Jerusalem Police Thwart Passover Goat Sacrifice Plot
A member of the Temple Institute holds a one-year-old flawless goat in an enactment of the preparation for the renewal of the Passover sacrifice in the third Jewish Temple on April 2, 2012 during a display to the public in Jerusalem. Image by Getty Images
Israeli police detained seven Jewish men suspected of planning to sacrifice goats in the Old City of Jerusalem in honor of Passover, reported.
The arrests on Friday came amid a pre-holiday crackdown against right-wing activists whose visits to the contested Temple Mount have been at the center of months-long tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.
Authorities barred several groups from entering Jerusalem during the week-long Passover holiday, which begins Friday evening, citing information they intended to carry out sacrificial rituals on the Temple Mount.
According to the Times of Israel, two of the men picked up on Friday morning were on their way to carry out the sacrifice, but were stopped by police before they could do so.
Upon their arrest, police spotted a second goat that had been left unattended, which they later connected to a third suspect who was subsequently detained.
A few hours later, officers picked up another four people — all minors — who had a third goat they intended to sacrifice, police said.
The seven suspects were charged with disturbing the peace, a police spokesperson said.
The three goats confiscated by police on Friday were unharmed and have been handed over to the municipality’s animal control department, the police said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
