No, Red Cows Won’t Spark War in Israel

I have little time for CBS News. Like NBC, ABC, and CNN, its stories on the Middle East regularly treat the absurd casualty figures offered by Hamas as trustworthy, without the least note of their faulty methodology and their failure of elementary tests of statistical probability. They take the questionable premises of Ben Rhodes as a starting point and refer to Jewish settlements as obstacles to peace when in every bit of land under Palestinian or Muslim control east of Tunisia, only the barest skeleton of a Jewish community remains. These networks turn attention away from the ongoing plight of the hostages, both American and Israeli, at Hamas’s hands, and play up the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza as if it were not the fault of the Hamas war criminals — as if only Israel were responsible, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

But my editor here turned my attention to a piece that appeared on CBS on March 7, which, while typically myopic and distorted (how many ways the reality can be misread!), was at least interesting and unusual. (READ MORE: Israeli Retaliation vs. Restraint)

The piece begins by citing a Hamas listing of Israeli crimes — nothing special here — that suddenly veers into something weird. Abu Ubaida, a Hamas spokesperson, accused Israel of “bringing red cows” to Israel.

Red Heifers Aren’t Part of a Scary Plot

As an American Spectator reader, you are more likely than most in today’s America to know Scripture and so to guess what he was talking about: The red heifer mentioned in the Book of Numbers (Chapter 19). 

You may also understand that the connection of the red heifer to any plot has nothing to do with its insidiousness. Yes, the Jews have prayed and continue to pray every day — at least those who use the traditional prayerbook rather than one modified by progressivism — for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. That has been going on three times a day at least since the Second Temple was destroyed. There is nothing new here, except for those who have found Jewish hope criminal, blasphemous, or satanic, many of whom are leaders of Middle East violence. (READ MORE: Surprise! The New (And Old) Palestinian Authority Is Jihadist)

So, what is this red heifer business, then, if not a scary recidivist plot?

Leviticus and Numbers set up a system by which holiness remains alive and palpable in the community’s experience. If one treats a holy place like a locker room, it doesn’t feel holy for very long. The Bible speaks of a system by which people become aware of tum’a, “impurity,” and tahara, “purity. ” We tend to think of purity as meaning an absence of some contaminant. In the biblical system, it means an absence of life.

In almost every case, biblical impurity is triggered by the removal of a person’s life force. The most obvious case is death, which is called in the Jewish legal tradition the “grandfather of impurities.” Being in contact with a corpse, walking over a grave, or being under the same roof as a corpse, even with no physical contact, can cause impurity.

Under Jewish law it is a great mitzvah, a deed that connects you with God’s purpose in life, to attend personally to the dead, and to prepare a body for burial by washing and clothing it. Yet everyone involved contracts this grandfather of impurities. Clearly, tum’a is not a consequence of ungodly behavior, it just means that we need to be in a different state when we come into the holy grounds of the Temple or partake of food from the sacrifices or other sorts of holy foods mentioned in Scripture.

Every kind of tum’a can be overcome. It is a cycle in life. Most impurities involve waiting one day and immersion in a pool of water (properly prepared) or certain natural bodies of water. Others require longer a longer wait.

Approaching the Holy Mount

The impurity from death requires not only a seven-day wait and an immersion, but it also uniquely requires the ‘impure’ person to be sprinkled with a mixture of special water taken from a spring and mixed with the ashes of a red heifer that had been specially sacrificed and then burnt. There are many details involved, most of them crucial, as outlined in Numbers 23 and elaborated on in the ancient Jewish law sources. 

The problem is that the last bit of ashes from the last red heifer that met all the requirements was used up nearly two millennia ago. 

What is the consequence of that? It doesn’t affect daily life unless you were to go to the Temple — not your local modern temple, but the Temple in Jerusalem built on Mt. Moriah in the place where Isaac was offered as a sacrifice and where Jewish tradition has it that the earth from which Adam was created was taken (“from the place where he was made he finds atonement”).

But there is no Temple today, so how does that affect anyone?

Jewish law holds that even though the Temple is not standing, holiness has never left the Temple site. That is why, if you ascend to the top of the Temple Mount, you will see signs in several languages noting that it is forbidden by Jewish law to enter the place where the Temple courtyard stood because all are presumed made impure by death and, without the ashes of the red heifer, that situation cannot be remedied. (READ MORE: A Very Unhappy Anniversary)

So, the appearance of some heifers which still look to be properly red is the cause of some excitement, though of no great plot. If they are raised to the proper age and remain qualified, it may be possible to enter the Temple precincts without violating the biblical command.

There is nothing to fear from that. After all, who does not respect another religion’s holy places in today’s enlightened world? Just as Jews were finally readmitted to pray in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where our Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried, and have shared it with our Muslim cousins, no doubt something positive and peaceful is attainable here, too. If we do not believe it ourselves then let’s rely on the prophecy of Isaiah, who declared in God’s voice, “For My House will be called a House of Prayer for all peoples.”

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