August Cross Quarter Day

Already, it is the August Cross Quarter Day. This is the day halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. In the old calendar of Europe, it is Lughnasad and Lammastide—the beginning of the Chase of Lugh, the Celtic sun god—when the first harvests begin far north of the Equator. It is the beginning of the Fall season of old.

For us here at Freedom Ridge Ranch, we see the season beginning to shift. Even as far south as we are—in the horse latitudes—our elevation is high, and summer is fleeting. Here, on the west slopes of the Continental Divide, the hot season is already gone. With the start of the Monsoon in July, we saw the greening begin, with its cool nights, hot mornings and cloudy and rainy afternoons.

Now, as the daylight is noticeably shorter, we see chilly, misty mornings, with dew on the blooming sunflowers, and dripping down from the metal roofs of house and barn and cabin. Already, the Aspens begin to show yellow in the leaves, and the sun appears south of where it rose at the Solstice. The shadows are deeper. The season is changing.
Already, we have put the feather comforter back on the bed.

Here at Ragamuffin Studies, we have just passed the Fast of Tisha b’Av, a day of mourning for the loss of Temple and a going into exile. Last Shabbat, we began the seven weeks of Comfort, when we read Haftarah Nachamu –“Comfort, O, comfort my people, says your G-d.” Autumn is coming, and with it the New Year of Years, Rosh Hashanah, and the Season of Repentance, Renewal, and the Ingathering Harvest. The Wheel of the Year turns once again to its end and beginning, and in the seasons of our lives, we have seen the last child grown and graduated, moving out for a while to study and practice for the time when he will come back to run Freedom Ridge Ranch.

Blessed is the One who makes the years pass and the seasons alternate . . .

Technorati Tags: Meanwhile Back at the Ranch,Times and Seasons,Weather

Branding Day

This year we have two calves, one born in June and one in early July who needed branding. The little black one was a little bull, and the white one under her white mother is a little heifer. So last Sunday, with the help of three cowboys—who are calling themselves Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe—we had a branding.

The CIT—who is now ‘Adam’—got the cows together on Sunday morning when we fed them in corral. Except that three were missing. Lucy Longhorn, her steer from last year, and Freckles’ steer from last year. The guys were able to get Lucy Longhorn in, and we figured the young‘uns would come in sooner or later. In any case, we didn’t need them until it was time to dose them up with Ivermectin against parasites. This year’s calves were the stars of the first half. Since he is the most experienced, ‘Hoss’ was assigned to roping. The cowboys had moved the cows into the arena, and there, the roping came pretty easily. Just a few rounds, and the little bull was roped by the hind leg.

Immediately after he was roped, ‘Adam’ (left) and ‘Little Joe’ (right) ran in to flank him. One took the leg while the other lifted the rope, bringing him down on the correct side. ‘Hoss’ dismounted his, and ran in with the branding irons. Then ‘Little Joe’ cut the earmarks, ‘Hoss’ made the bull into a steer, and ‘Adam’ administered the Black Leg vaccination. After that, the little guy was given a fly tag in the ear and sent back to his mama. The calf was down less than three minutes. It pays to have several experienced cow boys. The little white heifer was down even less time as she didn’t have to be cut.

The most exciting part of the day happened after the branding itself. As they were branding, the charlaite (the color of cafe au lait) and the Black steers showed up, wondering what was going on. There was a great deal of mooing across the arena stockade as they greeted the herd and were greeted in return. But the cowboys with the help of ‘Hoss’s’ dogs had to bring them into the chute for the Ivermectin treatment. There was some fancy riding, as ‘Little Joe’ on the Paint and ‘Hoss’ on the Sorrel brought the Black around the corral several times. We got the Charlaite in, but the black ran around the hill. ‘Hoss’ roped him there, and then we treated him in situ. After the job was done, there was only one Rocky Mountain Oyster given to the dog, Tipy, who belongs to ‘Adam.’ Then it was back to the house for hamburgers—from a steer killed in 2011—and a nice cold one for the working boys.

This fall, we will be slaughtering the black steer and the charlaite born in February and March of 2011. In the spring, the little black bull born just before branding last July, will go, unless we decide to sell him as stud. That is the way of life on a ranch. The males are for food, and the females to get new calves.

This month, we will deciding about the direction of our herd. Our bull, Studley Do-right is getting old, and although we have none of his older female offspring here on the ranch, we think he might be getting past his prime. We may need to “ship” him (sell him) and get a new bull. We are also considering reducing this herd, and bringing in a new breed—possibly Dexters—which are smaller and easier for us to handle. This is a weighty decision, and however we do it, we will be saying good-bye to some of our cows. This is also part of ranching. It is not the easiest part, since we have very genteel cows. The matriarchs, Freckles and LB were hand-raised by their previous owner, and they have influenced their offspring.

We are living closer to the realities of life. Meat does not come from the grocery store. It must be born and raised and slaughtered. Animals are raised by humans, and their genomes preserved by humans, so that humans can eat them and sustain their own lives. We are part of it all, and it all happens here, where they are grass fed and grass finished. We thank them for their lives and their contribution to ours. We slaughter them with one stroke of a sharp knife, so that they don’t have time to fear. We treat them with respect.

Americanas and Chicken Little

During the month of June, we added six Auricana/Americana pullets to the stock at Freedom Ridge Ranch. Auricana/Americana chickens are a South American breed, very hardy and calm, but with good preservation of predator avoidance and they are also very good layers. They are the famous “easter-egg” layers, and their eggs vary from sky blue to turquoise to green, and more rarely, pink to brown. 

Our hens are now about 8 weeks old, and we moved them outside weeks ago, after raising the little chicks in the bathtub over at the cabin for a few weeks. I had not had chickens since we raised three chicks given to us when I was a child, and I have become fascinated watching our hens. When we arrive at the chicken coop in the morning, they are chirping and clucking behind the closed door, already awake and ready to come forth into the daylight, to scratch and eat, chase insects and take dirt baths. We move their portable pen called the chicken tractor around the yard every day, so that they have access to weeds and flowers, as well as vegetable scraps from the kitchen.

The “ladies”—as the Engineering Geek calls them--are used to us, and to their hanging waterer, but whenever a shadow passes overhead, they immediately huddle under the raised chicken door to their coop and become very quiet. Once the threat passes, they go back to their clucking and eating, but with a watchful eye toward the sky, where a hawk or eagle might swoop down and take them for dinner. Drops of rain, or even vegetable scraps pitched into the chicken tractor sends them scurrying under shelter, even though the chicken wire top on the chicken tractor prevents any predator from entering. “The sky is falling!” the EG jokes, as they run for cover and grow silent.

Those of us of a certain age remember those classic animal fables from our childhood, The Little Red Hen, Chicken Little, the Ant and the Grasshopper. All of them were intended to teach a moral lesson: how those who work have earned the fruit of their labor, why one drop of rain does not a deluge make, and why it is important to plan for the future in the present. These tales inculcate and strengthen classic American virtues: hard work, common sense, and being prepared for the inevitable tough seasons.

But in watching my Americanas, I have come to reconsider how the tale of Chicken Little is understood by the newer generations of American children, if they have heard it at all. For some American children today are being raised almost as hot-house children, protected from every bump, bruise or danger while simultaneously being given the sense of enormous entitlement, so that they grow up with little experience of how to handle deprivation, danger and fear. For these privileged children, does the story of Chicken Little resonate differently than for those raised on the farm, or in the “duck and cover” era of the Cold War?

I think so, because twice last week I saw Jewish Libertarians insulted and ridiculed for pointing out the dangers of ignoring and appeasing the new, virulent anti-Semitism coming simultaneously from the left and from the Islamists of the world. In one case, several of them were called “Chicken Littles” and their concerns were ridiculed as if they were constantly running around proclaiming that “the sky is falling!”

A farm kid growing up in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s was aware of the context of the story of Chicken Little in ways that citified American children of privilege are not. When hearing the story of Chicken Little, the farm kid understood that there is really danger out there in the sky for little chickens, and that there can be real reasons for a chicken to run for cover and grow silent when the shadow of the hawk passes over the feather pen. In this context, the story is a warning not to invent danger where there is none,  and not to develop fears that are out of proportion to the evidence. The story was not meant to teach children to close their eyes to real danger, it was meant to teach them not to create conspiracy theories just because there is evidence of danger.

But in the present context, in which privileged city children are protected from even the intimation of danger, the story has morphed into one that teaches that there is no reason to take cover, or to be prepared for danger, and that the watchmen on the walls are crazy and ought to shut up. It is as if the story is meant to say, “Do not disturb my illusions. Let me continue to evade the reality of the hawk.” And yet the hawk is out there, as is the owl, and so it is important for little chickens to pay attention to the  shadows passing over them. However, it is equally important not to invent evidence of danger that does  not exist.

One reason that there is revived interest in the heirloom varieties of chickens is that the hybrids used in commercial egg and/or meat production are so incompetent that if left out on the free range, they will be easily taken by the hawk and the fox. All of the survival instincts are bred out of them in favor of fast and easy production characteristics. Such chickens must be protected by being kept in small cages, never seeing the light of the sun or feeling the pleasure of a dirt bath. They cannot survive on their own, for they do not recognize real danger, and will not duck out of sight when hawk comes soaring by. 

I can’t help but think that chickens raised in cages are easier to control than are my Americana hens, and they exist not to live their lives but only to produce the most eggs and meat in the shortest amount of time, with no thought to either the quality of their live of the quality of the meat and eggs they are used to produce.

Are we raising generations of our future doers and shakers who will be equally easy to control, who will not step out of line for fear of being ridiculed as Chicken Littles? This is certainly not a strategy for raising free-range kids, who will grow up to be free and independent individuals. 

This quashing of warnings is an interesting study in the evasion of reality. We are teaching to fear big systemic changes that they can have little impact upon, but at the same time, we tell them that there are no predators in the world, and that to be wary of threats to their individual lives and being is ridiculous. It is as though we are making ourselves and our children vulnerable to the most insane demagoguery.

And we think chickens are crazy because they duck under shelter and grow silent when the shadow of the hawk passes overhead.

Technorati Tags: Meanwhile Back at the Ranch,Educational Anarchy,Meshuggeneh World

Greening

Technorati Tags: Meanwhile Back at the Ranch,Weather,Geography

On a quiet Shabbat morning as I took a rare cup of coffee on the porch I noticed it. I was looking across at LB, who had left the corral and was grazing on the bank of Freedom Ridge Draw.

Because of last year’s drought we are still feeding the cattle at the corral, and usually they stay there all morning, moving across to water in the early afternoon. But here was LB, grazing in the morning. The valley and the hillsides are greening finally, after three weeks of monsoon winds bringing moisture over from the Gulf of California, lifting it up across the Arizona desert,  building the clouds heavy over the Mogollon Rim, and dropping the monsoon rains down upon the Mogollon Slope and Continental Divide. This year a good monsoon season has begun, the clear, cool mornings with a hint of moisture and the clouds beginning to build to the west-southwest by 10 o’clock. In the afternoon, wave after wave of heavy clouds begin to move across our ridges and valley, some of them dropping showers and on some days, a cloudburst. It is a good start for the monsoon, clouds every afternoon, and showers and storms three or four days out of seven.

The greening season here in Southwestern New Mexico is different from where I grew up in Central Illinois. In Illinois, spring is the season of tender green shoots and new grass, with the deep yellow of dandelion flowers hailing the end of winter in March. The corn grows high, there, each plant cycling a quart of water or more a day, bringing the muggy dog days of August, the hottest part of the summer. As the corn matures, the days dry out, gold and brown in the fall.

In New Mexico, the spring is windy and dry, brown with dust and sand—Arizona blowing over to Texas—one of the two dry seasons, following the winter snow that falls mostly over the mountains. The warming days and wind, the return of the birds are harbingers of summer. But here on the Mogollon slope, there is no green, no soft colors. The land is hard and bright, straw and brown. 

When the winds die down in June, we have our hottest summer days. The heat comes up from the desert, south winds from Mexico, and descends into the valleys. Ours is a dry heat, and you can get relief in the shade, if you can find any. In good years, by the end of June, the winds shift, coming from the southwest, and we see towering white clouds forming in the southwest, moving slowly across the Continental Divide to the north. Nights become humid, and our evaporative coolers don’t work for a week of two. But if all goes well with the trade winds coming up from the tropics and across these horse latitudes, in a few weeks the afternoon humidity will become afternoon thunderstorms, making coolers unnecessary as they wash the humidity into the dusty earth, clearing the air, and greening the land.

Some years are La Nina years, and the Monsoon winds fail, and we have drought. Last summer, the clouds built and we got a few feeble showers in July, and then it stayed dry until September. The feeble trades dropped their sparse moisture quickly over the Mogollon Rim but did not reach New Mexico. Last year, we had late rains and early snows in September and October, as the days grew shorter, and so the land never greened up, and the grasses did  not grow tall. We had drought and fires, drought and fires.

This year, the monsoon seems full of promise. The land is greening, the first I have seen these two years. May the monsoon continue and grow in strength this year, breaking the drought and bringing life-giving water to a dry and weary land.

The greening of the land is rest for the eye.

A Season of Losses and Gains: Part II-Gains

Yesterday, I began the process of catching up with myself after a three-month blogging hiatus. That entry was all about the losses we experienced over that time and how one of them affected my desire to blog at all.  Today, is for the gains.

Firstly, we have gained a baby burro. Petunia and Ruger presented us with a little jill, whose picture graces the title of Ragamuffin Studies, so iconic of spring is she. Little Priscilla is watched over by both of her parents, and spends her time gamboling and playing while her parents focus on the mundane activities of getting food and water. Young mammals are a delight, and this one is no exception. She is getting used to our hands, although she does not  take sweet feed from us yet, as her parents do. It is funny to watch her traveling four and five times the distance from the corral to the stock tank than her parents do! 

This season has also been one of frustration and growth for me. When I determined that I would never finish my current doctorate studies at all if I continued with a quantitative study, my advisor and I thought about a combined qualitative-quantitative study. This meant I had to learn how to do “qual'”, which requires a very different approach. This spring I took a heavy-duty Qualitative Case Study course with an expert in the field who is also a very demanding teacher. And it very nearly killed drove me to drink. The problems began with coming up with a question, and continued as I tried to shoe-horn a literature I knew well into a question that was very different. Stubborn as I am, I finally saw that my whole approach had to change. I allowed forced myself to write the introduction as a first person (horrors!) narrative that demonstrated how I had come to my question. In the process, I learned how bringing myself into the research itself is one of the characteristics of qualitative research, and I saw how my narrative approach helped not only define the question, but also find the gaps in the literature that my study would address.

I am quite pleased with my research report, although I did revert to the ablative (this was done, that  was shown, etc.) in reporting my results. Still, I gained a new perspective and new tools, two very important things to keep this “grandmother” brain from hardening up to a stultifying degree. And the coolest gain, I saw a theme in the data that I had seen in data during a more congenial (to me) course that I took last spring. And in talking it over with my expert, demanding professor, I realized that this is the theme that will likely occupy me through the dissertation: resistance.

“ Resistance? You’re interested in resistance? Who’d have ever thunk it?” was the Engineering Geek’s somewhat acerbic observation.

The Engineering Geek himself has been working on some important projects for the ranch, and these projects require all of his engineering skills. The whole irrigation system needed an overhaul, having been put in by “rank amateurs” (his words) and used for 18 years. He has been busy designing a manifold for delivery of water, French drains for getting rid of unwanted water, and general improvements to efficiency and design. He is also designing a solar well pump system, and a solar system for the house in order to make us more self-sufficient as “energy prices necessarily skyrocket” as our dictator president promised they would in 2008.

The Engineering Geek has also gotten the first contract for his own engineering firm, NRG Options Engineering, LLC, since retiring from the labs. Since he was apparently more popular with customers than the lab management, it is no surprise that he was requested by one of his former colleagues, and received the contract with no argument from administration. This has been a balm to his battered professional ego, for he never felt truly valued for his work as an employee. It took a long time for the words of our business consultant to sink in: No one will value you like you will. That’s why valuable people go into business for themselves.

This spring has also been great for observing. The Engineering Geek is also an amateur astronomer, and we have had several wonderful events to observe in our environs. We drove north about 100 miles to observe the Annular Solar Eclipse from the centerline, which passed through New Mexico. We thought we might be a little south of the predicted centerline, but it turned out we were right on it! Two weeks and two days later, we set up on our mesa for the final Transit of Venus in our lifetime. This takes place about once a century in two 8-year apart events. It was exciting to see the shadow of Venus cross onto the solar disc in real time through a filtered telescope, although I will admit that watching the rest of transit we could see from our area was like watching corn grow. Still, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity! (We could not see the Transit of Venus in 2004 from North America). 

Finally, our new house-cat came to us on the evening of the eclipse. We were set up at an elementary school north of Gallup, near Yah-ta-Hey, New Mexico. There was a beautiful little kitty there that came around as we were watching the annula. She kept rubbing at my legs, and claiming me as I walked around showing people how to use the filters and the eclipse glasses. (We had attracted a sizeable crowd when we set up our telescope). A neighbor of the school said that she was a stray, so when she jumped into the car as we packed up, what were we cat lovers supposed to do? Of course we stopped at Wal-Mart in Gallup and bought a little cat carrier. Of course we took her to the vet, got her de-wormed, de-ear-mited and spayed. Her name is Moon Shadow (of course!) and she has moved in and brought poor lonely Binky out of his shell. Another gain, brought to us by serendipity! 

There is so much more to write about but each of them deserves a separate blog entry! Stay tuned!

A Season of Loss and Gain: Part I-Losses

I have not written anything at all here since Purim. Part of the reason is that we have been busy with our work on the ranch, and my work with the Gary Johnson campaign, with classes and courses, training and all the business of life. If I had thought that as the children grew up and began leaving home my leisure would increase, I have been shown to be wrong. The days are still just as packed as they ever were, if not more so.  

But another, deeper reason is that I have been challenged and tested this spring of 2012 with losses and gains that I was reluctant to write about because I had not yet resolved some of them in my own head and heart, and in some ways still haven’t.

We lost a total of four animals this past spring. The one calf born so far this year, was taken by coyotes, and a heifer died one night for reasons that we will never know, about two months after we transferred her to our partner’s farm on the Rio Grande. These losses caused momentary anguish and questioning, but not the anguish that two others created.

In late January, while we were away, the eldest of our two house cats died unexpectedly. Cloudy, our most beautiful cat—the one with the unique aquamarine eyes--laid down in his favorite winter sleeping spot and never woke up again. He was found by the CIT, who saw him born 11 years before. It seemed the  circle was closed that night and the next day when we buried him on the sunny south-facing hillside behind the house, under a twisted pinyon tree in view of his favorite window perch.

 

But the hardest loss by far happened on February 8, 2012. It was a sunny, early spring morning, when I fed the dogs, and as was my habit, hugged Umbrae—our big, black Newfie cross hard so that he would “talk” to me. Later that morning, busy with computer work for a class that I was leaving to attend in Albuquerque, I did not notice that he and Lily had gone on walk-about. When he did not return, I drove the county road looking for him, returning empty to the ranch. After Lily returned, I reluctantly left for two days, hoping that he would return that evening. He never did. And I am left with a huge hole in my heart, wondering what happened to him, and thinking about what I could have done differently that morning. He may have been stolen, he may have been attacked by a wild animal. He may be alive still, and he may not. We just don’t know. And that is the hardest loss of all. As I drive around the Red Hill area, I still have one eye on the pastures and roads, the hills and the houses, hoping to catch a glimpse of my big, black dog. In my mind’s eye I see him, in the periphery of my vision, dancing on the big rock on the hill above the house.  

More than any other reason, I  think I have not posted here for so long because on some level, I wanted to wait for good news about Umbrae. Writing about his loss, I knew, would open up the wound of not knowing, to bring that awful sinking feeling in my gut, the pain of loss that seems unendurable even as it must be endured. And it would make his loss seem final and permanent in my mind.

There have been other losses, but they are smaller, less permanent, more reconcilable. There have also been many gains, some wonderful and amazing, and some small and satisfying. The gains, I think, deserve their own entry and their own honors. Tomorrow.

I have undertaken the discipline of blogging again, as we move into the summer and as I embrace more and more fully this life we have chosen, way out here.

Purim: The Diaspora Mentality

 

“It can’t happen here.”  

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations so that the name of Israel will not be remembered.”

Psalm 83  

“So many Hamans, only one Purim.”

 

Once again Purim is upon us, a time of spring-fever hilarity and drunken silliness. The only holiday of the Jewish calendar when it is not only permitted, but practically commanded that we drink enough so that we do not know the difference between Mordecai, the hero, and Haman, the villain. And what’s not to celebrate? On the surface, Purim is another one of the quintessential Jewish holidays that can be summarized thus:
They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.     

But scratch below the surface of the formula, and look again. Purim is antithetical to the joy of Pesach, when we rejoice in our liberation from slavery, and our obligation in every generation to understand that it was we, ourselves, who came forth from Egypt. Rather, Purim is more than slightly hysterical, as we read the Megillah and remember that in the Diaspora, the Eternal G-d of Israel is silent, hidden even in the face of our total annihilation.  Even the circumstance of our peril in Shushan was governed by the capriciousness associated with the false gods of the nations, the date of our destruction—13 Adar—being chosen by the casting of lots, called purim.  And the villains do not have the solemn power of a Pharaoh and his priests, ready to duel, gods against G-d, over the fate of Israel. A drunken king willing to mortgage away his kingdom for the price of a half-year long drinking party and his vain chancellor who struts and fusses his way to the destruction of the Jews of Persia; that’s what we get in this Diaspora tale of precarious redemption. And even that is not accomplished by the strong hand and mighty arm of the Eternal, full of power and glory. No, in our Diaspora redemption, the King is too weak to even rescind the death decree, but the Jews of Persia are granted a special dispensation to defend themselves against those commanded to destroy them.  

Purim is very much a Diaspora tale, and in the Megillah itself we see all of the stereotypical manifestations of what R. Soloveitchik calls “the galut (exile) mentality.” The tale could be pulled right out of a newspaper from Europe today, or any other place and time in which a highly assimilated and comfortable Diaspora Jewish community is suddenly made aware of how small, vulnerable and hated it really is.

Even the heroes are Diaspora heroes. When Hadassah is entered into the “Miss Shushan” contest to get the king a new queen, she goes with a less “Jewish”name, Esther, which means “hidden.” Her uncle, the Court Jew Mordecai, counsels her not to reveal her identity, so that she remains hidden in the court of the King. The attitude of the Jews of Shushan is also typically that of assimilated Jews of the Diaspora. As R. Irving Greenberg puts it, when Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman in the street:

“. . . they were confident they had nothing to do with ‘Mordecai the Jew’ types who would not go along with Persian rules. It was a rude awakening to discover that Haman designated all Jews as his target. Even more shocking was the discovery that the respectable [King] Ahashverosh, who would never kill Jews—some of his best friends were Jews—passed the ring to Haman without hesitation and was ready to stand by indifferently while the mass murder proceeded. The Jews of Shushan discovered the bitter lessons of the Diaspora: It can happen here, and we are one. (The Jewish Way).

When the destruction of the Jews of Shushan is announced, Esther and Mordecai’s responses are echoed down through the whole sorry history of Diaspora Jewry. Mordecai weeps, Esther decides that it is better not to stand out (“Shah! Be shtill!”), and the Jewish community is divided on the seriousness of the peril (“They don’t really mean it.” “This is the land of Schiller and Bach.”) It is only when Mordecai takes action, sending a message to Esther in which he says:

“Do not think that you alone of all the Jews, will escape into the King’s house; for if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s household will be destroyed. Who knows but that you have come into the King’s Household for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4: 13 – 14)

And so Esther does act, and deliverance comes because of her action. But her actions are not the confident and direct acts of a prophet like Moses, but the careful and hesitant self-abasement of a court Jew in the uncertainty of exile:

“If I have found favor in your eyes, O King, and if it pleases the King, let my life be given to me at my request and my people spared at my pleading . . . If only we had been sold to be slaves, I would have been silent for merely suffering bondage, I would not have wanted to cause damage to my king . . .” (Esther 7:3 – 4).

The hysterical hilarity of Purim is a celebration of the momentary relief of a people who know that evil has been averted but not destroyed; that the wheel is still in spin. Haman hangs today, and the Jews are saved, but tomorrow there could arise another son of Amalek--who embodies the pure, destructive will to annihilate the Jewish people—and genocide come upon them like a bolt out of the blue.

This Purim, as I drown out the name of Haman with a swing of the grogger, and eat my Hamantaschen accompanied by a nice Moscato, I also remember this about Amalek: he is the symbol of idolatry, the claim to an absolute power that is contradicted by the very existence of the Jew. As R. Greenberg puts it:

“Premature messianists. . . are angered by the persistence of the Jew who thereby gives the lie to their presumptions. Idolatry is tempted to make the Jew disappear and thereby clear the way for its own, uncontested dominance. The twentieth century has made the matter even clearer. Whosoever would be God must destroy the Jews totally. As long as one Jew is alive, the Jewish denial of all but God remains . . . the temptation to become God is overwhelming, therefore a plan to murder every last Jew becomes conceivable—and doable.” (The Jewish Way).

And I think about the rising unrest in the world, and the empty promises of Utopia that come from the right, the left, the Islamists, the trade unions, the political personality cultists, the Occupy movement and the idolater in the White House who said: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Is it no wonder, then, that we are seeing a rise in Jew-hatred all over the world, from Achmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map, to the Occupy Los Angeles teacher who wants all Jews expelled from the United States. SSDD.

And the Jews of the United States, confronted with a maniacal hatred of ourselves and our country, act just like the Jews of Shushan. So many liberal Jews refuse to see Obama’s hatred of Jews and Israel. So many libertarian Jews help Ron Paul sweep the overt anti-Semitism in his campaign under the rug. Jewish self-hatred abounds in the press, in the media. It is hard to understand. It seems crazy. It seems suicidal. It is irrational.

“Do not think that you alone of the Jews will escape into the King’s house—(the party, the movement, the collective) . . .

Utopia is an idol; beautiful at a distance, but corrupt and deadly close-up. And no matter how much the individual Jew might protest and argue that it is not he who contradicts assimilation, the collective, the perfection of human kind, Amalek sees his very existence as a threat, saying:

 

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations . . .”

So many Hamans. Only one Purim.