Abstract
This chapter offers an overview of the history of the pig as a marker of difference for Jews and Christians. Beginning in classical antiquity, “universalistic” cultures like the Greeks and Romans denigrated and mocked Jews for not consuming certain foods, particularly pig. Christianity adopted the Greco-Roman stance and continued to consider Jews (and Muslims) as uncivilized, irrational, and dangerous due to their avoidance of eating pig, with such denigration turning all too frequently into persecution. Jewish foodies either do not know or do not care about this tragic history. The will to assimilate modernist rebellion against and/or ignorance about Jewish subjects has led many Jewish foodies to indifference regarding or opposition to the observance of the kosher laws (kashrut), a position similar to, if not derivative of, Christianity.
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Notes
- 1.
For discussion of how the pig served as a symbolic marker of non-Jewish attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in the ancient world, see Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), Chap. 3 (“Abstinence from Pork”); Cristiano Grottanelli, “Avoiding Pork: Egyptians and Jews in Greek and Latin Texts,” Food and Identity in the Ancient World, ed. Cristiano Grottanelli and Lucio Milano (Padova: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Librereria, 2004), 59–93; Jordan D. Rosenblum, “‘Why Do You Refuse to Eat Pork?’: Jews, Food, and Identity in Roman Palestine,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100, 1 (Winter 2010): 95–110; idem, The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), esp. Chap. 2; Misgav Har-Peled, “Le cochon comme problème: Grecs, Romains et l’interdit juif du porc/The Pig as a Problem: Greeks, Romans and Jewish Pork Avoidance” (PhD dissertation, École des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales, 2011); idem, “‘Avoiding the Most Legitimate Meat’: Stoicism, Platonism and Jewish Pork Avoidance,” a talk given at the conference “Neoplatonism in the East—ex oriente lux.” The International Society of Neoplatonic Studies, Haifa University. Haifa, Israel, March 22–24, 2011. For the reverse rhetorical formation, see Har-Peled, “The Eternal Return of the Empire’s End: Time, History and Practice of the Sages’ Identification of Rome with the Pig,” a paper presented at the conference “The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perspectives,” Tel Aviv University, 2–4 October, 2013; idem, “The Dialogical Beast: The Identification of Rome with the Pig in Early Rabbinic Literature” (PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2013). Har-Peled’s work is available at academia.edu.
- 2.
Kaminsky, Pig Perfect, 5.
- 3.
Claudine Fabre-Vassas, The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig, trans. Carol Volk (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
- 4.
Misgav Har-Peled, “The Pig Libel: A Ritual Crime Legend from the Era of the Spanish Expulsion of the Jews (15th–16th Centuries),” Revue des Études Juives 175, 1–2 (Janvier–Juin 2015): 107–133; Shachar, Judensau.
- 5.
Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 32, citing the words of an alleged Sabbatian, Joseph of Rohatyn, as quoted in Ya’akov Emden, Sefer shimush (1757), 5v, 6v.
- 6.
Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 128–156; Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Dorset Press, 1974), 298 and passim.
- 7.
La République et le cochon (Paris: Seuil, 2013). A March 2012 lecture by Birnbaum, “Eating Pork in Paris with Pierre Birnbaum,” can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvbrCr9r_4E. Another excursus on the pig as an ambivalently laden symbol in Europe is Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), Chap. 1, while Jonathan Boyarin, “The Pig as Poros: On the Uses (and Loss) of a Swinish Symbolic Mediator,” unpublished paper, wraps Fabre-Vassas’ analysis into a larger anthropology of European Christian identity as grounded on a search for transcendence of (Jewish) genealogy; see the briefer French version, “Le Porc en dieu Pôros,” Penser/Rêver 7 (2005): 151–176. Finally, see Misgav Har-Peled, “Configurations porcines: étiologies et jeux identitaires entre juifs, chrétiens et musulmans autour du cochon au Moyen Âge,” Byzance et l’Europe: L’héritage historiographique d’Évelyne Patlagean, Actes de colloque international, Paris, 21–22 November 2011, ed. Claudine Delacroix-Besnier (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2016), 143–168.
- 8.
Jane Grigson, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 7, quoted in Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor, Food and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 2004), 2.
- 9.
“National Front Party Head: No Non-pork Options in School Menus,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, 6 April 2014; http://www.jta.org/2014/04/06/news-opinion/world/national-front-party-head-no-non-pork-options-in-school-menus; also, more recently, http://news.yahoo.com/attacks-france-walks-narrow-line-islam-schools-155928863.html.
- 10.
“Danish Town Says Pork Must be Served at Public Institutions,” The Guardian, 19 January 2016; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/danish-town-says-pork-must-be-served-at-public-institutions?CMP=share_btn_link.
- 11.
Rubenstein, “The Making of a Rabbi,” reprinted in Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1966), 210.
- 12.
Elissa Altman, Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw (New York: NAL/Penguin Random House, 2016).
- 13.
Gigabiting (the author’s name), “The Rabbis’ Banquet, or Why it’s ‘kosher’ not to keep kosher,” Blogher, Jewish thread, 7 August 2013; http://blogher400.rssing.com/chan-12591977/all_p1.html#item12. At the bottom of the story, the author announces her online presence, gigabiting.com, as the place “where food meets culture and technology.” The above blog post also appeared the same day on the gigabiting.com site, with the author’s name given as Janice, who seems to write every piece for the site. Gigibiting, which is based in Boston, is owned by Janice Gregg , who has written for DiningOut Magazine.
- 14.
http://www.jta.org/2015/11/03/life-religion/pew-survey-57-of-u-s-jews-eat-pork-and-torah-study-more-popular. In contrast, 90% of surveyed American Muslims say they abstain from pork and 67% of American Hindus from beef.
- 15.
Max Falkowitz, “Chametz-Free NYC, Day 1: Eating Well in New York During Passover,” Serious Eats: New York, 21 March 2013; http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2013/03/chametz-free-nyc-day-1-eating-well-in-new-yor.html. Raising further complexities of contemporary Jewish identity, Falkowitz goes on to write: “But come Yom Kippur I fast. And during Passover it’s matzo all the way. For a food-loving Jew, especially one committed to his carbs the way his parents taught him, keeping kosher for Passover is a commitment that’s hard to ignore, and a challenge I’ve come to look forward to.” Food thus serves both as a bond with the ways of one’s culture and as a marker of autonomy from them.
- 16.
Kaminsky, Pig Perfect, 5. I do not know whether Lena was Jewish.
- 17.
Kaminsky, Pig Perfect, 66.
- 18.
Mitch Broder, “New in New York: At Baconery, Everyone’s Taken with Bacon,” Mitch Broder’s Vintage New York, 19 February 2013; http://mbvintagenewyork.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-in-new-york-at-baconery-everyones.html.
- 19.
See Rocco Loosbrock, “More And More Jews Are Enjoying Our Gourmet Bacon!,” The Student Operated Press, 4 September 2009; http://thesop.org/story/food/2009/09/04/more-and-more-jews-are-enjoying-our-gourmet-bacon.php. The author, who at the time operated a Bacon of the Month Club, insists that the growing trend of Jews loving bacon has nothing to do with their leaving their Judaism, but only with their being modern enough to question ancient practices. He cites a number of “Jewish friends” and reproduces their testimonies regarding their love of bacon. I could not find any information on Schulz.
- 20.
Jeffrey Yoskowitz, “On Israel’s Only Jewish-Run Pig Farm, It’s The Swine That Bring Home the Bacon: Letter From Kibbutz Lahav,” Jewish Daily Forward 2 May 2008, http://forward.com/articles/13245/on-israel-s-only-jewish-run-pig-farm-it-s-the-/#ixzz2gLD6h0TU; idem, Pork Memoirs: Personal Stories About a Complicated Meat, http://porkmemoirs.com. I thank Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus for making me aware of this blog. On pigs in Israel, see also Ronit Vered, “Prescribing Pork in Israel,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 10, 3 (Summer 2010): 19–22.
- 21.
Laura McCandlish, “Why Some Jews Don’t Feel Guilty About Eating Pork,” Modern Farmer, 11 March 2014, http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/something-jews-eating-pork; “Chef, teacher, writer, activist, forager, and farmhand” David Levi, “My Kind of Kosher,” Chef Levi’s Portland Food and Cooking Class, 24 October 2011, http://davidscottlevi.blogspot.de/2011/10/my-kind-of-kosher.html.
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Schorsch, J. (2018). Jews, Christians, and Pigs: A Brief History. In: The Food Movement, Culture, and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71706-7_2
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