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A religious ritual, which the Jews believe is necessary to purify themselves from the impurities of the dead, which for them cannot be removed except by sprinkling the impure thing with water mixed with the ashes of a pure “red cow”, with no blemish on it, and which has never been subjected to service or carried on its back. This ritual is considered a religious practice that is impossible to perform, and its conditions are difficult to meet, so the Jews were unable to perform it over the course of their long history, except 9 times, the last of which was nearly 2,000 years ago.
The appearance of the "Tenth Red Cow" represents great importance to the Jews, as they believe that it is a "sign from God" to allow them to ascend the "Temple Mount", that is, enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was forbidden to them due to desecration, and then demolish it to build the "Third Temple" on its ruins. They believe that this is a prelude to the appearance of the “Messiah the Savior” and the achievement of salvation for the Jewish people.
In 2022, the priests in the occupying state obtained 5 red cows, which were declared to have the conditions that qualify them for the “Tenth Cow” ritual. As the cows entered their third year, at the beginning of 2024, Jewish organizations, in cooperation with the Israeli authorities, began preparations for the ritual, which must be implemented - According to Jewish beliefs - on the second day of the month of Nisan according to the Hebrew calendar, which corresponds to April 10 of this year according to the Gregorian calendar.
Religious roots
The ritual of purification with the ashes of the red cow is considered one of the religious obligations that Jews celebrate, and they attach great importance to it. It is also considered one of the religious beliefs embraced by Protestants and fundamentalist Christianity, which is based on the teachings of the “Old Testament” and believes in the return of Christ to earth.
The imposition of the ritual of purification goes back to the Old Testament, as the texts of “Chapter 19” of the “Book of Numbers”, one of the books attributed to the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, mention that the Lord commanded the Prophet Moses to search for a pure red cow, to purify it from the impurity of the dead. It was also mentioned in the “Mishna” section of the “Talmud”, which is the rabbis’ explanations of the Torah, and is considered one of the most important religious sources for the Jews.
The idea of this belief is that the Jews must purify themselves with the ashes of a pure red cow, from the impurities of the dead, which have forms, including: touching the body of the dead, or being with him in one place, or passing by a funeral, or touching one of the graves, or walking over it, Or touching a dead bone.
Whoever does not purify himself from the impurity will remain impure throughout his life, and will transfer the impurity to the people and things he touches. As for whoever touches a person who has become impure with the dead or touches an impure animal, he will remain impure until the evening.
Conditions that must be met by a cow
A set of conditions must be met by the cow in order for it to be suitable for slaughter and purification. If one of them is not present, the cow becomes unfit for this ritual. These conditions are:
Her hair must be pure red, not tinged with any other color, even if it is two hairs, because within her color there are two hairs of another color, and she becomes unfit for purification.
Its horns, hooves and eyelashes should be red.
She was not subjected to any kind of work, no rope was placed around her neck, no one rode her back or leaned on her, she did not carry weight on her back, and no male animal climbed on her back, with the exception of birds.
To be free from defects, diseases and deformities.
To be raised in the Land of Israel.
She has never been mated.
It must have entered its third year at the time of slaughter, according to the most widely followed opinion.
Whoever is born with a red cow that meets the aforementioned descriptions, he must report it, and then the priests examine it and compare it with the conditional descriptions, and it remains under close supervision to ensure that it conforms to the conditions, and that none of them is violated or anything that contradicts them appears until the time of slaughter. It is transferred in the last period before the ritual to the Jerusalem (Jerusalem), walking through the streets of the city under the eyes of the people, then transported to the Temple until the day of sacrifice.
The availability of these conditions is not an easy matter. Obtaining the red cow has always cost the Jews a lot of money. According to their belief, one cow is enough to purify the entire Jewish people, and its ashes can also be kept for the purpose of purification for many years.
There is an interest among Jewish cow breeders in raising red-colored cows, perhaps they will provide the mashed cow for the ritual (Al-Jazeera)
The time and place of performing the ritual
Jewish teachings indicate that purification rituals are carried out on the second of the month of Nisan according to the Hebrew calendar. It was stated in the Talmud that the Prophet Moses slaughtered the first red cow on that day, and all red cows were slaughtered after that on the same day.
All the Red Cows rituals - except the first - were held on the Mount of Olives, which is located east of the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, opposite the eastern wall of Jerusalem, and overlooking Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The wise men of the Children of Israel meet before slaughtering any cow to discuss the selection of the location for the ritual, so that a new location is chosen for each cow. The place of slaughter and burning is required to be completely clean and far from desecration, and the place of burning must be large enough to store containers of ashes for several days before mixing them with water.
Red cow slaughter ritual
The ritual is based on slaughtering a red cow and burning it. During the burning, cedar wood, hyssop and wool dyed dark crimson are added during the burning. Then the ashes are collected and pounded, and placed in a vessel containing pure water, and the person whose impurity is to be removed is sprinkled with it, in a process that lasts 7 days, until the impurity is removed from him. The impure person is sprinkled with water on the third day, and purification does not become acceptable until he is sprinkled on the seventh day.
The deputy high priest specifically supervises the ritual, as it is stated in Jewish teachings that the Lord assigned Eliezer the task in the first cow, and did not assign the high priest Aaron. The appointed priest prepares for 7 days, staying in a stone room in the temple - where they believe that the stone is not affected by defilement - and during this period, he must not eat or drink except from stone vessels, and must not touch a person or thing that defiles him.
When slaughtering, it is required that a group of wise men and a crowd of the children of Israel be present, especially men, and all the priests and others who attend must prepare for the occasion by baptizing with pure water, and the priest in charge of the ritual is sprinkled with water mixed with the ashes of the previous cow.
The cow is slaughtered in front of the appointed priest, then its blood is sprinkled towards the temple 7 times. He does not participate in the slaughter, burning, collecting ashes, or sprinkling water. Rather, another pure man performs each of the tasks.
The promised red cow was brought from the US state of Texas to Israel in 2022 (social networking sites)
The whole cow is burned, including the meat, skin, blood, and dung, and three pure male boys, aged between 7 and 8 years, are assigned to collect the ashes. They are required to grow up in the service of the Lord in stone courtyards that are hollowed out at the bottom, to ensure that there is no grave beneath them, and great care is taken that they do not walk. Above the graves. They are assisted in the collection by a pure man, who was vowed from birth to this task, raised according to Jewish law, and subjected to strict supervision, such that he never handles the bodies of the dead so as not to lose his purity.
On the day of performing the ritual, the boys are carried on bulls, to ensure that no impurities are attached to them during their journey to the place of slaughter and burning, or they are transported with the priest across the second floor of a bridge built of stone between the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque) and the Mount of Olives.
Then the boys crush what remains of the cow after burning it and collect the ashes. They use hammers and stone sieves to do so. The ashes are kept in stone containers in a clean place for 3 days, then mixed with pure water. The boys bring it before the day of sacrifice from the pool of Silwan, located in the village of Silwan, south of the city. Jerusalem.
Water mixed with ashes, or what is called “water of impurity,” is sprinkled on everyone who is defiled, all of the people, the belongings, and the place on which the temple will be built, and some of it is kept in every city to carry out the necessary cleansing of the one who has been defiled.
While the cow purifies those who are defiled, it also defiles - according to Jewish beliefs - everyone who performs the rituals. The priest and everyone who participates in the rituals of slaughter, burning, collecting ashes, and sprinkling water are impure that day until the evening, and must wash his clothes and body with water.
Nine cows
Throughout the long history of the Children of Israel, the Jews - as their sources state - were able to sacrifice only 9 cows, which are:
The First Cow:
It was prepared by the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, and it was in the first month of the fortieth year of the wandering, which corresponds to about the year 1455 BC. The ritual was performed by the deputy high priest, Eliezer.
The Second Cow:
Prepared by Ezra in 515 BC.
The third and fourth cow:
prepared by Simon the Just in 275 BC.
The Fifth and Sixth Cow:
Prepared by the High Priest of the Children of Israel, Johanan, in 200 BC.
The Seventh Cow:
Prepared by Al-Yu'ini ibn Caifa in 70 BC.
The Eighth Cow:
Prepared by the Egyptian Hananmal in 37 BC.
The Ninth Cow:
Prepared by Ismail bin Fabus in 59 AD.
The first cow was slaughtered in the “Wilderness of Kadesh,” which is located in the “Wilderness of Sin” in Wadi Araba, between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea, and it was burned completely, including the flesh, bone, skin, blood, and dung - as stated in the teachings - and the Jews were purified with it, and they kept the ashes. After that, even during the Babylonian captivity, to use it in purification, until the second cow was slaughtered after about 940 years.
As for the other eight cows, they were all slaughtered and rituals were held for each one in a different place on the Mount of Olives, after the construction of the Second Temple, during the reign of the Persian Emperor Darius I. The cow was burned in a stone pit 3 meters long and 3 meters wide, and it included 6 niches. A stone chamber to store the vessels in which the ashes were collected. The priest in charge would stand at the top of the pit on a large platform to spread some of the blood of the cow after the slaughter towards the door of the temple.
The ashes of the first cow were kept in a clean place outside the camp, while the ashes of the eight cows after that were placed in stone vessels. Then the ashes of each cow were kept in a different place from the others, in stone pits on the Mount of Olives.
The tenth cow
The Jews have not been able to obtain the “tenth red cow” and purify it for nearly 2000 years. Obtaining the specific specifications in the red cow has always been extremely difficult. In addition, the Second Temple was demolished in 70 AD, and the Jews were expelled from the Holy Land and dispersed throughout the country.
The tenth cow has special importance for the Jews, as it plays a pivotal role in the plan to build the “Third Temple.” They believe that they are a “people who have been defiled” for dozens of centuries, and they have no salvation except by purifying themselves with the ashes of the red heifer, so that they can “climb the Temple Mount,” that is, enter. Al-Aqsa Mosque, in preparation for its demolition and the construction of the “Temple of Solomon” on its ruins. The ritual of purification with the ashes of the tenth cow is also an indication of the outbreak of the battle of “Armageddon,” which the Jews believe is a prelude to the appearance of Christ the Savior, and the achievement of the salvation of the Jews.
The Jews' search for the red cow, to perform purification rituals, began since the establishment of the occupying state in Palestine in 1948, and then they were able to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was forbidden to them according to the Grand Rabbinate's fatwa for the Jews, until they were purified from the impurities of the dead.
More than 1.25 million members of the religious Haredi movement, who constitute about 13% of the population of Israel, condemn the fatwa, and they are awaiting the implementation of the ritual of the Tenth Cow to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Find the cow
In 1996, a red cow was born on a farm in Kfar Hasidim, near Jaffa. She was placed under the supervision of rabbis, and after a year she lost her ability to perform rituals, as white hairs appeared on her tail.
The matter was repeated in 2002, when it was announced that a red cow had been born, but after a few months it was discovered that it was not fit. In 2018, the Temple Institute announced the birth of a red cow, but news about it stopped after that, indicating the emergence of something that obscures its validity.
In September 2022, the occupying state received 5 red cows that were born on a farm in the American city of Texas. When the cows were brought into Israel, they received exceptional facilities from the Ministry of Agriculture, and were not subject to mandatory examination or the affixation of cow seals.
It is believed that the five cows were produced through genetic engineering, to be suitable for ritual conditions, which contradicts Jewish religious teachings, which stipulate that cows are born naturally.
Prepare for the ritual
At the beginning of 2024, the cows that were cared for in the “old Shilo” settlement, which was built on the ruins of “Khirbet Silun” northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, entered their third year, which means that they became fit for slaughter, and accordingly, preparations began for Israel to carry out the ritual, the timing of its implementation in 2024 coincides with Eid al-Fitr, that is, April 10 in the Gregorian calendar.
Many parties in the occupying state are behind the preparations for the implementation of the Red Cow ritual, and these parties also supervised the process of searching for and caring for the cows, the most important of which is: the “Build Israel” organization, which includes evangelical Christians and extremist Jews, led by Tzachi Memo. The Temple Institute is headed by Yisrael Ariel, the second figure in the far-right Kach movement.
Both left-wing and right-wing Israeli governments fully support the measures to prepare for the Red Heifer ritual, which enjoys massive support from the Ministry of National Security, led by Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and the Ministry of Finance, headed by Bezalel Smotrich.
The occupation authorities launched a project to search for Silwan Pool, of which only a part is visible. The Ministry of Jerusalem presented a proposed design to build a park on the Mount of Olives to serve the celebration of the burning of the tenth cow.
In late March 2024, extremist Jewish religious groups held a conference in the “Old Shilo” settlement, in which about 100 rabbis from various religious movements participated, with the aim of discussing the necessary preparations for slaughtering and burning the Red Cow. The Temple Mount Administration, the Israeli Ministry of Education, and the Department of Jewish Culture in the Ministry of Settlement and National Infrastructure participated in the conference.
The Temple Institute also published an advertisement asking for volunteer priests to train them in the rituals of slaughter, burning, and purification. It stipulated that the volunteer must be born in a home or hospital in Jerusalem, in order to avoid being defiled by the impurity of the dead.
Source: Al Jazeera + websites