Eat This Podcast
Talking about anything around food
Subscribe
Collections
Donate
Archive

Forbidden: Jews and the Pig “The Signifying Swine”

3 March 2025

An advertisement for Burger King kosher "bacon" in Israel. A smiling young man wearing a Burger King paper crown holds a "bacon" burger. He has the long sidelocks that signify an observant religious Jew.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:50 — 28.4MB)

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS | More

Head and shoulders portrait. A smiling man with spectacles, short gray hair and a long gray beard, wearing a blue check shirt and riddish tie.
Jordan Rosenblum
Perhaps the only thing most people know about Jewish dietary laws is that pork is forbidden. A new book asks why the pig — rather than any of the other animals banned by the Hebrew bible — should have become so inextricably bound up with Jewish identity. Author Jordan Rosenblum points out that at the time of the Roman occupation, the pig was “simply the most commonly encountered nonkosher quadruped.” The imagined qualities of the pig and those of the Jews aligned, a link that still survives in anti-semitic propaganda.

I didn’t want to rehash the history of anti-semitism but I did want to know more about the relationship between pork and Jewish identity. I hope you will too.

Notes

  1. Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig is published by New York University Press.
  2. Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  3. Cover art is a reproduction from a 19th century book about customs of the Middle Ages. The banner image is from a campaign by the Debby Agency for Burger King. I am told (by ChatGPT) that the Hebrew says “And may the house be filled with the smell of turkey bacon”.
  4. Here is the transcript.

huffduffer icon   Huffduff it

Filed under:
Podcasts
See also: , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Webmentions

webmention logo Webmentions allow you to respond on your own site and have that appear here. Your response should include a link to this post. Paste the URL to your post below and your comment will appear here. (Learn More.)

You might also like:

  1. A computer learns about ingredients and recipes What else would you put on a peanut butter sandwich?Perhaps you’ve heard about IBM’s giant Watson computer, which dispenses ingredient advice and novel recipes. Jaan Altosaar, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, is working on a recipe recommendation engine that anyone can use....
  2. Small Dairy “Local milk for local people”If you’re lucky enough to live in the right place, you may be able to experience real, fresh, whole milk....
  3. Food tours and cooking classesIt is quite amazing how popular food tours and cooking classes are in Italy. When in Rome, many people seem to want to eat, and cook, like a Roman. Well, not entirely, and not like some Romans. I spoke to...
  4. Jewish Food in Rome Everything changes, everything stays the sameThe Jewish Community of Rome arrived before the Christian Era and has never left. Its cuisine was created by hardship and ingenuity....
email log Instagram logo mastodon logo Micro Blog logo Email logo

Search

About Eat This Podcast

Eat This Podcast has been going since March 2013. That’s a long time in podcast world. In that time, it has twice been nominated for a James Beard Award, although it remains a labour of love rather than a search for glory.

I am a biologist with a keen interest in food and agriculture. Eat This Podcast allows me to pursue my interests and share what I find.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to all the guests who agree to be on the show, to the professional broadcasters who trained me, and to the software that allows me to do all this myself.

Subscribe here to get an email for each new episode. Between episodes, Eat This Newsletter brings you a selection of choice items I’ve found.

You will need to confirm your subscription, so look out for that and, maybe, check your spam folder.

Non-podcast News

Help Keep the Lights On

Ratings and reviews are great. So is an actual donation.

Elsewhere

There are other places I write and respond.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread was a series of micro-episodes on the history of wheat and bread, with an episode every day through the month of August 2018.

Posts are in correct chronological order, so you need to scroll to the bottom to find the latest.