March 27, 2008
Why don’t Jews eat pork? When I was growing up, I was often told that kashrut was a sign of the superior intelligence of the Jewish people. We had a system that kept us healthy by prohibiting the consumption of dangerous foods — the meat from pigs that could carry trichinosis, shellfish that could cause food poisoning, and animals that died of disease and could spread all sorts of noxious illnesses. The implied conclusion was that with modern methods of sanitation, refrigeration, and government inspections, we no longer needed this primitive health code.
Of course, the Torah says nothing about the health benefits of kashrut. This is what the Torah does tell us: “For I the Lord am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy.” We keep kosher because God commands it. Kashrut is neither outmoded nor primitive. We keep kosher because it helps us to add holiness to our lives. Several times each and every day, we have to stop and ask ourselves, “Is this kosher?” Several times each and every day we must remember that we are Jews and part of Israel’s covenant with God.
It is in this week’s parsha, Shemini, that we first read the basic laws of kashrut — the animals, birds, and fish that may or may not be eaten. The rules for land animals are straightforward. To be kosher, these animals must have cloven hooves and chew their cud. Then the text singles out four animals that have one, but not both of these traits: the camel; the shafan (variously translated as rock badger or hyrax); the hare, which chews its cud but does not have true hooves; and the pig, which has cloven hooves but does not chew its cud.
While there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of nonkosher animals — lions and tigers and bears, dogs and cats, elephants and rhinoceri and hippopotami — the pig has long been the symbol of “treifness.” In all likelihood, this is because the pig is the only nonkosher animal commonly eaten by non-Jews around the world. But rabbis rarely stop at the p’shat, the simple meaning; we’re drawn to drash, the homiletic explanation. And there are ethical lessons to be learned from the prohibition of eating pig.
I don’t know the origin of this one, but I came across it in one of the late Harry Kemelman’s “Rabbi Small” mysteries. He suggested that we react so negatively to the idea of eating pig because it is the only common domestic animal that does no work and provides no useful products other than its meat. Cows and goats give milk, oxen pull plows and wagons, sheep provide wool, cats get rid of mice, dogs guard the home, chickens lay eggs, horses provide transportation — all these domestic animals are valuable to us while they are alive. But the pig does no work and provides no products — it is valuable to us only when it is dead. Because God commands us to “choose life,” we want nothing to do with an animal that is raised only to be slaughtered.
I like this explanation, but there is a much older one for why we react so negatively to pigs. As the Torah teaches, the pig has one of the two signs of kosher animals — cloven hooves. The midrash points out that when a pig is lying down, it stretches its legs out in front of it to show its hooves, as if to say, “See, I’m kosher.” And so the rabbis accuse Cain, Pharaoh, Esau, and other unsavory characters of acting like pigs — but not in the way we use the expression — to call someone slovenly or greedy. The rabbis liken them to pigs to call them hypocrites and deceivers, to say that they cultivated a few ostentatiously positive behaviors to try to disguise their real nature, to try to trick people into believing that they were kosher human beings.
So why don’t Jews eat pork? First and most important, because God prohibits it. But when we avoid ham and bacon, we are also proclaiming our reverence for life and our commitment to honesty and integrity.
Rabbi Joyce Newmark, a resident of Teaneck, is a former religious leader of congregations in Leonia and Lancaster, Pa.
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