Judaism and Dietary Patterns

Paper Summary:

This essay offers a nuanced historical account and explanation of why the Jewish dietary rule came to insist on the prohibition of the consumption of certain animals, while others were tolerated, with particular reference to the time when the rule came to be fleshed out. More specifically, the paper looks into the case of pigs or pork as an animal whose inclusion in the list of those unclean might strike as particularly odd to the modern reader. Given the similarities they had with oxen, sheep and goats as domesticated and herbivorous livestock, swine, it seems fair to say, had little reason to be excluded. But this short piece argues that their labelling as unclean had as much to do with the peculiar circumstances in which Leviticus and Deuteronomy were written as with the consistency of the religious doctrine based on an adherence to the tenet of separate spheres which pigs and other animals fell foul of.

Outline;
Introduction
Reasons for the Exclusion of Pig: Hygiene and Habit
Criticism of Hygiene and Habit Interpretation
Contextualising Dietary Law: Babylonic Exile and Anti-desert Mentality
Distinctive Categories and Aberrations
Conclusions

From the Paper:

"That pork was unhygienic does not stand up to much scrutiny either. Criticising the hygienic rationale, Jean Soler for example, correctly makes the obvious point that the nomadic Hebrew tribes, who lived at the time when these rules were drawn up, did not possess sufficient medical knowledge to be able to pronounce the pig unclean based on the infectious dangers it posed to man. Even though it would be tempting to suppose that the kind of hot and arid climate in which the ancient Israelites lived was particularly hazardous for the transmission of diseases, the lack of even physicians to prepare for this possibility at that time points to the extent to which medical reasons could not plausibly be carted out to account for why pigs were expressly forbidden."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bulmer, Ralph, 'The uncleanness of the birds in Leviticus and Deuteronomy', Man 24/2 (1989), pp. 304-21.
• Douglas, Mary, Purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo (London and New York: Routledge, 1966).
• Dolander, Miguel-Angel Motis, 'Mediterranean Jewish diet and traditions on the Middle Ages' in Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (eds), Food: a culinary history from antiquity to the present (New York: Columbia University Press,1999).
• Eidelman, Jay M., 'Be holy for I am holy: food, politics and the teaching of Judaism', Journal of ritual studies 14/1 (2000), pp.45-51.
• Feely-Harnik, Gillian, The Lord's table: meaning of food in early Judaism and Christianity (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994).

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• Essay # 47236 : "Judaism and Its Plurality"

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