Red Heifer
As promised.
Last night's Ash Wednesday sermon was on Numbers 19, a portion of which is reproduced below:
2 "This is a requirement of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. 3 Give it to Eleazar the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. 4 Then Eleazar the priest is to take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. 5 While he watches, the heifer is to be burned-its hide, flesh, blood and offal....17 "For the unclean person, put some ashes from the burned purification offering into a jar and pour fresh water over them. 18 Then a man who is ceremonially clean is to take some hyssop, dip it in the water and sprinkle the tent and all the furnishings and the people who were there. He must also sprinkle anyone who has touched a human bone or a grave or someone who has been killed or someone who has died a natural death....
Allusion was made to the fact that there have been some modern events regarding red heifers. I finally did the research. This article dates from April 2002:
So how does the calf recently born in Israel figure into things? As Gorenberg explains, the ashes of a flawless red heifer — an extremely rare creature — were required by the ancient Hebrews to purify worshipers who went into the Temple to pray. In modern times, rabbinical law forbids Jews from setting foot on the Temple Mount, thus violating the site where the Holy of Holies dwelled, until and unless they are ritually purified. Without a perfect red heifer to sacrifice, the Third Temple cannot be built, and Moshiach — the Messiah — will not come. Writes Gorenberg, "[Israeli] government officials and military leaders could only regard the requirement for the missing heifer as a stroke of sheer good fortune preventing conflict over the Mount."
In 1996, thanks in part to a cattle-breeding program set up in Israel with the help of Texas ranchers who are fundamentalist Christians, a red heifer was born. There was immense excitement among messianists of the Israeli religious Right, and their American Christian counterparts. The world media covered it as a joke, but it wasn't funny to David Landau, columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz. He called the red heifer "a four-legged bomb" that could "set the entire region on fire." Muslim leaders worried about the red heifer too, as they would see an attempt by Jews to take over the Temple Mount as a sign of the Islamic apocalypse.
As it turned out, during the three years of waiting for the heifer to reach the ritually mandated age of sacrifice, white hairs popped out on the tip of her tail. This bovine was, alas, not divine. But now there's a successor, and rabbis who have examined her have declared her ritually acceptable (though she will not be ready for sacrifice for three years). She arrives at a time when Israel is fighting a war for survival with the Palestinians, who are almost entirely Muslim, and a time in which Islam and the West appear to be girding for battle with each other, as Islamic tradition predicts will be the state of the world before the Final Judgment.
Well, bad news:
In 2000, Bill Clinton walked out of Camp David as the talks for peace collapsed. George W. Bush hasn't even addressed the Palestine issue, WHY?
"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. This is the guy that plotted to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Little did he know that the Heifer was NOT the one God promised at all.
So in comes a little self-fulfilling prophesy to fix everything up and make it better. After the failure to PRODUCE a Red Heifer naturally, a Texas breeder was hired to craft another cow in Israel. Well, that cow was well made and in April 2002 it was declared that another Red Heifer was born. A lot of devout people weren't happy because the cow wasn't naturally 'kosher' shall we say.
In November of 2002 it was proclaimed that this cow was disqualified as well.
More information at ccg.org.
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I think we could become friends...