The Veal Option
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The Jerusalem Post, September 18, 1992
As I write this, Rosh Hashana and the accompanying Days of Awe are fast approaching, so my thoughts naturally turn to cows.
The first cow I ever knew in a serious way was a little milker named Shulamit. I was a teenager when I met her at my Socialist-Zionist, Vegetarian-Anarcho-Syndicalist Nuclear Free Zone summer camp, just down the road from Grossinger’s in the Catskills. Shulamit was our experimental cow—we were all prepping, we believed at the time, for life as pioneers on kibbutzim, so, clearly, we needed to know all there was to know about the mechanics of cows. Shulamit (I first thought her name was Hebrew for “cow”—I know now, of course, that Shulamit means “horse”) wasn’t very intimidating, even by cow standards. She wasn’t too much taller than I was, and she wasn’t in the habit of moving around too much—and before she did, she would let out a a big sour burp to announce her intentions, like a tugboat coming to a drawbridge.
Still, the only animals I knew at the time were the guinea pig I roomed with (Albie, 1972-1978) and the parakeets who lived in a cage in the dining room, and who didn’t move around too much, either. So a cow, even an inconsequential cow like Shulamit, was big news, animal-wise.
My task for two summers was to milk Shulamit, which I took to be the most crucial job on our modest farm, since I was led to believe that Shulamit would explode if I missed even one day of milking, and such an explosion would surely affect the other farm operations, especially the adjacent tomato patch, which needed to be kept clear of cow viscera at all times. So, puffed up by the importance of the job at hand, I would hop out of bed at four, pull my pants on, grab the pail and head to the cow shed. Shulamit would be waiting for me, tail-wagging, like a big, lumpy dog. I would coax her into the stall, wipe down her udder with a wet cloth, which is farther than I got with any of the human females at camp, and begin milking.
She wouldn’t give too much, which was okay with me, because the truth is that milking by hand is boring and tiresome, and also, cows kick. I would finish up and try to let her out of the stall, but most times she would just stand there, looking stupid. I then carried the bucket of steaming milk, which, quite frankly, disgusted me, to the kitchen, where it would be boiled and set out for breakfast.
We all acted as if it was just the greatest thing in the whole world that we were able to use milk we harvested ourselves, but no one would actually drink it because it was full of fat globules, and eventually someone would throw it out. The only person I ever knew to drink Shulamit’s milk was one of the older campers, Reuben from the Bronx, who would bend down, aim a teat directly into his mouth and squeeze. Maybe they do those sorts of things in the Bronx, I don’t know.
Shulamit is long dead by now. After my group graduated to bigger and better things, like smoking dope (Explanatory Note Should I Ever Decide to Run for Public Office: I never actually tried pot myself, but I’m more than willing to name names of people who did), no one wanted to milk her any more, so the camp sold her to some of the locals down the road, who, I was told, chopped her up for parts. This was a shame, I thought, because she would have made a great pet, certainly better than a guinea pig or cage crammed with squawking, idiot parakeets.
When I moved to a real kibbutz, where the milking wasn’t personal and the cows were big and mean, I tried to adopt a calf as a pet, but the kibbutz’s Central Committee for the Adoption of Farm Animals voted my proposal down, no surprise there. What happened was that a calf was born with three legs and two heads, or two legs and three heads, the details escape me now, so the dairy commissars saw an opportunity for veal, which upset me, because my heart bleeds for anything born with two or three heads.
“Let me take it home with me,” I told the dairy manager, a request that further proved to him that all Americans were mush-brained soapwads. The calf became veal and I became disillusioned, though I still think that cows would make pretty nifty pets, especially when compared to dogs. I am looking at my dog right now, as a matter of fact, and the only reason I can think of why people have dogs as pets instead of cows is that dogs fit inside most houses more easily than cows.
She isn’t exactly my dog, actually—she’s my mother’s, and I suppose I would be more patient with her if she were legally mine. I would also be more patient with her if she would stop barking in my face. That’s another thing about cows—no barking, just a little bit of mooing and some belching. Of course, you have to raise your cows right, just like your dogs, something my mother didn’t seem to do—if she raised me the same way she brought up this dog, I’d be in prison by now.
I’m sure the dog knows what I’m writing, because she is giving me one of those “Since you clearly don’t like me, why don’t you just drop me off at the pound where they’ll give me a lethal injection and bury me in a common grave with other, lesser dogs” looks she’s become so adept at giving. I will now apologize to the dog in order to get her to stop looking at me that way.
Which is another thing about cows—they’re incapable of making you feel guilty about anything. They’re generally very carefree. Combine that with their extreme stupidity, and you’ve got a winning combination in pet technology. Frequently, we would see the mama cows chewing their cuds while delivering their calves.
Often, they would eat through their entire labor—now that’s carefree and stupid. Also, they’re low maintenance, as opposed to dogs, which are extremely high-maintenance animals. Our dog, the one who is still staring at me but is now also licking herself in the most embarrassing way possible, has bigger medical bills than some heart-attack victims. Lately, she’s been suffering from doggie psoriasis, which has some particularly unpleasant physical manifestations. You’ve never heard of a cow getting psoriasis, have you? Any animal that could eat its way through labor is made of stronger stuff than that.
I think the dog knows I’m belittling her medical condition, because she’s giving me one of those reproachful looks again. I guess she just doesn’t realize how lucky she is that you can’t make veal from dog.