heifer has been born within the biblical land
of Israel, according to rabbinical teaching.
The birth of the animal, to a black-and-white mother and a dun-colored
bull, is being hailed as a "miracle" by activists who want to
rebuild the Third Temple and prepare the way for the Jewish messiah's
entry to Jerusalem.
The faithful will need to wait until the heifer is at least three before
it can be used in a ritual sacrifice. That would enable religious Jews
to start the new millennium (a Christian event, but still regarded as
portentous) in a state of purity.
News of the red heifer's appearance, however, will not be well received
by Muslims. The site of the old Jewish temples in the Holy City
is now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock.
Jewish extremists want to destroy the Dome and the adjoining
Al-Aqsa mosque to make way for a new temple. In 1985 a group of Jewish
terrorists were jailed in Israel for planning to destroy the
Dome with high explosives.
But Jewish activists say they regard it as their divine mission to build
a new Temple. "We have been waiting 2,000 years for a sign from
God, and now he has provided us with a red heifer," said Yehudah Etzion,
the ringleader of the Eighties' plot to blow up the Dome, who
was present at last week's inspection of the red heifer at Kfar Hassidim.
"There were a couple of little white hairs which worried us, but
the rabbis are satisfied that it is the red heifer referred to in the
Bible," said Mr Etzion. (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London) 3/1
Boston Globe 04/06/97 (p A1)
By Ethan Bronner, Globe Staff
In photo: Rabbi Shmaria Shore examines a red heifer seen by some as a
sign for Jews to rebuild the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.
(Globe Photo/Heidi Levine)KFAR HASIDIM, Israel - She stares out at the
world through dewy eyes, stumbling on awkward legs,
dipping into her trough with abandon, oblivious to the soaring hopes and
apocalyptic fears that have spread with the news of her birth.
Watched over by an armed guard in a skullcap and visited by rabbis and
other seekers of meaning, this rust-colored six-month-old heifer
is hailed as a sign of the coming of the Messiah and decried as a walking
atom bomb.
Of a variety believed extinct for centuries, the red heifer is seen by
some as the missing link needed for religious Jews to rebuild their
ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Sacrificing the animal in its third year and
using its ashes in a purification rite would allow Jews to return
2000 years later to the Temple site, a spot holy to both Jews and
Muslims.
With tensions already high over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's decision to build a Jewish neighborhood in the section of
Jerusalem Palestinians consider theirs, many fear that the calf's arrival
could create an explosive situation.
``That cow represents the risk of a massive religious war,'' said Avraham
Poraz, a member of Parliament from the leftist Meretz Party.
``If the fanatics get a hold of it and try to take over the Temple Mount,
God knows what will happen. It only takes a few crazies to
endanger all our lives.''
In terms of historic gravity, some have drawn a loose analogy with Dolly,
the cloned Scottish sheep. But if Dolly stands on the frontier of
science, the calf of Kfar Hasidim harks back to the most ancient tribal
ritual.
Born to a black-and-white mother and brown father on a northern Israeli
farm run by a religious high school for troubled and orphaned
students, the calf was brought to the attention of Rabbi Shmaria Shore
shortly after its birth.
Shore, a native of Providence, said he had his doubts and, after checking
with ancient texts, invited a number of rabbis from Jerusalem to
come to give their views. They did so several weeks ago and quickly
spread word that something truly miraculous seems to have occurred.
To understand the significance of the heifer requires a knowledge of
long-abandoned practices in the extinct Temple as well as a grasp of
the place the Temple holds in the collective unconscious of religious
Jews.
For strictly Orthodox Jews, the Temple stands for the Jewish people's
direct link to God, its place as His chosen people. Built by King
Solomon around 950 BC and destroyed and rebuilt and expanded over the
succeeding centuries until its final destruction by the Romans
in AD 70, the Temple was the center of Jewish life where daily animal
sacrifices were overseen by the priestly classes of Levites and
Cohens.
The Temple's destruction meant that Jewish religious life had to be re-
created. Prayer, Torah study and good works became substitutes
for animal sacrifice as a means of seeking favor and forgiveness from
God, a development that many modern Jewish thinkers have
welcomed. But a yearning for the days of the Temple has never entirely
died.
One byproduct of Israel's victory in the 1967 war that brought the Old
City of Jerusalem under Israeli control is the revival of interest
among a small number of Jews in rebuilding the Temple because of the link
they believe it offers to God and the cosmic centrality it
might signify for Jews everywhere.
This has caused concern not only because few Jews wish to return to
animal sacrifices and priestly classes but because the site of the
Temple has been occupied for the past 1,300 years by the third-holiest
shrine in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
Holy to Muslims and Jews
Those mosques were built when Islam spread through the region in the 7th
century. Most scholars say the mount was chosen for their
location precisely because of the belief that it was a holy place. The
Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven from there.
A few Jewish fanatics have been caught trying to blow up the mosques to
make room for a new Temple that would anchor a renewed
Jewish kingdom and trigger the arrival of the Messiah. Most everyone else
believes such a move would launch a war with the world's 1
billion Muslims.
The fear of such an act is nonetheless keen. Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat recently showed a meeting of the Islamic Conference
Organization in Pakistan a photo montage sold by Temple advocates that
depicts the mount with the ancient Temple in the place of the
two mosques.
Arafat indicated that the current battle over a Jewish housing project in
East Jerusalem is but the first step on a path leading to the new
Temple. Last September, when Israel opened a new exit to an archeological
tunnel near the mount, Muslims rioted, saying the Jews
were seeking to bring down the mosques.
The vast majority of Jews fiercely reject dreams of returning to the
mount, content to have the one remnant of the Temple, the Western
Wall, as a symbolic link to a bygone era and leave it at that. And they
have been generally unworried about the zeal of a handful of
Temple faithful for two reasons.
First, to avoid friction with Muslims, the Israeli government forbids
Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. And second, the rabbis have
ruled that religious Jews may not even walk on most of the mount for fear
that, in their impure state, they will pollute the holiest of
earthly places.
But that is where the new heifer comes in.
In the days of the Temple, all who entered it had to be made spiritually
clean by being sprinkled with a substance whose main ingredient
came from the ashes of a red heifer burned in its third year.
A rare breed
The sages described the heifer as a rare breed. Only nine were recorded
in religious texts to have existed and the strain has long been
assumed extinct, thus making it impossible to contemplate a return to
Temple ritual.
Orthodox Jews still pray three times a day for the rebuilding of the
Temple.
But, Jewish scholars say, most have not taken the prayer
literally.
``It has always been a kind of nostalgia,'' remarked Daniel Sperber, an
Orthodox Jew and professor of Talmud at Bar Ilan University,
outside Tel Aviv. ``Most people relate the rebuilding of the Temple with
the coming of the Messiah. Until he turns up, we don't have to
worry much about it.''
But most religious Jews consider the mount to be an exceptionally holy,
if temporarily occupied, spot. They will not speculate on when
the Temple will replace the mosques but many believe that, one day, it
will.
The creation of Israel and the recapture of Jerusalem have reawakened a
belief among the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox community
that something divinely inspired is unfolding here. The red heifer is
simply the next sign.
A dozen rabbis have examined the calf and said she is the long-awaited
ritual heifer, meeting, so far, all the criteria described by the
ancients. If the calf lives unblemished for another 18 months, she can
theoretically be put to use.
``It is written that it is the 10th heifer that the Messiah will discover
and here we have the 10th heifer. This is a clear sign that the
Messiah is near,'' said Rabbi Ido Weber Erlich of Jerusalem in an
interview on Israel Radio.
For the workers at The Temple Institute, on a cobblestone alley inside
the rebuilt Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, the arrival of
the heifer is an inspiration.
The institute recreates the implements of the Temple, from the pale
flaxen robes worn by the priests to the golden incense jars and lyres
used at prayers. There is already a portrait of the new heifer on the
institute wall.
``For us, the heifer is a milestone,'' said Rabbi Menachem Makover,
deputy director of the institute. ``During the diaspora, everything
was missing. No one knew about the crown worn by the high priest, for
example. Now we see that everything that was gone is slowly
coming back.
``We used to say, `We don't have this,' or `We don't have that,' but that
is no longer an excuse. We still have political problems with the
Arabs. But from above someone is leading us to these tools. We didn't ask
for the red heifer. Suddenly it came.''
This is the kind of talk that makes Arabs and many Israelis nervous.
David Landau, a journalist with the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz, and
himself an Orthodox Jew, wrote an opinion piece recently titled,
``The Red Heifer: It's No Joke.'' in which he called on Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and his security services to take this
problem in hand now.
Landau says that while a bullet to the head of the calf might be the
ticket, less radical action might also be considered since any blemish
or irregularity to the calf would ruin it for liturgical purposes.
Rabbi Shore, who presides over the religious school here, says the only
execution carried out by Israel was that of the Nazi Adolf
Eichmann 35 years ago and if the state were to do the same to the red
heifer, ``I don't know whether I'd laugh or cry.''
Some rabbis are urging that the calf be used to breed a herd of red
heifers so that such an attack not end what has begun.
Shore says the heifer's arrival poses other, still-unsolved problems,
such as finding a ritually pure member of the priestly Cohen class to
slaughter it. But many difficulties in the renewal of Jewish life in
Israel have already been solved, he said, and this, too, might have a
solution.
``Some people say, `Blow up the mosques,' but I don't see it that way,''
he said. ``The Temple is at the core of the spiritual life of the
Jews, and it must come when the Jews are truly ready for it. Of course,
rebuilding the Temple may come as something violent and
hostile.
``The Temple Mount is the source of blessing for the entire world. It is
not just a piece of real estate. So this opportunity we have must
not be wasted.''
Hatikva Ministries: The Story
Several weeks(?) ago I received a newletter from Israel all concerning the
preparations and building of the Third Temple. In this newsletter was one
sentence that said that Rabbi Ariel of the Temple Institute announced that a
practice altar had been built and that a red heifer had been born. I
checked several other sources quickly, but to no avail. There was nothing to
be found for a couple of weeks. Then, one of the news services I receive
from Israel came out with the news, about a paragraph in length. It was
followed in the next two or three days with essentially the same information.
The news services confirmed that Rabbi Ariel was in attendance for inspection
and qualification of the red cow born at a kibbutz around Haifa named
Kfar Hassidim. In fact, Rabbi Ariel was one of two rabbis who confirmed that
this red heifer met all the restrictions to qualify as the 'parah adumah'.
The article went on to say that one of the parents of the cow was black and
white spot, the other parent was dun colored. No one expected a red cow
from these parents. The birth, therefore, is regarded as miraculous. There
were two white hairs on the cow that worried the rabbis at first, but did not
disqualify the animal. The article further announced that the cow was about 6
months old.
We had always suspected that the rabbis were looking into alternatives to
Clyde Lott's cows. After all, they don't owe us any information, and any we
have received from them has been quite welcome. We have always regarded Clyde
very highly, but it is clear that this red heifer is not of his herd,
which has yet to take place as far as we know.
By this time, there are several news groups who have shared the news of the
cow's birth, even news groups from Israel. There has been a great
amount of interest and excitement generated in the past few weeks concerning
this news.
My husband, Joseph Good, is in Israel even as I write this message. A couple
of days ago he and the group he was with were able to see this cow.
What follows is part of a letter I sent to one of our staff (and a copy to
several friends). It is the account, as well as I could remember, of Joseph
told me over the phone several hours after he had seen the red heifer.
Dear Brian,
Just heard the big scoop from Joe regarding the red heifer. Here are the
details of what he has described. As predicted, he described her
as a red cow. I had to pry a little more information from him.
It appears that all three of the major networks: NBC, ABC, CBS and some
top newscaster (the name of which escapes Joe) have
requested opportunity to film the red heifer. They were denied. The rabbi
at the kibbutz told Joe that the group he was with was the 'first
among the nations' to view and film her.
Joe says that the little heifer is not so little anymore, she is a rather
large animal (after all, she is at least six months old). He described
her as being burnt red in color. When I asked him if it appeared she
would grow horns (this has been the subject of much controversy
among local Chavurah studies) he replied that yes, she was developing
horns.
He went on to add that it is now documented by the rabbi and film crew
that she will be ready for sacrifice in Elul 1998.
The cow apparently took quite a liking to Joe as she licked him from head
to toe and tried to nibble at his vest. I considered this unsafe
for the animal, but Joe was able to get close enough to her to be covered
in cow drool.
There is discussion and rumor among non-Jews that this heifer is not
recognized by the Temple Institute. On the contrary, every news
release regarding the announcement has named Rabbi Ariel of the Temple
Institute as having been one of the rabbi's who inspected and
qualified her. In addition, news has spread all over Israel and the ban
on Orthodox Jews ascending the Temple Mount has been lifted.
The kibbutz, Kfar Hassidim, is not Chassidic, but is Orthodox. They were
not planning on the birth of parah adumah, and were very
surprised by her appearance. She is considered an animal fit for the
required sacrifice and her appearance is regarded as miraculous.
There is more that I either did not hear, or he is saving for another
time. We may have to wait for him to return to the states before we
have much more news. One of the chief questions, which I will try to get
answered, is 'what special precautions in the care of this animal
are being taken?'
I will send information as more is given. The parah adumah has generated
a lot of interest, curiosity, and enthusiam. I'll let you know as
things develope.
end of letter
Since talking with Joseph again, he said that the heifer is in isolation. In
addition, he said her horns were small, as she is not full-grown, but they are
pointed on the ends, indicating that they are not just nubs.
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