Sanhedrin Plans Temple Mount Pesach Sacrifice?

Say it isn't so Joe.

Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sanhedrin plans for sacrifice of sheep (full article)
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

In a donated apartment concealed among the narrow streets of the Jerusalem suburb of Nahlaot, 13 Orthodox Jewish men meet every Tuesday to debate matters of Jewish law. They are the management team of a larger developing Sanhedrin, or religious court, in Israel.

They plan to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount on the day before or one month after Passover, which will start at sundown April 2. Either date is permissible under Jewish law. "If the government will not resist," said Rabbi Dov Stein, 68, a member of the group, "we will do it."

The Passover sacrifice is the latest of more than 40 legal decisions issued by the modern Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin bought a herd of 12 sheep - 110 to 150 pounds each - from a farm in southern Israel. Anyone wanting to eat of the sacrifice can pay seven shekels ($1.67) for an 8-to-10-gram slice, the minimum required by Jewish law, Stein said. The group is hoping to collect 30,000 signatures through its Web site to prove its influence to the Israeli authorities, and gain access to the Temple Mount area.

Hila Lipnick, a 28-year-old Orthodox woman who lives in Cambridge, Mass., used to live in Jerusalem and traveled daily to Gush Etzion, a settlement in the West Bank, for school. Although she says she believes in the eventual rebuilding of the Temple, she is unsure about sacrifice.

"I can't see rivers of blood going all over Jerusalem," she said, "and society just accepting it."

Neither can I. I can't see it and I can't accept it as a Jew or as a human being.

At this point in history, to re-enact literal animal sacrifice on the Temple Mount is such an incredibly barbaric religious de-evolution, it is hard to imagine that the Sanhedrin is even considering such a thing - let alone acting on that consideration.

While I support rebuilding the Temple and even re-establishing a Sanhedrin, I do not support resurrecting animal sacrifice on the Temple Mount at all. It's neanderthal.