Torah Portion - March 27, 2008

Sh'mini, Leviticus 9:1–11:47

We recently celebrated Purim, with it’s anything-goes, carnivalesque atmosphere. One month after this comical, entertaining festival comes the very serious holiday of Passover. On Purim, we suspend many of our typical rules for decorum in the synagogue. On Passover, the opposite is true. There are more and stricter rules during the week of Passover than almost any other time of the year. Moreover, many Jews who do not keep kosher during the other 51 weeks, hold very strictly by the laws and customs of kosher-for-Passover.

This week, as move from Purim toward Passover, our Torah portion encourages us to contemplate the purpose of boundaries, in particular those related to the dietary laws. Sh’mini includes a list of many dietary restrictions, including the prohibition against pork:

Of course, the consumption of many other types of animals is also forbidden in this chapter. All types of shellfish, certain birds, and rabbits---the laws of kashrut prohibit Jews from eating all of these and more. Yet, I have many friends—including some rabbinic colleagues---who have no problem eating lobster and shrimp, yet would never dream of eating pork. Once I was dining with a friend who had grown up in a strictly kosher home, but now chooses to eat virtually anything except for pork. When I asked him why he still avoids pork he said, “Never underestimate the power of the pig.”

It does seem true that, while many animal foods and food combinations are forbidden, the one most often associated with the kosher laws is the prohibition against pork. Back in Biblical times, the prophet Isaiah warns that anyone who offers swine flesh as a sacrifice would be destroyed. It is thought that pig meat was an anathema to Israelites because Canaanites offered pigs as their sacrifice in idolatrous worship. In the Middle Ages, as pork became a delicacy associated with Christian festivities because Christians wanted to sever all connections from the Jews. During the Spanish Inquisition, an invitation to eat pork was often a test to see whether a sup[posed Christian was secretly keeping Jewish customs. Such was the case in the haunting film, Goya’s Ghosts.

On Purim, we blur all boundaries. On Passover, we make boundaries starker. For those who choose to avoid pork, or hold by another sort of dietary restriction, this is a way of sanctifying boundaries in our everyday lives. To paraphrase Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, how we eat becomes a metaphor for how we live. We must make choices. We cannot always buy everything we want. We cannot always spend time with whomever we want. We may not exploit natural resources in any which way we want. Gratifying our every whim might be possible, but it is not always the virtuous thing to do. A spiritual practice that includes dietary limitations challenges us to do the right in other areas.

Rabbi Salkin brings up another fascinating reason for prohibiting pork. He notes that the animals permitted in the Jewish diet must first have a cloven hoof. This represents the duality of life, the most natively Jewish way of understanding reality. Judaism has always celebrates duality, from the earliest days of the creation story through our weekly ritual of Shabbat juxtaposed with the work week.

The animals permitted to Jews must also chew their cud. Philo of Alexandria suggest that  a cud-chewing animal resembles a student, who “after receiving from the teacher through his ears the principles and lore of wisdom, prolongs the process of learning, since he cannot at once comprehend and grasp them securely, until, by using memory to call up each thing that he has heard . . . ”

Whether or not we keep kosher, and whether or not we are carnivores, this metaphor reminds us that Jews  take wisdom, ponder it, take another look at it, and continue to chew on it, as it were/ Just as an animal who ruminates continues to revisit the good stuff, so we do this with knowledge and information. We continue to seek new ways of understanding texts and their interpretations.