This is a Jewish thing.
To have a functioning Temple in Jerusalem, or at least a working sanctuary (mishkan), you need priests, and not just priests, but priests who are in a state of ritual purity. To have priests who are in a state of ritual purity, you must have the ashes of a red heifer, as outlined in a ritual found in the Torah. The ritual must be performed by priests who are already in a state of ritual purity. But there are no priests now who are in a state of ritual purity, which has always been a problem for those who want to re-establish a functioning Temple. So has the apparent absence of a red heifer, meaning no calves have been recorded in modern history who meet the basic requirement of having a hide with all red hairs.
But never fear, the folks at the Temple Institute, who have been working to solve all the problems which would have to solved in re-establishing the Temple, have now announced that they think they have found the genetic code that would allow them to clone a red heifer, and that they have a plan to produce ritual pure priests:
the only solution would be to find priestly families who are willing to give up their children immediately after their birth for a special mission: to have them raised and prepared in conditions of isolation and purity for at least 13 years, so that they can handle the next red heifer, if and when it returns.…
This is a rather ambitious, and somewhat chancy plan–for one thing, it relies on the hope that the boys in question would not have any wet dreams (much less any, shall we say, explorations of sex twelve and thirteen year old boys have been known to engage in) before they reached the age of thirteen and actually performed the ritual. (I would presume that the isolation and purity would be arranged to minimize the chance of such occurrences, but nature is nature.) It also requires finding families who have unquestionably legitimate descent from the priestly caste of the Second Temple (which includes not only biological descent from Aaron in the unbroken paternal line, but also no marriages by such descendants of Aaron that would bar the offspring from being admitted to the status of priests in the intervening 1900 years.)But 2021 or later may turn out to be an interesting year in the Holy Land.
The official religious view that no one should step foot on the Temple Mount is also changing.
The consensus against going up on the Temple Mount also seems to be breaking apart. Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler went up last week, and several major haredi rabbis have recently gone up – sans publicity.
The reason for the change? It has become clear the Palestinians are doing so much damage to the Mount that even haredim now realize the need for Jews to reclaim it for ourselves – or at least reassert our rights[my emphasis]
Via Failed Messiah, which has links to fuller details.
Tags: Jerusalem, Red Heifer, Third Temple
