Rabbi Jeremy Rosen

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen takes a look at what the rules really are for wearing or using pig
related products.

Yes it is true Jews don’t like pigs. It’s not just the fact that the bible says you can’t eat them. You can’t eat bunny wabbits either but we’re not so averse to them as we are to pigs.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that although in general both Greeks and Romans let the Jews get on with their own religious practises every now and then some crazy exception, like Antiochus or Hadrian insisted on trying to force Jews to eat pig on pain of death. That couldn’t have helped. Nor could the Talmudic story that when besieging the Temple the Romans sent up a pig by pulleys to be sacrificed and when it dug its trotters into the walls they began to crumble.

And it’s interesting that throughout Northern Europe from the medieval times until the nineteenth century Christians loved to depict Jews riding on sows, suckling their milk and licking their back sides. Such a ‘Jewish Sow’ with attendant rabbis was depicted on the old Bruckenturm in Frankfurt till as late as 1801. But once again it was common for Christians to depict Jews doing the same to donkeys and we have no tradition of aversion to donkeys which also can’t be eaten.

Yet when one looks into Jewish law it becomes clear that the only thing one cannot do is eat the stuff. There’s absolutely nothing against wearing pig skin shoes (or crocodile either and they are just as forbidden to eat) or carrying a pigskin wallet or bag (the same goes for Ostrich, another ‘no no’ in our dietary laws).

A decade ago the Jewish Telegraphic Agency got hold of this story in New York. It reported: ‘A furore is erupting over the use of pigskin to treat Orthodox Jewish children with serious burns at New York’s pre-eminent pediatric burn center. But the unhappiness may be rooted in ignorance, according to an Orthodox expert in Jewish medical ethics. “Jewish law has no objection whatsoever to the use of pigskin in the treatment of burns,” according to Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a professor of medical ethics at Yeshiva University where he is also a professor of Talmud and a dean.”God did not make pigs just in order to make footballs,” Tendler said in a telephone interview.

”Pigs were made for man’s utility. The non-edible use of pigs is perfectly 100 percent all right. The prohibition against pig is only eating it.”

There are other anomalies in Jewish Law. For example it is only the actual flesh that is forbidden. You could gnaw on completely dry pig bones without infringing anything. And if you ask then why are we only allowed kosher gelatine if it’s made only from animal bones, the answer is it’s not. Too often there’s marrow and other material still attached, otherwise indeed there’d be no problem.

Actually that’s not entirely true because during the Second World War Dayan Abramsky, the really great authority who ran the London Beth Din at the time, decided that gelatine even if made from pig bones with marrow and fat, was acceptable because the chemical process of breaking down the bones involved rendered it unfit for human consumption. And it’s this ‘Nifsal LeAchilat kelev’ which literally means ‘A Dog wouldn’t touch it’ that takes it out of the category of food altogether. Sadly the Dayan decided that since the tradition of not eating unsupervised gelatine was such a long standing one he did not want to overturn it.

So unless you really feel like eating your pig skin belt for breakfast, you’re out of the woods, as they say.

Do you have a Jewish question or issue you would like debunked and explained by Rabbi Rosen? Email: editorial@JLifestyle.co.uk

First published in issue 3 of JLifestyle. Reproduced with permission from JLifestyle.

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