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Jews, Cows, and Other Red ThingsJews, Muslims, French Men and a Red Cow. |
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This story published April 1, 2000 On the first of April, 68 A.D, colicky Roman Emperor Titus razed a very large Jewish Temple, called the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem. Once half the temple was gone, local Muslims jumped on the prime real estate and constructed their own holy site, the Dome of the Rock [both the Temple and the Dome were built around a particular rock enamored by an unusually high number of world religions [Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven from it on a winged steed, Christians believe that Christ extolled virtues from there, and Jews believe that Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac there]. A certain school of Old Testament biblical interpretation holds that the Jewish messiah will arrive following the reconstruction of the original Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In order to do this, the temple is supposed to be purified with cow's blood. Special cow's blood: This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and upon which a yoke has never come.[1] In theory, once the cow shows up, the temple gets rebuilt, and the messiah arrives, causing a hullabaloo.[2] In early 1914, Jewish leaders tracked down such an animal born in a fetid hovel out in backwater Bordeaux. In particular, soap magnate Aaron Aaronsohn[3] wanted his hands on that cow, and he wanted it smuggled to what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine. There were enough Jews in Palestine to conjure up a Jewish nation if they could only get their act together, and his plan was to bring in this cow and rebuild that temple. Some Christian prophecies also buy into this cow business, only for them Christ pops in for a second visit. Keeping this in mind, Aaronsohn imagined he would have broad international support in the West for these bovine shenanigans. Aaronsohn put together a crack team of French and Jewish cownappers and struck for the south of France. Jews 1, French Farmers nilOn April 16 of 1914, the team arrived at the domicile of Pierre Pomme. Pomme had become so fond of the cow that it slept on his straw bed in the house, next to his wife Adele. Pomme himself bunked down in the filth of the barn at the bottom the hill, a common practicein rural France today. When Aaronsohn and his compatriots mistakenly tried to rouse the sleeping farmer from his resting place and spirit him off to Jerusalem, he was, needless to say, perturbed. Unfortunately, to Semitic ears (and ours too) the protestations of a Frenchman sound curiously like those of a wailing cow, and the conspirators carried Pomme halfway to town before discovering his true identity. They returned to the house and nabbed the heifer, despite Madame Pomme's efficient brandishing of an oversized hobnailed boot, and scooted off into the woods. Word spread quickly through the local Jewry. The very existence of such a cow gave credence to the idea of a Jewish nation in Palestine, and the millions of Jews displaced from Germany, Russia and other parts of Europe in the early twentieth century clamored for the cow to be granted safe passage to Jerusalem.[4] Unfortunately, this was completely at odds with the official line: France in particular had the greatest interest in stopping the cow; otherwise the Ottomans and Germans might collectively have a chance to attack and prevent what might be a French-supported Jewish crusade and uprising. Indeed, to soothe international relations, the French made a gift of a grand sculpture, an Elephantine Colossus,[5] to the Ottomans. Unfortunately, it was not to Turkish liking, and set up in a litter-filled, weedy field fifteen miles outside of Ankara, covered by a large tarp, the Turks said, "to protect it from bird droppings." Clearly, the Empire was not mollified. It was time for a little action. Ever inept in things military, the Frogs called upon General Sir Antony Hogmanay Melchett of British special forces to help them out. He sent Brigadier Sir Walter Gribbon to do the job, and Gribbon was horrified to hear of the cow's abduction. He later recounted A red cow without mark or blemish? That the French could have produced anything without blemish alone dropped my very jaw, but that French Jews were rallying around it and calling for a crusade was disastrous. Were cellars of French wine, warehouses of French cheese, and hectares of inexpensive streetwalking French tarts not enough for them?[6] Gribbon immediately dispatched a legion of British intelligence officers to intercept the cow at the end of April. Jewish confederates everywhere caught wind and got word to Aaronsohn, who then did his best to keep it furtive. Driving Miss DaisyTravel with a clandestine cow was not easy. Southern France was experiencing an epidemic of cattle blight, a virus which decays the bursa at the top of the leg, rendering the cow immobile. Often, the diseased limb fell off entirely. Poor jokes about "ground beef" notwithstanding, a substantial portion of France's cattle fleet was immobile, making it difficult to just hide the red heifer in a herd and mill about. Furthermore, railroads from the rural municipalities were not complete: similar transportation issues confounded the French fighting the Germans in the 1870s. The Zionists had to content themselves with slow, overland travel. The men purchased a large hogshead of wine, and forced the cow inside, leaving room for its head to stick out (a stolen cow was shameful enough; a drunken one would simply not do). In such a cool, wet environment the cow frequently tossed its head in indignation; the cownappers were forced to put a bag over the skull and horns and hope for the best. Grunting, the thirteen men heaved with all their might to lift a hogshead full of wine and a cow onto a horse-drawn cart, and they spirited away. The journey proved rough. Details from Aaronsohn's diary are telling: May 21 Driving the cart over the Swiss Alps proved too much for the hapless steeds of the Jewish crew. The horses panted and wheezed, dragging the wide-wheeled cart through paralyzing mud. The wine in the barrel sloshed to and fro, Lilith lowed frantically, and the French and Jewish members of the party argued over who was more oppressed culturally. As Jean was about to rhapsodize on the indignities of having to say le hamburger, one of the horses expired. Given that there were thousands of miles ahead consisting of nothing but mountains and the ramshackle cart had moved forward a scant quarter mile in the past two days, Aaronsohn decided a different tack was required to get the cow to Jerusalem before it died of advanced age. Cow-tastropheIn the meantime, Gribbon grew increasingly frustrated. He found it maddening that a ragtag collection of French and Jewish Zionists could run around eastern France with an entire cow yet evade British special forces. He had troops stationed all along France's borders, only to be met by protesting throngs of French Jews who masqueraded about with white Guernsey cows dyed red, albeit sometimes legless.[9] This backlog paralyzed French commerce and caused a general snit among everyone present, who blamed the British, rather than the Jews, for the problem: British guards at the border were the most outwardly visible source of the angst. An exporter of the newly-formed Citroen motorcar company complained: We have these magnificent cars, never break down, ever, yet we must sit in a line of legless cows for two weeks! It's these damned limeys -- they come here pretending to stop a great war with the Ottomans when all they really want is the inside of my daughter's pantaloons! What a hassle! I'd hand her right over if they'd only ask. A meat seller opined If this doesn't end soon, my meats will spoil. What am I supposed to do, unload 1900 honey-baked hams on these Jews with painted cows?[10] Snipers Miss the BoatAaronsohn, having extricated himself from the Alps, chartered passage across the Mediterranean to possibly sneak in under the gaze of the Ottomans. Riots of Zionist origin rocked all of France; Jews clamoring for the government to assist the transport of the cow sprung up everywhere. Others secured guns, pitchforks, and tools, preparing for a crusade to the Holy Land: arms would be needed to drive the Ottomans out, hammers would be needed to smash the Dome of the Rock, and hands would be needed to rebuild the old Temple Mount. The Ottoman Empire viewed these events with suspicion. It was not happy with the prospect of trying to decide if this was a rebellious Jewish uprising or a movement orchestrated by the French and British governments. Gribbon too saw the problem and swiftly decided that the cow must die, for fear that a world war might ensue. He sent snipers to all the major port cities in and around Jerusalem: Alexandria, Haifa, Beirut, Port Said. By then, however, fair winds had landed the Zionists and their precious cargo a week ahead of schedule, giving the Brits the slip. Aaronsohn and Lilith once again traveled overland in a rickety cart through the deserts of the Middle East, enjoying the protection of ever-increasing numbers of displaced Jews. While the cow was still confined to the wine barrel ("She smells like an Italian girl, that one," remarked one of Aaronsohn's crew), the group did not have to worry quite so much about day-to-day travel. Large numbers of friends traveled with and ahead of them, checking the border posts for suspicious Ottomans. On June 26, the coterie arrived in the outskirts of Jerusalem and the cow was brought to a secret meeting of rabbinical leaders. Maybe Not That SecretGiven that Jews all across Europe and the Middle East had been shouting to one another from the rooftops about these developments, the barn chosen on the outside of town was surrounded by thousands of would-be revolutionaries while the barrel-clad bovine and her captors sat inside. Aaronsohn wheeled Lilith into the room, the poor creature mooing weakly from a throat ringed with chafed skin and infections. Weeks of sloshing wine, milk, and cow offal had long since doused her head and matted her hair. Indeed, she looked like an ordinary brown cow. Aaronsohn triumphantly strode forward, an axe in hand, and whacked the barrel. It split asunder, disgorging its foul contents all over the barn's dirt floor. The cow, free at last, collapsed on the filth, with nary a patch of red fur to be seen. Rabbi Bevin, one of the leaders, stepped forward and announced, "This is no red cow without mark or blemish. Look at it! It is brown and stinky." Aaronsohn protested vociferously, wiping off Lilith's dirty head with his own shirt, searching desperately for the barest hint of evidence that she was what he claimed she was. The French mercenaries, expecting until this point to become rich, began to pull at the rabbis and scrabble at Aaronsohn: "Where's our money?" they asked. "We've come all the way to the Middle East! Where is it?" Aaronsohn grabbed the nearest rabbi and put the holy man's hand on the cow, smearing it with filth and the stench of vinegar. He pulled at clumps of dredded hair, teasing it apart, mining for crimson, but to no avail. A great wailing was heard from the crowd outside as news was quickly passed from those unlucky enough to spy on the proceedings through knotholes in the barn walls. Uh ohAmidst this confusion, British special agent George Derby leveled his rifle at Lilith and fired two shots, killing the animal. Derby had been hiding in the rafters of the barn for a week after bribing a local to tell him the location of the meeting place. The shots knocked him from his perch, and as he landed, Aaronsohn, enraged, dashed his head to the ground. The rabbis fled the rabble, and Derby was born up, tarred and feathered, and sent packing, seated backwards, on a mule to Jerusalem. The crowd dispersed in the same direction, hurling stones at windows, overturning carts, setting fire to houses, and causing a general melee. Aaronsohn wept, and the death of Lilith killed the hopes for a Zionist nation for the next thirty-five years. Derby eventually served eighteen months in a Turkish prison for looking improper in town; forcing him to miss his next assignment: protecting Austro-Hungary royalty vacationing in Serbia. As for the Elephantine Colossus in Ankara, German soldiers eventually used it for target practice before decay brought on by seeping rainwater brought the monument crashing down. By the time a Turkish nation was created, France had turned her gift-giving sights elsewhere, and, to the locals' great relief, no more such sculptures decorated the white sands of the Middle East. Footnotes
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 ©1996-2006 History House Inc.All Rights Reserved. |
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