On March 5, CBS News posted an article and video by Chris Livesay. The video was full of blatant inaccuracies, which all had one thing in common: portraying Bible-Observant Jews as religious fanatics intent on murdering Palestinians and cleansing Israel of any Islamic presence.
The article opened by citing Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida who claimed that the reason for the massacre on October 7 by Hamas “militants” was because “the Jews” had brought five red heifers to Israel. In a disgusting case of blaming the victim, that absurd statement shifted the blame from Hamas to the Jews and entirely ignored the Hamas charter written in 1988 in which the terrorist organization announced its intent to murder every Jew on the planet. Countless thousands of rockets and terrorist attacks can attest to their sincerity in carrying out that genocide. October 7 was just another attack, albeit their most successful to date.
Yet CBS and Livesay seem to believe that the cause of the attack on October 7 was motivated by the arrival of five cows one and a half years ago.
He also claimed that “some Jews and Christians believe they’re key to rebuilding the Jewish temple that once stood in Jerusalem, and to beckoning the Messiah”. That is a misrepresentation and twisting of Jewish theology. Jews believe that we can hasten the inevitable arrival of the Messiah by serving God and performing Biblical commandments, such as praying and keeping the Shabbat. The red heifer is simply one of those commandments.
Livesay wrote an article about the Red Heifer but did not speak to the Temple Institute, which is in charge of the Red Heifer project, or Rabbi Azariah Ariel, who is tasked with overseeing the project. This writer did interview Rabbi Ariel and this is his response:
“The main reason to recreate the red heifer is that it’s one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah. One of them happens to be the red heifer ceremony,” Rabbi Ariel explained. “We do not do the ritual of the red heifer so that the Messiah will come so that God will do something like this or like that. He doesn’t work for us. God commanded us to prepare the red heifer, and that is what we do.”
“The messiah is something separate. It is written in the Torah so we know it will come.”
Livesay went on to write:
“To understand, you have to look back almost 2,000 years in the tumultuous history of the Middle East, when the ancient Romans destroyed the last temple in Jerusalem.”
“To rebuild it, fervent believers point to the Bible’s Book of Numbers, which commands the Israelites to offer a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke.”
“Only with that offering, they insist, can the temple rise again.”
No, Mr. Livesay, the Book of Numbers was NOT written in response to the Romans destroying the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Book of Numbers (Bamidbar, in the original Hebrew) is one of the five books of the Torah that Jews believe was given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai. And, Mr. Livesay, if you find it difficult to believe the Jews, every Biblical scholar who has ever expressed an opinion would agree that the Book of Numbers predates the destruction of the Second Temple by at least several hundred years.
This makes me wonder which sources you chose to believe.
And there is no source that claims that the purpose of performing the mitzvah of the red heifer is to reinstate the temple in Jerusalem.
Mr. Livesay, you also wrote: “What stands in the temple’s place now: The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, which are among the holiest sites in Islam.”
It would have been more accurate to say that the Dome of the Rock was built on top of Judaism’s holiest site, using materials stolen from the ruins of our Temple. The Dome of the Rock was actually built as a shrine commemorating the Jewish Temple and not for any reason connected to Islam.
Al Aqsa Mosque (the further mosque) was so named based on a myth created during the Umayyad Dynasty, 50 years after Mohammad died, claiming the founder of Islam (who, the Koran claims never left Saudi Arabia) had made a miraculous overnight journey on a winged donkey in order to pray at the mosque that had not yet been built. Most Sunnis, especially those in Saudi Arabia, would be deeply insulted by the claim that Al Aqsa Mosque is in Jerusalem. They believe that the Al Aqsa Mosque is in Al Juraana, Saudi Arabia.
You also wrote: “Today, heavily armed guards ensure that only Muslims are allowed inside the complex. But that hasn’t stopped Jewish activists, like Melissa Jane Kronfeld, from leading groups up the Temple Mount five days every week.”
Yes, you saw that a state of anti-Jewish religious inequality is being enforced on the Temple Mount in contravention of Israeli and international law. And, as your statement indicates, this is entirely due to Palestinian violence.
While you cite Dr. Kronfeld’s belief that the Temple will be rebuilt and this could necessarily mean the destruction or moving of the Dome of the Rock, this prospect seems more horrifying to you than the destruction of the Jewish temples which Jews commemorate on a regular basis until this day.
You wrote: “It’s a suggestion that many fear, if acted upon, could make the current war even bloodier, and see it spread rapidly beyond the Gaza Strip.”
I would like to remind you that Israel already fought and won a war for Jerusalem in 1967. Or did your researchers miss that as well? If we want to pray, or even build a Temple, we have every right to do so.
But we don’t. For Jews, Jerusalem is the city of peace, a place to worship God, and the focus of our prayers since King David purchased it. For the Palestinians, Al Aqsa was neglected until the Jews conquered it in 1967 and they resurrected a story that not even they believed. For the Palestinians, the Temple Mount is the current excuse to murder Jews.
And, by the way, your cameraman should be fired. While you were narrating about the Aqsa Mosque, the dark gray dome on the southern end of the Temple Mount Complex, he was filming the gold-plated Dome of the Rock located at the center of the complex.
The video also featured a large white structure. The voiceover stated, “A massive altar already awaits, where the heifers are to be burned.”
That was a lie. The structure in the video is a model of the altar as it stood in the Temple. The real altar must be made of stone. The model, located in Mitzpe Yericho, is used for Temple service reenactments and educational purposes. It is not made of stone and cannot be used for the Temple service.
The model altar in Mitzpe Yericho (screenshot from CBS News)
The red heifer is not burned on an altar; it is burned on a pyre of wood, and it may only be burned on the Mount of Olives. Nothing you said is accurate.
You claim that most Jews do not share Kronfeld’s dream. What is your source for that? Every religious Jew has been praying three times a day for 2,000 years for the reconstruction of Jerusalem. Perhaps you don’t think that the opinion of religious Jews for 2,000 years counts for much.
And you worry about inciting Islamist groups. Do you want to know what really incites them? The fact that Jews are alive. Just ask them. It is written in the Hamas charter and they scream it in the streets of Iran, the US, and Europe. They don’t conceal their motives.
You note that the Hamas emblem features the Dome of the Rock behind two crossed swords and the Oct. 7 attack was called the Al Aqsa wave. If the site was truly significant to Hamas, they would either have had an image of Al Aqsa Mosque or they would have called the attack the Qubbat aṣ-Ṣakhra (shrine of the rock) wave. And I find it more than a bit disgusting that nowhere in your article do you condemn or even decry the Oct. 7 attack or the murder of Israelis carried out by Hamas “militants.
You wrote, “Most Muslims do not support Hamas’ violence”. Again, what is your source? Indeed, a recent survey indicates that half of US Muslims support Hamas and 21% judged the Oct 7 to be acceptable.
Every survey has shown that the vast majority of Palestinians support what Hamas did on Oct. 7. And many Muslims and even non-Muslims supported the Oct. 7 attack. The United Nations has failed to condemn it and there are even several US politicians who are so busy condemning Israel that they cannot find the time to condemn Hamas.
You failed to do basic research about the red heifer. The ritual burning of the red heifer must be carried out on the Mount of Olives on a plot of land that Rabbi Yitzchak Mamo legally purchased many years ago. Jewish law requires bringing public time-bound sacrifices even if we are ritually impure. According to Jewish law, we are deficient in our ritual obligations if we do not bring these sacrifices. This does not require a temple structure. It requires a stone altar, essentially a pile of rocks that can be constructed in ten minutes and removed in even less time.
But the Jewish nation has not done so, even though we captured the Temple Mount in 1967 and have the military strength to do so today. Israel has a law requiring the freedom of all religions. By preventing Jews from expressing religious equality on the Temple Mount, the Israeli police are breaking the law. We have to do so because the Palestinians oppose religious equality. They want all of the holy sites, even those that are only relevant to Judaism, to be exclusively Muslim. And they actually believe it is praiseworthy to achieve this at the edge of a sword (as the Hamas emblem graphically illustrates).
Yet, among all of the inaccuracies you wrote, you did not mention any of this in your article.
Indeed, the articles you have written in the past condemn Israel but not Hamas. You portray Netanyahu as an enemy of the US. Netanyahu grew up in the same town I did in Pennsylvania. While Netanyahu formed a coalition with right-wing parties, he is a centrist. And Israel is currently being governed by a unity coalition which includes the left-wing.
Mr. Livesay, I hope that at one point in your career, you aspired to be a journalist to inform the public. In this article, you failed in that aspiration. It was propaganda that portrayed the Jewish religion and our connection to Jerusalem as the source of violence in the Middle East. Gaza exists because in 2005, Israel was willing to remove all the Jews from the area. It was a painful move but we have always hoped to live in peace. In Israel, we live alongside two million Arabs who are full Israeli citizens. The Arab countries expelled 800,000 Jews. A Jew who sets foot in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority can expect to be murdered. The two-state solution will only make that worse, bringing Hamas into the very heart of Israel.
I write this with great reluctance. I would much rather discuss this with you over a cup of coffee in Jerusalem. You are clearly ignorant when it comes to Jews and Israel.
