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Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 28, 2024

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This video is a transcript of an interview with Jordan, who discusses the motivations behind his book on the cultural significance of pigs, particularly in Jewish and non-Jewish identity. The conversation begins with an introduction to the context and the date, August 23rd, around 3 PM in London.

Jordan explains that his interest in the topic started nearly 20 years ago when he was researching food laws in ancient texts, specifically focusing on how pigs were discussed by ancient rabbis and Romans in relation to identity. He accumulated various anecdotes and facts over the years, highlighting how discussions around pigs often generated curiosity and engagement in his talks.

The interview further explores how pigs have been used as a metaphor over time, especially as a symbol of humiliation in Jewish contexts. Jordan argues that while pigs are rarely mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, their significance grew during the Second Temple period, particularly through stories of martyrdom. He explains how the pig became emblematic of Jewish identity and Jewish dietary laws, while also being a tool for external mockery in medieval Christian contexts.

Jordan emphasizes that the symbolic value of pigs continues to evolve and remains relevant today. He discusses contemporary implications, such as the cultural reaction to “impossible pork” products, which raise questions about identity and the routine eating habits of different cultures. He concludes by expressing hopes that readers will appreciate the depth of the narrative around pigs and consider the broader implications of food choices and identity narratives in their lives.

The conversation also hints at the potential for future research on pigs and food studies more generally, suggesting a need for both micro and macro studies of food's symbolic meanings in different cultures. Jordan invites further exploration and scholarship on the topic, encouraging others to join the dialogue about the cultural weight of food and identity.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Historical Exploration**: The speaker discusses their academic journey, which began nearly 20 years ago while researching food laws in ancient times, focusing particularly on the cultural and identity-related significance of pigs in Jewish and non-Jewish convideos.

2. **Cultural Symbolism of Pigs**: The video highlights how the pig has been used historically to signify Jewish identity, particularly during periods of persecution, such as during the second temple period and in medieval times. The choice to eat or not eat pig has been layered with meanings over centuries.

3. **Ongoing Research and Interest**: The speaker describes their passion for the subject, mentioning that their research naturally expanded as they kept discovering more references and narratives about pigs, leading to the creation of multiple works on the topic.

4. **Relation to Broader Cultural Themes**: The discussion touches on how food and dietary choices reflect and communicate identity, values, and beliefs across different cultures and religions, emphasizing the importance of understanding the underlying meanings tied to these choices.

5. **Contemporary Implications**: The video draws connections between historical attitudes toward pigs and modern discussions around food alternatives, such as plant-based meats, suggesting that cultural baggage heavily influences contemporary dietary choices and their meanings in society today.

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Here are some key quotes from the video:

1. **Origin of Interest**:
- “This started back almost 20 years ago when I was working on my dissertation... I kept finding facts and I would think it was interesting and throw it into a talk and throw it into a file.”

2. **Cultural Significance of Pigs**:
- “...the more I worked on it, the more I was interested in it.”
- “If you look at the Hebrew Bible, pigs appear very rarely... but starting in the second temple period, starting around the time of the Maccabees, there start to be pigs in stories of Jewish martyrdom.”

3. **Identity and Meaning**:
- “To eat the pig as a Jew means a variety of things. To not eat the pig means a variety of things.”

4. **Historical Convideo**:
- “...over 2000 years, it gets layered with more meaning.”

5. **Personal Anecdote**:
- “...my family make fun of me because I love my mechanical pencils. So I love having books and I not just underline, I make my own index.”

6. **Cultural Layers and Modern Implications**:
- “...it continues to mean something. A Jew who eats pig can't just be a person who's eating pig. It has to be read by it...there's still a desire to prove, are you doing that to transgress?”

7. **Discussion on Impossible Pork**:
- “And both their, their kosher agency... refused to give it to impossible pork... it’s not technically wrong, but it feels wrong.”

8. **Conclusion and Broader Message**:
- “What I want them to take away from it is it has been, and I would argue, will continue to be used to tell stories of Jewish and non-Jewish identity.”
- “So what I would want them to take away from it is number one, this fascinating story, but then to think about how that applies to their other things that they recognize in life.”

These quotes exemplify the evolution of the speaker's interest in the cultural, religious, and historical layers of the significance of pigs in Jewish and broader society over time. The speaker reflects on personal experiences while also addressing larger themes related to identity and meaning in food choices.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This started back almost 20 years ago when I

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was working on my dissertation.

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And, I was working on food laws in the

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ancient world, and the ancient rabbis

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and pig kept popping up.

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And, I wrote my first article on this subject.

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Uh, it was even the subject of my, job talk

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for the job that I currently hold.

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Um, and 'cause I was looking at how the ancient Jews

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and ancient rabbis talked about pig and Jewish

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and non-Jewish identity,

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and then found that Romans were talking about

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Jewish identity through the Pig two.

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And so it was interesting to look at insiders

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and outsiders talking about identity in different ways,

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but through the same mechanism.

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And I pig kept popping up.

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I kept finding facts and I would think it was interesting

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and throw it into a talk and throw it into a file.

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And I would give talks and people would wanna know, well,

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why don't Jews eat pigs?

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Or let, or they would come up

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and share their story of their, their,

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the ways they would or wouldn't eat pig.

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And I kept saying,

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this is the next thing I'm gonna work on.

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And after a certain point, I, the file was overflowing.

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Um, well, I guess that's a, that's a metaphor

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that maybe would work for someone my age,

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but younger people wouldn't necessarily understood the,

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the word document had lots of sources in it,

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and I started to put it together

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and I just kept finding it and finding it.

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And also, I hit a point where I had to be okay with the fact

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that I was gonna find, that I was gonna continue to find

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sources after I,

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'cause if I waited to find every source,

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I would never finish the book.

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And in fact, and I now have a file

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of things I've found since I sent the book to the publisher,

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and they told me I am not allowed to touch a word.

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Um, but so the motivation was, it just kept coming up.

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And it was so fascinating. It was such rich material.

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And the more I worked on it,

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the more I was interested in it.

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This is my fourth book.

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And actually, the first three I was kind of sick of

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by the time I was done with it.

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I like didn't want to talk about it anymore.

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But you can ask my family, I'm still overly excited

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to talk about what I call like my pigs.

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You know, there's so much, so the, so it's,

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the motivation was it was just kept popping up

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and there was so much information.

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So that, that's what inspired me

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or continues to, I, I, I, again, I keep collecting

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pigs sources for future talks

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or, for, you know, if there's ever another addition

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or something, I could squeeze in more pigs.

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If you look at the Hebrew Bible, pigs appear very rarely,

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you know, you're told in, in, Leviticus

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and Deuteronomy don't eat them,

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but you're also told not to eat the camel.

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Um, and pigs, pigs appear only a handful of times.

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So many other, not categorically,

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not kosher animals appear in the Hebrew Bible.

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Um, what, what I argue is

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that starting in the second temple period, starting

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around the time of the, the Maccabees, where, there,

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there start to be pigs in stories of Jewish martyrdom,

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stories of Jews being told you, you either eat the pig

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and submit to foreign rule or you'll be killed.

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And in those stories, they could equally say you could eat

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the camel, you could eat the eagle, you could eat,

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a variety of other non-kosher animals.

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But it's the pig. And I think it's the pig

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'cause that's the most commonly available non-kosher animal.

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But it, it starts to make it mean more.

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And in fact, you know, when you, when you write a book,

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you write the same ideas over and over

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and over again as you're rewriting the chapter.

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And then as you're writing a book review,

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and as you're writing, a book, proposal,

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and as you're giving talks related to it,

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and there was one kind of throwaway line I wrote one time

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that like made me stop,

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and now I keep coming back to, which was I realized

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that in the most ancient sources about, the Maccabees,

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which are about this, the what is now the modern Jewish

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holiday of Hanukkah, you learn

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so much more about the pig than you do about oil.

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People today talk about, the miracle of oil.

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It lasted eight days.

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This kosher oil

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after the Maccabees were, were victorious.

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But that story doesn't come until

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several hundred years after.

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It's the first recorded event of that story.

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But if you read the earliest book of Maccabees,

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there are are page after page

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after page about Jews being forced to either

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eat the pig or be killed.

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And so starting, and then both Jews

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and the, the Jews particularly start to notice that

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'cause the Jewish sources talking about it.

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But then also non-Jew sources start to notice, Hey,

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Jews don't eat the pig.

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Now, that's not always true. Some Jews do, but Jews

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and non-Jews sources start talking about it more and more.

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And as they talk about it more,

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they invest it with more meaning.

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And then what I say is, over 2000 years,

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it gets layered with more meaning.

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And so to eat the pig as a Jew means a variety of things.

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To not eat the pig means a variety of things.

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For a Jew or a non-Jew to eat

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or not eat the pig means a variety of things.

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And so each successive generation

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layers another meaning on it.

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And so the, the longer you go, the more it means.

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So now the pig means so much more than the camel.

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And in fact, I, in the opening of the book, I point out,

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I have a, a soon to be 10-year-old son.

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And when I was, he was a a baby,

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my mom got him these wooden blocks

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that had Hebrew letters on them and,

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and animals with their Hebrew names on it.

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Um, and my wife grew up in Italy.

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So then I bought some Italian blocks too,

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and I was comparing them from the same company,

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and I found that they both had the eagle,

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and several other animals.

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But the Hebrew blocks didn't have the pig,

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the, but the Italian blocks did.

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Um, but so I then compared all of them

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to see what did they replace it with?

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And the Hebrew blocks placed the,

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replaced the pig with the camel.

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But if you look at the biblical verses,

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the camel is prohibited, right?

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Literally right next to the pig in the Hebrew Bible, right?

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So they were

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replacing one biblically forbidden animal with another.

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But the pig just the cultural symbolism.

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And sort of my point is, if you just had the Hebrew Bible,

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that would make no sense.

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But it's, it's the, these thousands of years of,

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of complications, that's the story that I tell in this book

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that explain these blocks my family make fun of me

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because I, I love my mechanical pencils.

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So I, I love having books

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and I not just underline, I make my own index.

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So if you look at the back of my book, and,

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and so the first thing I did when I finally said, okay,

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I wanna do this, is I looked at the back

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of pretty much every book I've read for the past 20 years

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and look to find my pig.

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And, and you find it and all sorts of,

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and then you give toxin, people tell you, you know,

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have you did this?

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Or you talk about it in class.

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Um, there's one, one have a, there's a story,

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in Voltaire Canid that talks, that tells of,

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people who are suspected of being, con

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of muranos, which we'll get to that in a minute

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of this pig history.

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Um, and,

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because they take the, the, the bake, the, the ham,

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the bacon outta their chicken, right?

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Um, and a student in class,

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I was just mentioning this pi, something about pigs.

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And a student was like, we just

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read Voltaire in my other class.

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And there's this story, right?

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So if you talk about it, people tell you things.

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So I've been collecting pig facts through the years,

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and then the, what I try, what I did was start trying

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to figure out how to put it together and where it was.

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And then once you start looking,

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and then it's just reading all sorts of different things.

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I read things way beyond my comfort zone.

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And then one thing leads to another.

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Um, you know, you find one book

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and then you look at the footnotes,

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and then you follow the footnotes and they suggest that.

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And then you go to the library and you look, it's hard

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to get students these days to go

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to an actual physical library.

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You can do a lot on Google books,

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but I love to go to the library

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and look at the book to the right and the left of it,

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and open it up, right?

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And it's the chance finding the things,

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and then it's just random.

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You're reading a random book.

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And so, they just, they're everywhere.

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And once you start looking for it, it's everywhere.

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And so, it was 20 years of chance

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and purposeful findings

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and then trying to bring them together.

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And then once you start bringing together, story starts

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to come out of it and you start

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to see when certain trends appear,

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and then you go looking for more of those.

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So that was, sort of purposeful

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and accidental findings.

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You can start and say in the, in the second,

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in the second temple period when I talked about that eat pig

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or be, be, martyred.

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But I really see that story emerging in medieval times

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and beyond, where you see,

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Christians using it to mock Jews,

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but also to mock Christians

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who weren't being Christian enough.

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Right? We have, there,

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Nuremberg has written about anti Judaism

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and the, the idea of, there, going back

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to John Christo, an early church father

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who talked about judaizing Christians

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and what he meant are bad Christians, Christians

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who were acting like Jews, right?

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And, and so pig became a symbol of that now.

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So it was used to mock Jews in ways of, there was,

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in the 12 and 13 hundreds, there were, vows

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that Jews had to make if you're gonna go into.

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So, oaths, you had to take, if you're gonna go into

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be, give evidence in a trial,

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and they had to stand on a sow's skin

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and hold a Toro skull, right?

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Um, and the sow skin was clearly meant to mock Jews.

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Um, and the way you could tell it was originally a,

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a goat skin, and they changed it, right?

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And, you have, different ways.

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So the, they had, you look at again, well,

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we could look at Murano, the term for Murano means pig.

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And the idea that was a Jew who had converted to Christ

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who had Catholicism, but you suspected

09:54.715 --> 09:56.715
that they were secretly acting like a pig.

09:57.105 --> 09:58.635
They were secretly acting like a Jew.

09:58.635 --> 10:03.355
And that's layers of mockery to say, you're a Jew, really,

10:03.695 --> 10:05.915
and Jews don't eat pigs, but so you're a pig.

10:05.915 --> 10:08.355
And so one of the biggest accusations against suspected

10:08.545 --> 10:12.405
muranos was that they didn't eat pig.

10:13.275 --> 10:15.415
Um, and there were, there are testimonies of Jesus,

10:15.755 --> 10:20.215
you know, Converso, who said, no, no,

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I just don't like pig.

10:21.295 --> 10:23.415
Like, look at all these other non-kosher animals.

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I eat, but I just don't like it. Right?

10:25.995 --> 10:29.855
And, the, and maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

10:30.235 --> 10:33.055
You had the, the famous example in Germany of the Densa,

10:33.055 --> 10:35.215
which was, it started as,

10:35.675 --> 10:38.895
and this goes back to early Christianity, looking

10:39.075 --> 10:40.815
and ancient Judaism too.

10:40.955 --> 10:43.655
The idea of animals as embodying virtues and vices.

10:44.035 --> 10:46.495
So if you go back to the second temple period, there was a,

10:46.575 --> 10:49.175
a j named Philo who talked about how,

10:49.515 --> 10:50.975
why is pig not allowed?

10:50.975 --> 10:54.175
And he said, well, 'cause it's, you look at animals,

10:54.355 --> 10:57.455
the allowable animals that are domesticated quad eds.

10:57.455 --> 11:00.015
So like, why are cow allowed in pig not, he said,

11:00.085 --> 11:01.455
well, 'cause what are their characteristics?

11:01.455 --> 11:03.335
They have to chew the cud and have split hooves.

11:03.675 --> 11:07.495
And he said, chew the cud is when you,

11:07.605 --> 11:10.175
what they do is they chew information, they bring it down,

11:10.195 --> 11:12.335
and they literally regurgitate the knowledge.

11:12.515 --> 11:14.295
And so they say, this is how you should be as a thinker.

11:14.395 --> 11:18.175
You should take in information, digest it, bring it back up,

11:18.855 --> 11:21.285
think about it again, digest it, bring it back up,

11:21.295 --> 11:23.005
think about it, digest it, bring it back up.

11:23.425 --> 11:26.645
And he said that, so by eating animals that chew the cud,

11:26.645 --> 11:27.765
that's literally what they do.

11:28.025 --> 11:29.845
But that's a lesson in education.

11:30.355 --> 11:32.805
When you, you should listen to this interview

11:33.265 --> 11:37.005
and go think about it and then listen to it again, right?

11:37.185 --> 11:38.805
The, and then think about it again.

11:39.025 --> 11:41.325
Um, and they said the split hooves is about, there's two,

11:41.325 --> 11:43.765
there's virtue and there's vice in life.

11:44.025 --> 11:46.685
And by eating that you remember which path you should go.

11:47.395 --> 11:51.085
Well, the, at first in this was all over Europe, the idea

11:51.085 --> 11:52.965
of animals as virtues and vices in churches.

11:53.465 --> 11:56.005
But in Germany in particular, they start to take the pig,

11:56.005 --> 11:57.365
which embodied greed.

11:59.105 --> 12:01.985
'cause it's piggy, you know, it's, it's piggish and,

12:02.965 --> 12:05.865
and say, well, that embodies greed equals Jews.

12:06.175 --> 12:08.905
Jews are greedy, Jews are pigs. Jews hate pigs.

12:09.005 --> 12:10.745
And it starts to become a, a joke

12:10.765 --> 12:15.585
and then a vulgar joke by having Jews eat a pig excrement

12:15.585 --> 12:16.825
and drink pig urine.

12:17.445 --> 12:19.705
And it becomes vul more and more vulgar.

12:19.925 --> 12:22.825
And a certain point becomes so vulgar that they say, yeah,

12:22.825 --> 12:25.065
we can't even have this in churches anymore, right?

12:25.065 --> 12:27.905
Because it just devolves into a, a vulgar joke.

12:27.925 --> 12:30.465
But for several centuries, it was a vulgar joke

12:30.465 --> 12:32.425
that was perfectly acceptable to have in churches.

12:33.485 --> 12:36.185
Um, so pig is used to dehumanize Jews,

12:37.085 --> 12:38.985
but it's also used to,

12:39.935 --> 12:42.185
because of that to mock Christians

12:42.205 --> 12:44.625
who aren't good enough Christians.

12:46.885 --> 12:48.065
And that continues on.

12:48.065 --> 12:49.945
And there's a long history of,

12:50.345 --> 12:52.465
I mean the Nazis used that as part of that.

12:52.665 --> 12:55.305
I, in the book, I give one example of it and I said,

12:55.705 --> 12:56.785
'cause that's the other,

12:57.565 --> 13:00.265
the hard part I started in the medieval chapter was going

13:00.265 --> 13:04.375
through all of the awful antisemitic tropes of that.

13:04.375 --> 13:06.935
And that's kinda, it exacts a toll on a writer.

13:06.935 --> 13:08.255
And so when I got to the Nazis,

13:08.255 --> 13:09.495
I'm like, I'm gonna give you one example.

13:10.535 --> 13:11.535
I don't need to go through it.

13:11.755 --> 13:15.575
You, the reader and me the author do not need to do, he,

13:15.605 --> 13:18.495
I'll I'll give you one quote from I think Himler I used,

13:18.595 --> 13:21.255
and then there's plenty of others, you know?

13:21.355 --> 13:22.655
So I hit a poor, I hit a,

13:22.655 --> 13:23.735
that was when I hit my breaking point.

13:23.765 --> 13:25.575
Well, let's look at impossible pork and work backwards.

13:25.575 --> 13:27.695
What I'd say is that it continues to mean something.

13:28.215 --> 13:30.295
A Jew who eats pig

13:31.335 --> 13:33.325
can't just be a person who's eating pig.

13:33.625 --> 13:36.485
It has to be read by it.

13:36.585 --> 13:39.175
Um, either themselves

13:39.355 --> 13:41.615
or others will read like, well, why are you eating?

13:41.615 --> 13:43.215
What does it mean? Like, there, there's a,

13:43.215 --> 13:44.895
there's still a desire to prove, are you doing

13:44.895 --> 13:45.935
that to transgress?

13:45.995 --> 13:47.455
And one of the, so I'm gonna get

13:47.455 --> 13:49.215
to the impossible pig in a second to say, one of the things

13:49.215 --> 13:50.895
that I really highlight is I think there's a problem

13:50.895 --> 13:54.375
that some people say, a Jew pig is a bad Jew,

13:54.995 --> 13:57.135
or they're heretical in some way.

13:57.135 --> 13:59.935
And I'm like, well, we have this long history I can talk

13:59.935 --> 14:02.095
about too, of Jews who chose to eat pig

14:02.355 --> 14:04.015
to transgress Jewish identity,

14:04.035 --> 14:06.495
but in a way that we reinforces Jewish identity, right?

14:06.495 --> 14:08.135
Because they're, by doing that,

14:08.135 --> 14:10.135
they're making a statement about their Jewish identity.

14:10.195 --> 14:12.735
And my broader point is just pig is used

14:12.795 --> 14:14.095
to talk about Jewish identity.

14:14.515 --> 14:16.215
And I, I think it continues to be.

14:16.515 --> 14:18.055
So let's look at impossible pork.

14:18.355 --> 14:19.495
So for those who don't know, this,

14:19.495 --> 14:23.135
obviously an impossible meats company, makes lots

14:23.135 --> 14:26.155
of fake meat products

14:26.625 --> 14:29.075
that have no animal products in them whatsoever.

14:29.465 --> 14:32.995
They make fake impossible sausage, impossible, beef

14:33.685 --> 14:35.715
impossible, all sorts of things.

14:35.855 --> 14:38.635
All of those things, are, he,

14:38.635 --> 14:39.715
they have a kosher certification

14:39.715 --> 14:42.355
and halal, they have Islamic, certifications.

14:42.745 --> 14:44.555
They then came up with impossible pork.

14:45.055 --> 14:48.315
And both their, their kosher agency, the ou,

14:48.315 --> 14:50.835
which has been in business since 1923, it started

14:50.835 --> 14:52.285
with Heinz vegetarian baked beans

14:52.305 --> 14:53.645
and now continues to today.

14:53.645 --> 14:55.285
So it just celebrated its hundredth anniversary

14:55.285 --> 14:56.325
of kosher certification.

14:56.865 --> 14:58.885
And halal certification refused to give it

14:58.885 --> 14:59.925
to impossible pork.

15:01.095 --> 15:02.515
And i I, and this,

15:02.615 --> 15:05.195
and they said, look, it's, it's all the same ingredients

15:05.295 --> 15:07.195
as impossible sausage that's continues to be

15:08.035 --> 15:09.875
possible pork sausage, right?

15:09.875 --> 15:12.515
Like it's modeling that, but it's impossible pork.

15:12.655 --> 15:16.675
And the, they, the head of that agency admitted like,

15:16.675 --> 15:18.835
look, it's just, it feels wrong.

15:19.555 --> 15:21.375
And people have different explanations for this.

15:21.995 --> 15:25.375
And so you should always take sky's explanation

15:25.375 --> 15:28.495
with a grain of salt in that we all have, you know, if

15:29.215 --> 15:31.055
I have my, my reason for it,

15:31.095 --> 15:32.335
'cause I've been doing this historical sweep,

15:32.335 --> 15:33.495
there are other people who,

15:33.495 --> 15:34.615
they're interested in technologists

15:34.615 --> 15:35.815
that have a technological answer

15:35.835 --> 15:37.015
or people have the other things.

15:37.035 --> 15:39.375
So for me, for my historical sweep, what I see this is,

15:41.295 --> 15:43.595
it makes sense and doesn't make sense, right?

15:43.655 --> 15:44.715
It doesn't make sense

15:44.715 --> 15:46.195
because all the ingredients are kosher.

15:47.105 --> 15:48.645
You do all these other products.

15:49.465 --> 15:53.555
But when you look at over 2000 years of this baggage for it

15:53.855 --> 15:57.235
to claim that that's kosher just feels wrong.

15:57.825 --> 16:00.115
It's not technically wrong, but it feels wrong

16:00.655 --> 16:02.675
and that is part of it, right?

16:02.855 --> 16:07.595
Um, but, and you could imagine someone choosing to eat that

16:07.855 --> 16:11.355
as a statement of arguing against certain

16:12.425 --> 16:13.585
rabbinic interpretations.

16:13.925 --> 16:17.425
You could choose, see someone not eating it, in favor

16:17.425 --> 16:18.505
of rabbinic interpretations,

16:18.505 --> 16:21.465
or not eating it in favor of cultural trends.

16:21.965 --> 16:24.225
The same way a lot of people, you know,

16:24.225 --> 16:25.705
I collect stories 'cause people come up

16:25.705 --> 16:26.745
and tell me I've, the amount

16:26.745 --> 16:28.345
of times I've heard someone say, I'll eat bacon,

16:28.365 --> 16:29.625
but I can't eat a pork chop.

16:30.135 --> 16:33.465
Just a big piece of meat. And there's a long story for that.

16:33.605 --> 16:36.505
Now you look at the fake meat products going back

16:36.505 --> 16:38.545
to the twenties and thirties, there was beef fry.

16:38.545 --> 16:42.065
There's a long history of fake meat products

16:42.065 --> 16:43.705
that have been certified as kosher.

16:44.605 --> 16:49.215
But the problem with impossible pork is it was the name

16:49.475 --> 16:52.775
and the taste and the quality are so close.

16:53.595 --> 16:56.335
And I could find you going back to the Talmud sources

16:56.405 --> 16:57.855
that tell you, no, no, it's totally fine.

16:59.025 --> 17:00.205
But that's not the point here.

17:00.305 --> 17:01.925
The the point that I was trying to bring out, it's here.

17:01.925 --> 17:03.645
It's, it's not about the legality.

17:03.675 --> 17:06.405
There's this baggage, this weight.

17:06.465 --> 17:09.845
So that's why I say it, me, it continues to mean even more

17:09.845 --> 17:13.535
because legally there's no reason not to.

17:14.155 --> 17:17.655
But it's that extra cultural layer of meaning that,

17:17.765 --> 17:20.575
that I find fascinating that I think only makes sense

17:21.235 --> 17:23.695
if you look at this 3000 year sweep.

17:23.935 --> 17:27.695
I hope they take from it, the, the story

17:27.795 --> 17:30.455
of the pig and why it comes to mean something

17:30.455 --> 17:32.255
and why it matters, right?

17:32.395 --> 17:35.535
Um, and I hope they, particularly, I hope they take from it

17:35.555 --> 17:38.215
to not, there's a lot of judgment like, I can't,

17:38.275 --> 17:39.815
people understand their perspective,

17:39.815 --> 17:41.295
but don't understand someone else's.

17:41.725 --> 17:43.935
Like, why, why would anyone eat the pig?

17:44.015 --> 17:46.775
I would never, or why wouldn't someone eat the pig?

17:46.775 --> 17:47.975
That's, it's ridiculous.

17:48.555 --> 17:53.085
Or, why does the, the pig comes

17:53.085 --> 17:54.245
to mean so many different things.

17:54.245 --> 17:57.165
And what I want them to take away from it is it has been,

17:57.165 --> 18:01.165
and I would argue, will continue to be used to tell

18:01.915 --> 18:04.085
stories of Jewish and non-Jewish identity.

18:04.905 --> 18:07.485
And instead of judging that one way

18:07.605 --> 18:08.965
or the other, I would want them

18:09.585 --> 18:11.525
to step back and say, well, why?

18:11.525 --> 18:12.925
What does it mean? What does it mean?

18:13.365 --> 18:15.085
I often want people also to step back

18:15.085 --> 18:16.725
and think about everything they eat food.

18:17.835 --> 18:19.575
So I'm interested in food in general

18:19.795 --> 18:22.135
and the ways that religious communities

18:22.315 --> 18:25.295
and people even zooming out past religion,

18:25.915 --> 18:29.175
use the way they eat to tell their story and their identity.

18:29.845 --> 18:33.475
Right? I'm a vegetarian, I'm a vegan, I,

18:33.615 --> 18:35.935
all I eat is meat, right?

18:36.115 --> 18:39.695
Um, and what that, what that communicates about them,

18:39.755 --> 18:42.855
and it communicates values and meanings and,

18:44.155 --> 18:45.295
and so what I would want them

18:45.295 --> 18:48.615
to take away from it is number one, this fascinating story,

18:48.635 --> 18:50.615
but then to think about how that applies to

18:51.225 --> 18:53.815
their other things that they recognize in life.

18:54.515 --> 18:58.625
Um, and so I get that that would be,

18:58.665 --> 18:59.985
I think the main thing I want people to take away from,

18:59.985 --> 19:02.545
because it's a, and I would hopefully want them

19:02.545 --> 19:03.945
to take away that the pig is pretty cool.

19:04.385 --> 19:06.345
I touched throughout on Islam,

19:06.405 --> 19:08.625
but, I, I couldn't tell everything

19:08.625 --> 19:11.785
and I would love, I think there would be a very different,

19:11.805 --> 19:14.345
but in some ways similar story of Islam in the pig.

19:14.925 --> 19:17.175
Um, I think that

19:18.975 --> 19:20.695
I would, so there's a few areas.

19:20.835 --> 19:23.735
One is, there's more work to be done.

19:24.555 --> 19:28.455
Um, I'm still continuing on the ways that food rules,

19:28.515 --> 19:30.535
and relations to food and animals.

19:31.195 --> 19:32.975
Um, and there's two sort of, there's food studies

19:32.995 --> 19:34.855
and there's animal studies which connect

19:34.855 --> 19:36.175
and don't connect,

19:36.205 --> 19:38.655
tell stories about Judaism and other religions.

19:38.835 --> 19:41.775
And so I'd want people to, to tell these stories.

19:42.435 --> 19:45.375
Um, I think there's more work to be done,

19:45.835 --> 19:47.375
on the way on comparative.

19:47.405 --> 19:49.535
What, what does it mean for different traditions

19:49.535 --> 19:50.655
in different times and places?

19:51.355 --> 19:54.375
Um, it's also early on in my career, I used to judge people

19:54.475 --> 19:57.375
who did like these sweeping stories, right?

19:57.395 --> 19:58.815
And so I, I was on my first,

19:58.915 --> 20:01.775
my dissertation in my first book is on very narrow,

20:01.955 --> 20:04.295
you know, first through third century CE stories.

20:04.795 --> 20:07.215
Um, and I would've very much judged me today

20:07.215 --> 20:08.775
for writing this 3000 year scope.

20:09.395 --> 20:14.295
But, having done that, I also think that we need both.

20:14.315 --> 20:16.535
We need those micro studies and those macro studies,

20:16.715 --> 20:19.695
and then we need to have a little forgiveness for the people

20:19.835 --> 20:23.015
who are stretching beyond their boundaries, right?

20:23.515 --> 20:25.375
Um, and a little forgiveness for those

20:25.375 --> 20:26.815
who are staying within their boundaries.

20:27.395 --> 20:29.815
So, I think that, one of the things

20:29.815 --> 20:32.175
that came from this is I really benefited from people

20:32.275 --> 20:33.895
who did, who stayed in their boundaries.

20:33.895 --> 20:38.175
Someone who wrote about pigs in this time in, in Italy,

20:38.275 --> 20:41.415
or this time in England, or this time in Egypt.

20:41.955 --> 20:44.535
Um, and I needed all of that to stitch it together.

20:45.035 --> 20:46.935
So what I would say is, people

20:46.965 --> 20:49.205
Could take it in both directions, sort of the accordion.

20:49.205 --> 20:50.965
They could zoom out or they could zoom

20:50.965 --> 20:52.045
in and they can say, you know what?

20:52.045 --> 20:54.685
You got this piece wrong when you're talking about

20:55.235 --> 20:57.365
17th century England, right?

20:57.425 --> 21:00.845
And then they can do a, a micro history for that to fill in,

21:00.865 --> 21:01.925
and that would be wonderful.

21:02.425 --> 21:05.525
Um, or they can say there's something else if

21:05.565 --> 21:06.605
you zoom out a little bit more.

21:07.225 --> 21:08.725
So I think there's a lot of room.

21:08.865 --> 21:11.445
I'm not, everyone's welcome to study the pig.

21:11.685 --> 21:13.325
I would love more people to hang out with me.

21:13.425 --> 21:14.725
I'm not gonna hog the spotlight.

"Pigs, Identity, and Ancient Food Laws: A Journey of Discovery"

00:00:00 - This started back almost 20 years ago when I was working on my dissertation. And, I was working on food laws in the ancient world, and the ancient rabbis and pig kept popping up. And, I wrote my first article on this subject. it was even the subject of my, job talk for the job that I currently hold. and 'cause I was looking at how the ancient Jews and ancient rabbis talked about pig and Jewish and non-Jewish identity, and then found that Romans were talking about Jewish identity through the Pig two. And so it was interesting to look at insiders and outsiders talking about identity in different ways,
00:00:46 - And I pig kept popping up. I kept finding facts and I would think it was interesting and throw it into a talk and throw it into a file. And I would give talks and people would wanna know, well, why don't Jews eat pigs? Or let, or they would come up and share their story of their, their, the ways they would or wouldn't eat pig. And I kept saying, this is the next thing I'm gonna work on. And after a certain point, I, the file was overflowing. well, I guess that's a, that's a metaphor that maybe would work for someone my age, but younger people wouldn't necessarily understood the, the word document had lots of sources in it, and I started to put it together and I just kept finding it and finding it.
00:01:26 - that I was gonna find, that I was gonna continue to find sources after I, 'cause if I waited to find every source, I would never finish the book. And in fact, and I now have a file of things I've found since I sent the book to the publisher, and they told me I am not allowed to touch a word. but so the motivation was, it just kept coming up. And it was so fascinating. It was such rich material. And the more I worked on it, the more I was interested in it. This is my fourth book. And actually, the first three I was kind of sick of by the time I was done with it. I like didn't want to talk about it anymore. But you can ask my family, I'm still overly excited to talk about what I call like my pigs.
00:02:07 - the motivation was it was just kept popping up and there was so much information. So that, that's what inspired me or continues to, I, I, I, again, I keep collecting pigs sources for future talks or, for, you know, if there's ever another addition or something, I could squeeze in more pigs. If you look at the Hebrew Bible, pigs appear very rarely, you know, you're told in, in, Leviticus and Deuteronomy don't eat them, but you're also told not to eat the camel. and pigs, pigs appear only a handful of times. So many other, not categorically, not kosher animals appear in the Hebrew Bible.
00:02:48 - that starting in the second temple period, starting around the time of the, the Maccabees, where, there, there start to be pigs in stories of Jewish martyrdom, stories of Jews being told you, you either eat the pig and submit to foreign rule or you'll be killed. And in those stories, they could equally say you could eat the camel, you could eat the eagle, you could eat, a variety of other non-kosher animals. But it's the pig. And I think it's the pig 'cause that's the most commonly available non-kosher animal. But it, it starts to make it mean more. And in fact, you know, when you, when you write a book, you write the same ideas over and over and over again as you're rewriting the chapter.
00:03:28 - and as you're writing, a book, proposal, and as you're giving talks related to it, and there was one kind of throwaway line I wrote one time that like made me stop, and now I keep coming back to, which was I realized that in the most ancient sources about, the Maccabees, which are about this, the what is now the modern Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, you learn so much more about the pig than you do about oil. People today talk about, the miracle of oil. It lasted eight days. This kosher oil after the Maccabees were, were victorious. But that story doesn't come until several hundred years after. It's the first recorded event of that story. But if you read the earliest book of Maccabees, there are are page after page after page about Jews being forced to either

"The Complex Symbolism of Pigs in Jewish Identity: A 2000-Year Exploration"

00:04:12 - And so starting, and then both Jews and the, the Jews particularly start to notice that 'cause the Jewish sources talking about it. But then also non-Jew sources start to notice, Hey, Jews don't eat the pig. Now, that's not always true. Some Jews do, but Jews and non-Jews sources start talking about it more and more. And as they talk about it more, they invest it with more meaning. And then what I say is, over 2000 years, it gets layered with more meaning. And so to eat the pig as a Jew means a variety of things. To not eat the pig means a variety of things. For a Jew or a non-Jew to eat or not eat the pig means a variety of things.
00:04:54 - layers another meaning on it. And so the, the longer you go, the more it means. So now the pig means so much more than the camel. And in fact, I, in the opening of the book, I point out, I have a, a soon to be 10-year-old son. And when I was, he was a a baby, my mom got him these wooden blocks that had Hebrew letters on them and, and animals with their Hebrew names on it. and my wife grew up in Italy. So then I bought some Italian blocks too, and I was comparing them from the same company, and I found that they both had the eagle, and several other animals. But the Hebrew blocks didn't have the pig,
00:05:34 - but so I then compared all of them to see what did they replace it with? And the Hebrew blocks placed the, replaced the pig with the camel. But if you look at the biblical verses, the camel is prohibited, right? Literally right next to the pig in the Hebrew Bible, right? So they were replacing one biblically forbidden animal with another. But the pig just the cultural symbolism. And sort of my point is, if you just had the Hebrew Bible, that would make no sense. But it's, it's the, these thousands of years of, of complications, that's the story that I tell in this book that explain these blocks my family make fun of me because I, I love my mechanical pencils. So I, I love having books
00:06:16 - So if you look at the back of my book, and, and so the first thing I did when I finally said, okay, I wanna do this, is I looked at the back of pretty much every book I've read for the past 20 years and look to find my pig. And, and you find it and all sorts of, and then you give toxin, people tell you, you know, have you did this? Or you talk about it in class. there's one, one have a, there's a story, in Voltaire Canid that talks, that tells of, people who are suspected of being, con of muranos, which we'll get to that in a minute of this pig history. and,
00:06:58 - the bacon outta their chicken, right? and a student in class, I was just mentioning this pi, something about pigs. And a student was like, we just read Voltaire in my other class. And there's this story, right? So if you talk about it, people tell you things. So I've been collecting pig facts through the years, and then the, what I try, what I did was start trying to figure out how to put it together and where it was. And then once you start looking, and then it's just reading all sorts of different things. I read things way beyond my comfort zone. And then one thing leads to another. you know, you find one book
00:07:36 - and then you follow the footnotes and they suggest that. And then you go to the library and you look, it's hard to get students these days to go to an actual physical library. You can do a lot on Google books, but I love to go to the library and look at the book to the right and the left of it, and open it up, right? And it's the chance finding the things, and then it's just random. You're reading a random book. And so, they just, they're everywhere. And once you start looking for it, it's everywhere. And so, it was 20 years of chance and purposeful findings and then trying to bring them together. And then once you start bringing together, story starts

"Symbolism and Mockery: The Evolution of Pig Imagery in Jewish-Christian Relations"

00:08:18 - to see when certain trends appear, and then you go looking for more of those. So that was, sort of purposeful and accidental findings. You can start and say in the, in the second, in the second temple period when I talked about that eat pig or be, be, martyred. But I really see that story emerging in medieval times and beyond, where you see, Christians using it to mock Jews, but also to mock Christians who weren't being Christian enough. Right? We have, there, Nuremberg has written about anti Judaism and the, the idea of, there, going back
00:09:03 - who talked about judaizing Christians and what he meant are bad Christians, Christians who were acting like Jews, right? And, and so pig became a symbol of that now. So it was used to mock Jews in ways of, there was, in the 12 and 13 hundreds, there were, vows that Jews had to make if you're gonna go into. So, oaths, you had to take, if you're gonna go into be, give evidence in a trial, and they had to stand on a sow's skin and hold a Toro skull, right? and the sow skin was clearly meant to mock Jews. and the way you could tell it was originally a, a goat skin, and they changed it, right? And, you have, different ways.
00:09:46 - we could look at Murano, the term for Murano means pig. And the idea that was a Jew who had converted to Christ who had Catholicism, but you suspected that they were secretly acting like a pig. They were secretly acting like a Jew. And that's layers of mockery to say, you're a Jew, really, and Jews don't eat pigs, but so you're a pig. And so one of the biggest accusations against suspected muranos was that they didn't eat pig. and there were, there are testimonies of Jesus, you know, Converso, who said, no, no, I just don't like pig. Like, look at all these other non-kosher animals.
00:10:25 - And, the, and maybe it's true, maybe it's not. You had the, the famous example in Germany of the Densa, which was, it started as, and this goes back to early Christianity, looking and ancient Judaism too. The idea of animals as embodying virtues and vices. So if you go back to the second temple period, there was a, a j named Philo who talked about how, why is pig not allowed? And he said, well, 'cause it's, you look at animals, the allowable animals that are domesticated quad eds. So like, why are cow allowed in pig not, he said, well, 'cause what are their characteristics? They have to chew the cud and have split hooves.
00:11:07 - what they do is they chew information, they bring it down, and they literally regurgitate the knowledge. And so they say, this is how you should be as a thinker. You should take in information, digest it, bring it back up, think about it again, digest it, bring it back up, think about it, digest it, bring it back up. And he said that, so by eating animals that chew the cud, that's literally what they do. But that's a lesson in education. When you, you should listen to this interview and go think about it and then listen to it again, right? The, and then think about it again. and they said the split hooves is about, there's two, there's virtue and there's vice in life.
00:11:47 - Well, the, at first in this was all over Europe, the idea of animals as virtues and vices in churches. But in Germany in particular, they start to take the pig, which embodied greed. 'cause it's piggy, you know, it's, it's piggish and, and say, well, that embodies greed equals Jews. Jews are greedy, Jews are pigs. Jews hate pigs. And it starts to become a, a joke and then a vulgar joke by having Jews eat a pig excrement and drink pig urine. And it becomes vul more and more vulgar. And a certain point becomes so vulgar that they say, yeah, we can't even have this in churches anymore, right?

"Pig as a Cultural Symbol: Navigating Identity, Antisemitism, and Modern Substitutes"

00:12:27 - But for several centuries, it was a vulgar joke that was perfectly acceptable to have in churches. so pig is used to dehumanize Jews, but it's also used to, because of that to mock Christians who aren't good enough Christians. And that continues on. And there's a long history of, I mean the Nazis used that as part of that. I, in the book, I give one example of it and I said, 'cause that's the other, the hard part I started in the medieval chapter was going through all of the awful antisemitic tropes of that. And that's kinda, it exacts a toll on a writer.
00:13:08 - I'm like, I'm gonna give you one example. I don't need to go through it. You, the reader and me the author do not need to do, he, I'll I'll give you one quote from I think Himler I used, and then there's plenty of others, you know? So I hit a poor, I hit a, that was when I hit my breaking point. Well, let's look at impossible pork and work backwards. What I'd say is that it continues to mean something. A Jew who eats pig can't just be a person who's eating pig. It has to be read by it. either themselves or others will read like, well, why are you eating? What does it mean? Like, there, there's a, there's still a desire to prove, are you doing that to transgress? And one of the, so I'm gonna get
00:13:49 - that I really highlight is I think there's a problem that some people say, a Jew pig is a bad Jew, or they're heretical in some way. And I'm like, well, we have this long history I can talk about too, of Jews who chose to eat pig to transgress Jewish identity, but in a way that we reinforces Jewish identity, right? Because they're, by doing that, they're making a statement about their Jewish identity. And my broader point is just pig is used to talk about Jewish identity. And I, I think it continues to be. So let's look at impossible pork. So for those who don't know, this, obviously an impossible meats company, makes lots of fake meat products that have no animal products in them whatsoever.
00:14:33 - impossible, all sorts of things. All of those things, are, he, they have a kosher certification and halal, they have Islamic, certifications. They then came up with impossible pork. And both their, their kosher agency, the ou, which has been in business since 1923, it started with Heinz vegetarian baked beans and now continues to today. So it just celebrated its hundredth anniversary of kosher certification. And halal certification refused to give it to impossible pork. And i I, and this, and they said, look, it's, it's all the same ingredients as impossible sausage that's continues to be possible pork sausage, right?
00:15:12 - And the, they, the head of that agency admitted like, look, it's just, it feels wrong. And people have different explanations for this. And so you should always take sky's explanation with a grain of salt in that we all have, you know, if I have my, my reason for it, 'cause I've been doing this historical sweep, there are other people who, they're interested in technologists that have a technological answer or people have the other things. So for me, for my historical sweep, what I see this is, it makes sense and doesn't make sense, right? It doesn't make sense because all the ingredients are kosher. You do all these other products. But when you look at over 2000 years of this baggage for it
00:15:57 - It's not technically wrong, but it feels wrong and that is part of it, right? but, and you could imagine someone choosing to eat that as a statement of arguing against certain rabbinic interpretations. You could choose, see someone not eating it, in favor of rabbinic interpretations, or not eating it in favor of cultural trends. The same way a lot of people, you know, I collect stories 'cause people come up and tell me I've, the amount of times I've heard someone say, I'll eat bacon, but I can't eat a pork chop. Just a big piece of meat. And there's a long story for that. Now you look at the fake meat products going back

The Cultural Significance of Pig Consumption: A Historical Perspective**

00:16:38 - There's a long history of fake meat products that have been certified as kosher. But the problem with impossible pork is it was the name and the taste and the quality are so close. And I could find you going back to the Talmud sources that tell you, no, no, it's totally fine. But that's not the point here. The the point that I was trying to bring out, it's here. It's, it's not about the legality. There's this baggage, this weight. So that's why I say it, me, it continues to mean even more because legally there's no reason not to. But it's that extra cultural layer of meaning that,
00:17:21 - if you look at this 3000 year sweep. I hope they take from it, the, the story of the pig and why it comes to mean something and why it matters, right? and I hope they, particularly, I hope they take from it to not, there's a lot of judgment like, I can't, people understand their perspective, but don't understand someone else's. Like, why, why would anyone eat the pig? I would never, or why wouldn't someone eat the pig? That's, it's ridiculous. Or, why does the, the pig comes to mean so many different things. And what I want them to take away from it is it has been, and I would argue, will continue to be used to tell
00:18:04 - And instead of judging that one way or the other, I would want them to step back and say, well, why? What does it mean? What does it mean? I often want people also to step back and think about everything they eat food. So I'm interested in food in general and the ways that religious communities and people even zooming out past religion, use the way they eat to tell their story and their identity. Right? I'm a vegetarian, I'm a vegan, I, all I eat is meat, right? and what that, what that communicates about them, and it communicates values and meanings and,
00:18:45 - to take away from it is number one, this fascinating story, but then to think about how that applies to their other things that they recognize in life. and so I get that that would be, I think the main thing I want people to take away from, because it's a, and I would hopefully want them to take away that the pig is pretty cool. I touched throughout on Islam, but, I, I couldn't tell everything and I would love, I think there would be a very different, but in some ways similar story of Islam in the pig. I think that I would, so there's a few areas. One is, there's more work to be done.
00:19:28 - and relations to food and animals. and there's two sort of, there's food studies and there's animal studies which connect and don't connect, tell stories about Judaism and other religions. And so I'd want people to, to tell these stories. I think there's more work to be done, on the way on comparative. What, what does it mean for different traditions in different times and places? it's also early on in my career, I used to judge people who did like these sweeping stories, right? And so I, I was on my first, my dissertation in my first book is on very narrow, you know, first through third century CE stories.
00:20:07 - for writing this 3000 year scope. But, having done that, I also think that we need both. We need those micro studies and those macro studies, and then we need to have a little forgiveness for the people who are stretching beyond their boundaries, right? and a little forgiveness for those who are staying within their boundaries. So, I think that, one of the things that came from this is I really benefited from people who did, who stayed in their boundaries. Someone who wrote about pigs in this time in, in Italy, or this time in England, or this time in Egypt. and I needed all of that to stitch it together.

"Expanding Perspectives: Embracing Micro and Macro Histories of the Pig"

00:21:13 - Could take it in both directions, sort of the accordion. They could zoom out or they could zoom in and they can say, you know what? You got this piece wrong when you're talking about 17th century England, right? And then they can do a, a micro history for that to fill in, and that would be wonderful. or they can say there's something else if you zoom out a little bit more. So I think there's a lot of room. I'm not, everyone's welcome to study the pig. I would love more people to hang out with me. I'm not gonna hog the spotlight.

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