A calf was born in a dairy barn in the Jordan Valley last week, and on Rosh Chodesh Elul, a delegation of rabbis stood over her, running their hands through her coat. She was the third heifer of her kind to be born in Israel this season, joining two others already under watch in the Galilee and the Golan Heights.
Together, the three calves represent the most concrete progress yet toward a goal Jewish tradition has pursued since the destruction of the Second Temple: raising a red heifer whose ashes can restore ritual purity to the Jewish people.
The examinations were carried out by the Beit Midrash, the rabbinic study hall, of the National Institute for Red Heifer Research, a body that unites religious Zionist, Litvish, and Hasidic rabbis around a single national mission. Members of the Institute traveled to all three farms in a single sweep, checking the calves from tail to head for the disqualifying flaws that have derailed nearly every red heifer candidate in living memory.
The requirements come directly from the Hebrew Bible. “This is the ritual law that Hashem has commanded: Instruct the Israelites to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid” (Numbers 19:2). Since the Second Temple’s destruction nearly two thousand years ago, the ashes of such a cow have been unavailable, leaving every Jew in a state of ritual impurity from contact with the dead, a status the Bible calls tumat met. Without those ashes, the purification described in the Torah cannot take place, and full Temple service cannot resume. That is why a light hair on a newborn calf is not a minor veterinary detail. It is the difference between a heifer that can eventually serve the nation and one that cannot.
The first stop was Beit Rimon in the Galilee, where the heifer given the name Temimah, meaning “unblemished” or “whole,” was examined three months after her birth. Temimah’s case has been the most closely watched of the three, because a farmhand attached an identification tag to her ear shortly after birth, before anyone recognized what she might become. The tag raised concern that it may have caused a disqualifying blemish.
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