A red heifer born last month in the hills of the Galilee, sired by imported American semen and born to a black-coated mother, has reignited a coordinated national campaign among Israeli rabbis, breeders, and educators to restore the lost laws of ritual purity to the Jewish people. The campaign arrives at a moment when public appetite for Temple-related preparation appears to be surging: a recent survey found 55 percent of Israeli Jews now support rebuilding the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount, and a report published this week put the number of men enrolled in Temple service training at 150,000, out of a planned 200,000. “This is not a private event or private issue,” declared Yehuda Ben Tzvi, head of programming at the Mikdash Educational Center, in an interview with Joseph Good of Hatikva Ministries. The calf, he announced, is only one piece of a six-point national strategy the organization has spent the past year building, one Ben Tzvi insists must become “a national historical event” rather than the work of a small circle of activists.
The campaign’s appeal to ordinary Israelis is no longer confined to grassroots circles. On Sunday, Israel365 News published an editorial by Yosef Eitan reporting that the government has quietly called for training 200,000 men in the procedures of Temple service, with 150,000 already enrolled. The Israeli government itself has not formally endorsed the broader Temple movement, but the figures Eitan cited suggest the Israeli public increasingly has. Last week, Israel365 News reported on a new survey commissioned by the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation and conducted by the Direct Polls Institute, which found that support among Israeli Jews for rebuilding the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) on Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount) now stands at 55 percent.
Ben Tzvi, who lives in Jerusalem overlooking the Temple Mount and descends from a family of Leviim (Levites), opened the conversation by describing his life’s work. “I spend my nights and days reminding myself, the Jewish people, and the rest of the world to love Jerusalem, never forget Jerusalem,” he said, before turning to what he called “an epic historic two years” for the Jewish people. “It’s not all about arms and strength and the military effort,” Ben Tzvi said, “but it’s also about faith, about the inner strength, remembering who we are, why we are here, what is the destiny of the Jewish people.”
The centerpiece of the interview is the new calf, discovered by a team member of the National Red Heifer Institute who works at a breeding farm using semen imported from the United States. “Fascinatingly enough,” Ben Tzvi said, “a beautiful red heifer was born around a month ago, and she was, funnily enough, discovered by one of our team members from the National Red Heifer Institute.” He emphasized the unlikely genetics involved. “A red heifer born from a black Angus, but she was tip to toe 100 percent pure.” The calf has been named Tamima, meaning whole or unblemished. “We named her Tamima in a prayer that she will remain Tamim, whole, both in body and in redness of her coat,” Ben Tzvi said.
The law of the red heifer, parah adumah in Hebrew, comes directly from the book of Numbers: “This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is no blemish, and on which never came a yoke” (Numbers 19:2).
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