21 arrested for trying to sacrifice a baby goat on the Temple Mount

Group is the latest to try, unsuccessfully, to revive animal sacrifice at the site of the ancient Jewish temples

Police said Sunday that they arrested 21 people suspected of trying to bring a sacrificial goat up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday.

It was the second time in as many months that a group was arrested for attempting to perform a traditional sacrifice at the historical site of Judaism’s two ancient holy temples. While the temples have not existed and Jews have not performed such sacrifices for nearly 2,000 years, small groups ascend the mount perennially to try to revive the ritual, without success.

The Temple Mount, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is Judaism’s holiest site and one of the holiest sites in Islam, and has long been a flashpoint for conflict. Public Jewish prayer (and animal sacrifice) is prohibited there. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a frequent visitor to the site, has pushed to change the ban on prayer, prompting fury in the Muslim world and denials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the status quo has changed.

The group that took a goat to the mount on Friday was attempting to perform the sacrifice in honor of Pesach Sheni, or Second Passover. Before the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 CE, the day offered an opportunity for Jews who were unable to bring the Passover sacrifice to do so exactly one Hebrew month later.

Police said that on Friday, “a group of rioters that arrived at one of the entrances tried to break through the gate with the goal of bringing a baby goat onto the grounds of the mount, thereby disrupting public order.”

They were arrested before they could perform the ritual sacrifice. The detainees were brought to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court and police sought to keep them in custody, but a judge released them.

Police filed an appeal on Sunday, but the decision to free the suspects was upheld, according to the police statement.

Small groups have been trying to bring back sacrifice at the mount for years, connected to a fringe movement that seeks to build a Third Temple at the site where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock now stand. Ritual sacrifice and actively working to reconstruct the temple have not been part of mainstream Jewish practice for many centuries, and Jewish legal authorities are divided on whether it is permissible for Jews to even set foot on the mount.

“Bringing a sacrifice to the Temple Mount is contrary to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s ruling,” Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the chief rabbi of the Western Wall, said in a statement in 2022.

One month before Friday’s arrest, on the day when the Passover sacrifice would have been brought in ancient times, police arrested 14 Jewish men and boys for trying to smuggle sacrificial goats onto the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, according to the far-right legal aid group Honenu.

The group, called Returning to the Mount, has submitted a request annually to perform the Passover sacrifice, but has been denied by police. In 2024, 13 suspects, all between the ages of 13 and 21, were caught with goats in their possession that they intended to sacrifice for Passover, including one that was hidden inside a baby carriage and another inside a shopping bag, a police statement said at the time.

Similar incidents occurred in 2023 prior to Passover and sparked clashes with Muslim worshipers.