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The Swine of the Times

by · September 24th, 2007
Featured, Israel, Kosher, Neat Projects, News

Days after Yom Kippur and it is already happening again: another pork establishment in Israel was set on fire.  Ynet reported the news, though they have yet to report for sure whether or not the arsonist was an ultra-Orthodox Jew; nevertheless, this is just one of many recent related attacks and one more part of the ongoing battle over pork in Israel (see Ben Murane’s post on such battles in Netanya).

I just arrived in Israel one day before Yom Kippur and will be here for the year exclusively researching pork in Israel.  I am specifically analyzing the tension between religious and secular Israelis, and am interested in how certain Israelis raise and eat pork as a form of political and cultural protest.  It is still illegal to raise pigs on Jewish land, though through a series of loopholes, a few kibbutzim have emerged as major producers of Israel-raised pork products.  I’ve been following this topic very closely and when attacks like this most recent one occur, I take notice . . . and feel surprisingly conflicted.   This is yet one more incident for me to document; one more layer to the story making my project all the more relevant.  Yet, such violence is deplorable, and given all the problems this region is dealing with, it is hard for me to watch Jews torching and bombing other Jews just because some choose to eat and sell one particular filthy animal. 

My cousin, Ariella, responded to the news of the arson attack by reminding me that this sort of incident happens all the time (a very different reaction than she would have had about Arab-Israeli conflict violence, which seems to also occur  here regularly).  “Anti chazir is in national subconscious,” she forced out in English, meaning, of course, that an antipathy to pork is part of the national Israeli consciousness.  I agreed with her, though I still believe that she thinks that my project is bizarre.  My cousins find it strange that a Jew from America would have any interest in pork, and pork in Israel of all places. I agreed with Ariella that pork holds a supreme symbolic importance in Jewish life and that anti-pork is a part of the national consciousness.  I then explained to her that for that very reason I am here in Israel to understand how one symbol can incite so much violence, even on the day after the day of atonement. 

After Sukkot I plan to visit Safed to obtain footage of the shop in flames for my project.  Unfortunately there will probably be a lot more posts about pork-related violence, so stay tuned. 

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6 Responses to “The Swine of the Times”

  1. Michael Croland Says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

    The story on its own is amazing, but the fact that you’re in Israel researching this specifically is beyond fascinating. What are you doing your research for?

    I hope you post here again as your research progresses! :-)

  2. Hillary Says:
    September 25th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    Agreed (with Michael)! Very interesting research topic! Let us know what you find out.

  3. Jeffrey Yoskowitz Says:
    September 25th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    Thanks Michael and Hillary for your much appreciated support. I really think that this topic is an accessibly and unique point of entry to talk about much greater issues in Israeli society, but then again, I always think food and food commodities can play such a role. In this case, however, I also felt that this story had to be told. I am gathering research, both written and visual to piece together the full story for a book or a lengthy article.

    I received a fellowship from my alma matter to pursue this project and it piggy backs (pun intended)off of my previous research on the American kosher food industry. I like to think that now I’m analyzing the Israeli non-kosher food industry. I’m also working on a documentary on the subject. And as I uncover new layers, I’ll have much more to report, and I can’t think of a better place to do it than the Jew and the Carrot…or a better audience.

    For now, I’m more frequently posting on my own personal blog on the subject at http://www.jeffyosko.blogspot.com, where I have also listed a series of articles on the subject.

  4. Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus Says:
    September 29th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    Jeffrey,
    Given your interests in Jews and pork, do you you have any thoughts about why Michael Pollan chooses to feature a boar at his sustainable banquet, his “secular seder,” at the end of his Omnivore’s Dilemma? I’m writing about Jewish religious dimensions of his book, and while there’s much in what he says and does that I find quite consistent with what I see as classic Jewish attitudes about the sanctity of food and its power to connect us to the natural environment and to other people, it’s hard to get around his passion for the pig. I suspect that you’re interested in similar Jewish fixations on eating pig, so I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts about pigs and Pollan. It’s a little weird, though not entirely surprising how little he does day about kashrut, given his conviction that traditional regional, ethno-cultural foodways seem to provide sound guidance for answering the “omnivore’s dilemma.” And I love the idea of your project to research pork and Israel! I think you’re really on to something about an important expression of modern secular Jewish identity.

  5. reggie Says:
    October 1st, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    Pork seems to be one of the most colorful ways to protest the religiously controlled food regulations in Israel. Yet the idea of eating pork seems to repulse not just kosher Jews but non-kosher ones as well. I know Jews who have a hard time just saying the word. It almost seems a “davka” thing to do. Does it drive the point home even further because it’s so extreme a symbol?

  6. Jeffrey Yoskowitz Says:
    October 8th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

    Jonathan, thank you for your support and I whole-heartedly apologize for my tardiness in responding to you. I’ve been traveling in Israel for the holidays and now I’m back in Tel Aviv looking for an apartment.

    As for Michael Pollan’s omission of Kashrut and his fixation on the pig, I’m at somewhat of a loss. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve yet to read “An Omnivore’s Dilemma” beyond the excerpts in the NY Times Magazine and excerpts at Adamah. You should know that I’m a huge fan of his other works, “Second Nature” and “Botany of Desire.” It seems like Michael Pollan just doesn’t realize the Jewish component behind the values he purports to believe in. I don’t believe he’s conscious of his omissions. I truly believe that he’s the product of a typical cultural Jewish American upbringing in which he learned about his Jewish heritage and not about the religion he inherited along with it.

    I don’t quite see a parallel between his focus on the boar and the pork-fixation among Jews who have left the Orthodox fold. In countless Jewish memoirs during the Haskalah you can read about the first time everyone eats pork. It’s a seminal moment in their lives. Such was also the case in memoirs of early 20th century American Jewish history (Mary Antin’s “Promised Land” comes to mind, though I may be confusing her work with another). Just last month I met a child of Chabad parents who had just a month prior cut off his peyes. Now on Shabbat he meets four friends and has bacon at a diner in New York out of spite to his heritage. Pork is truly a powerful symbol for them, and they believed that their rejection of Judaism only truly counted once they had moved beyond the greatest Jewish taboo.

    Though, it’s possible that Pollan’s fixation on swine is a subconscious attempt to connect to the American people based on the classic Jewish-American method of assimilation. By incorporating pork—for many years the cheapest form of animal protein available and consequently the protein of the masses—in his dream diet, Pollan is making his dream accessible to a majority of Americans. Thus, his dream diet can be seen as the new American Dream. The drive to assimilate is still a feature of so many American Jews regardless of their religious background, and Michael Pollan, in this case, may be a typical American Jew. There are certainly many examples of how the desire to eat basic American foods among Jews has catalyzed assimilation. It’s no surprise that in conformist America in the 1950s the kosher food industry took off as many American processed foods took on hechsherim.

    It could also be none of the above-mentioned reasons, but it’s certainly a great question to think about and I thank you for asking it. Every time I watch Larry David argue over shrimp on his TV show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” I ask myself the very same question. And I do think the pig symbolizes something to all Jews, even non-affiliated ones in America, though I’m still working to understand exactly what it is. It’s a bit easier to understand its symbolism among secular Israelis, which is why I’m here now.

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