(End of the American Dream)—Is the world about to be shocked by the sacrifice of a red heifer in the land of Israel? On September 15th, 2022 five perfect red heifers were flown into Israel from the state of Texas. That got a lot of attention, but at that time all of those red heifers were too young to qualify for a red heifer sacrifice. A couple of years have passed since then and now they are all old enough to qualify, and it is being reported that rituals that would be part of a red heifer sacrifice are being practiced. The information that I am about to share with you is quite stunning, but it does not mean that a red heifer sacrifice is about to take place. Ultimately, authorities in Israel will decide when they feel that the time is right.
I think that those that brought the red heifers to Israel were planning to sacrifice one of them once they reached the proper age.
But then the war started and that changed everything. In fact, a spokesperson for Hamas identified the red heifers as one of the reasons why Israel was attacked on October 7th, 2023…
Twenty miles north of Jerusalem, five Texas Red Angus cows chew on grass, oblivious to the fact that their mere presence in Israel was cited by Hamas as a reason for its massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7. The terror organization’s spokesperson says the cows were a justification for the attack, stating that bringing them to Israel was “an aggression” based on a “detestable religious myth.”
Apparently Hamas was convinced that if a red heifer was sacrificed Israel would make a move to take control of the Temple Mount so that the rebuilding of the Temple could begin…
Hamas has called the importation of the red cows an act of “aggression” because it falsely believes that the presence of the cows may ignite the rebuilding of the Temple, which the group thinks would end Arab control of the Temple Mount, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located.
Those that are involved in the red heifer project did not want to inflame tensions even more, and so the sacrifice of a red heifer was put off for another time.
But now that Hamas has almost been totally defeated, does that change things?
Middle East Eye is reporting that some of those involved in the red heifer project have been practicing for the day when a sacrifice will finally be allowed…
A group of religious Israelis have been pictured practising the ritual of the red heifer, which is meant to herald the building of a new Jewish temple on the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
According to Jewish tradition, the ashes of a perfectly red heifer cow are needed for the ritual purification that would allow a third temple to be built in Jerusalem.
Israeli journalist Yinon Magal was the one who originally broke this story. The following is an English translation of what he posted on Twitter…
“Temple worshipers are now practicing the mitzvah [religious duty] of a red cow in front of the Temple Mount, which will enable the return of purity and the observance of all the temple mitzvahs,” posted journalist Yinon Magal on Tuesday, along with a picture of activists from the Temple Institute.
The photograph that accompanied that post is below…
There are two things that immediately jump out at me from this picture.
Number one, the cow that we see is most certainly not one of the five red heifers.
In fact, it is obviously not anywhere close to being a perfect red heifer.
Number two, this photograph was not taken on the Mount of Olives, because we can see the Mount of Olives in the background.
When they decide that the time has finally come for a red heifer to be sacrificed, it will be sacrificed on the Mount of Olives. But of course practice for such a ceremony can be conducted anywhere.
Ever since 1921, Jewish people have been prohibited from entering the Temple Mount unless they are ritually clean, and they can’t be ritually clean without the ashes of a red heifer…
The Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem has also, since 1921, officially banned Jews from entering the Temple Mount. It ruled that Jews are forbidden to enter the site unless “ritually clean”, which is impossible without the ashes of a red heifer.
Many religious leaders are very much looking forward to the day when the ashes of a red heifer are finally available.
But one official from the Temple Institute recently told the Daily Wire that there “is no plan right now for using a kosher red heifer, killing it and turning it into ashes”…
Conducting a red heifer ceremony is controversial in rabbinic circles, and there is far from a consensus over whether it can even be done, according to the Temple Institute, which provides rabbinical supervision for the cows.
“There is no plan right now for using a kosher red heifer, killing it and turning it into ashes,” Yitzchak Reuven, the director of international development for the Temple Institute told The Daily Wire. “Anyone saying this is making it up. We will only do this when the time is right, because there is no point in doing it if the Jewish and rabbinic world won’t accept it.”
That sounds pretty definitive.
So even though they may be doing practice runs, we may not see the real thing for a while.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the five red heifers.
In a previous article, I explained that the Temple Institute has determined that a red heifer does not qualify for a red heifer sacrifice until its third year has begun…
As for the time the red heifer may be used for this commandment – the Sages state that it is valid when it reaches maturity, i.e. from the beginning of its third year. [13] From this age and onward the red heifer is valid without age limitations. Though, ideally, one should not wait till it passes the age of four, lest it grows hairs of colors that deem it invalid. [14]
All of the red heifers that were flown into Israel in 2022 are now old enough to qualify.
But as time passes, there is a risk that these red heifers will develop hairs that are not red and be disqualified.
More than half a million dollars has already been spent on these particular red heifers, and if every single one of them is ultimately disqualified those involved in the project will have to start from scratch.
I don’t think they want to do that.
So we shall see what happens. Personally, I have a feeling that there is more going on behind the scenes than we are being told.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
