01/16/01

One mystery uncovered in Clean Phil’s writings was his motive in acquiring the last known herd of Sullivan County Reds. Turns out his interest had nothing to do with farming really, or preserving rural heritage for that matter. Instead it appears to have had more to do with feeding his religious delusions that his actions were somehow crucial to the fate of the world.

Sullivan County Reds were a hardy, old-time cattle breed that were once common throughout the Catskills. It’s thought they derive from the Devon breed. They had long ago fallen out of favor commercially (like just about every other breed of cattle) to Holsteins, and were discarded wholesale in the 1950's. Seems Ziggy Moskowitz, the former Borsch belt comedian turned militant Zionist, held onto a small herd of them on a farm outside Liberty for the purpose of producing a perfect red heifer as mentioned in Numbers 19. And so the breed was saved by Moskowitz at least for a time from extinction.

According to what I learned on the World Wide Web, ashes from a perfect red heifer are required for purification in Jewish law. It is believed by many Zionist militants that without such purification, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is off limits to them because it has been defiled by Muslims when the Temple there was destroyed 1,300 years ago, giving way to the Dome of the Rock. It is therefore believed that the Temple Mount cannot be reclaimed without the ashes of a perfect red heifer being produced. To the thinking of many, this will fulfill the final step to usher in the Messiah and the End of Days. Yeah, who fucking knew? The fate of the world will one day hinge on the birth of a damn red cow! Maybe a damn Sullivan County Red! And you know once that Dome of the Rock (the oldest structure in Islam, by the way) is blown up, it’ll all be mushroom clouds from here to fucking kingdom come!