Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Contrary to popular opinion, the prohibition against the pig as a food animal for Jews is probably rooted in religious prohibitions against animals sacred to other peoples. The modern fear of a trichinosis infection, a parasitic and often lethal disease transmitted to humans by consumption of insufficiently cooked pork, is valid but unlikely to be the original reason for regarding swine as ritually impure (Isa. 65:4; 66:3).

As we noted in another posting,  part of the misunderstanding lies in the translation of the Hebrew word “tame” which really means “impure,” but is translated as “unclean” which implies that hygiene is at the heart of the observance. This doesn’t mean that hygiene is not important, for if one observes the kosher laws, it will enhance personal hygiene  but this is a residual effect and not the primary motivation behind the kosher laws. In the medieval age during the height of the Black Plague, Jews were frequently attacked because their hygiene was superior,  for the Jews always washed their hands. On the other hand, the Hebrew word shketz (which is used to describe non-kosher fish) definitely has a pejorative connotation denoting filth or anything that is disgusting (cf. Nah. 3:6, Eze. 5:11).

Among the various reasons that have been given for these laws. The traditional and most obvious reason is the religious or spiritual, “You shall be men consecrated to me”  (Exod. 22:31). A holy people needs to distinguish between the sacred and the profane. The celebrated “Letter of Aristeas,” a Judaic philosophical work that was originally written in Greek (100 B.C.E.), contains some of the oldest explanations found anywhere regarding the dietary laws. In his letter, Aristeas taught that the purpose of the kosher laws served as a hedge differentiating the Jewish people from other nations. He also stated that these laws were given to the Jews to inculcate in them the spirit of justice, to awaken pious reflections, and, by their means, to help form the character of the individual. To prove his contention, he pointed to the fact that in kashrut, birds of prey are forbidden as food so the Jew might recall the first principle of social justice:  one must never prey on others.

Almost two centuries later, Philo of Alexandria, a Platonist philosopher and leader of the Alexandrian Jewish community (who was the first theologian to comprehensively integrate Greek wisdom with the Torah) attempted to interpret Scriptural law by means of the Greek method of allegory, assigning a human vice to every creature branded in the Bible as “unclean,” and reading into every prohibition a devout exhortation to man to take himself in hand and master his “unclean” passions and habits. Moreover, the dietary laws also taught the Jews about “the practice of virtue by frugality and abstinence” (Special Laws 101) The very idea of whether food can influence behavior is a subject that has long been debated since antiquity and still is being debated even today.

The Christian scholar George Foot Moore rejects this theory and feels there is neither internal nor external evidence to support this position (Judaism, 1, 1927, p. 21). He reasons:  “They were ancient customs, the origin and reason of which had long since been forgotten. Some of them are found among other Semites, or more widely; some were, so far as we know, peculiar to Israel; but as a whole, or we may say, as a system, they were the distinctive customs which the Jews had inherited from their ancestors with a religious sanction in the two categories of holy and polluted. Other peoples had their own, some of them for all classes, some, as among the Jews, specifically for the priests, and these systems also were distinctive” (op.cit., 21-22).