What these red cows from Texas have to do with war and peace in the Middle East – CBS News

Some Jews and Christians believe they’re key to rebuilding the Jewish temple that once stood in Jerusalem, and to beckoning the Messiah.

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.

Instrumental in bringing the heifers to the Holy Land was Yitshak Mamo, of Uvne Jerusalem, a group committed to seeing a new temple built in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Mamo said the ceremony must be performed looking directly into where the ancient Second Temple stood, until it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.

What Mamo didn’t mention is 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.

“There’s one true God, and it started here,” she said, before falling to her knees and bowing where the First Temple, or the Temple of Solomon, was built in 957 BCE. The Second Temple, or Temple of Herod, was a reconstructed version of the first, built in the 6th century BCE, according to scripture.

“It’s so important for the Jews to return and rebuild the temple,” said New York native Kronfeld, who founded the High on the Har organization to lead the tours.

“I believe it’s going to go, 100%. The whole thing is going to go to build a temple,” she said, insisting that the shrine and its golden dome should be preserved, but relocated.

“Everyone says that the building, the Third Temple, is what will bring the war, it would destabilize the Middle East,” she said.

To be clear, Kronfeld’s dream of seeing a Third Temple constructed on the site is just that, a dream, and it is not shared by the Israeli government or by the vast majority of Israelis or Jews.

At the recent National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance in Washington, D.C., Mamo spoke of his heifers and his hopes for a Third Jewish Temple.

“For me, the red heifer is red for the blood of Jesus Christ. That’s why it’s red.”