Torah Study Blog

This is the time of year for families to gather and eat meals together. Frequently, the foods we eat have a connection to our cultural upbringing. This week, Rabbi Janet Roberts led our group and had us look at some of the Jewish dietary prohibitions.

Leviticus 11 presents a long list of the foods that are forbidden, but Rabbi Roberts pointed out that there is no reason given for why these foods are “unclean”, and no indication of what will happen if you eat them anyway. Culturally, Jews understand that these foods are “tref,” which means they are not fit for Jewish consumption.

“Tref” does not actually mean that it is “unclean” in any health-related way. It is a matter of ritual impurity. Jews are supposed to keep themselves kadosh for God – which means to be “set apart.”

Pork is one food that traditional Jewish people will avoid. According to Leviticus 11:7, “swine – although it has true hoofs, with the hoofs [sic] cleft through, it does not chew the cud: it is unclean for you.” To “chew the cud” means to partially chew food in the mouth and swallow it where it mixes with acidic digestive liquids, then have it come back up to be re-chewed. According to the Cattle Empire website, “cud chewing is often used as an indicator of a healthy and comfortable herd.”

The books of Maccabees may give some insight as to why pork products are “tref” for Jews. The books of Maccabees are not part of the Hebrew Bible, but they are appended to the Catholic Bible. The books address the successful Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid (or Hellenistic, Greek) Empire in approximately 170 B.C.E, but they were probably written about fifty years after the events described. Greek cookbooks from that time have been found, and pork was a staple of the Hellenistic diet.

According to 2 Maccabees 6, the Seleucid ruler, “forced the Jews to abandon the laws of their ancestors and live no longer by the laws of God, also to profane the temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus ... [and] Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man advanced in age and of noble appearance, was being forced to open his mouth to eat pork. But preferring a glorious death to a life of defilement, he went forward of his own accord to the instrument of torture ... This is how he died, leaving in his death a model of nobility and an unforgettable example of virtue not only for the young but for the whole nation.”

According to 1 Maccabees 1, Antiochus was the king of the Seleucid Empire when he looted the Temple in Jerusalem, and plundered and set fire to the city. “Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and abandon their particular customs. All the Gentiles conformed to the command of the king, and many Israelites delighted in his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath.” They left their sons uncircumcised and they built “pagan altars and temples and shrines, to sacrifice swine and unclean animals.”

Using her rabbinic training, Rabbi Roberts understands that the most important question we should ask when we read passages is – “Who paid for it?” What was their motivation and what were they trying to get people to believe? Scholars see conflicting traditions in the Bible when it comes to Jeroboam and Aaron. Rabbi Roberts pointed out that we have no contemporaneous documents about Antiochus and we rely only on Apocryphal texts to inform everything we know about Antiochus. Was he really as bad as the story says, or is this “Fake News?”

If the story is not factually true, what might have been happening to cause the story to be written this way? The way this story is presented, Antiochus set out to destroy all ritual aspects of Judaism. It might not be surprising that some Israelites were willing to turn their backs on Judaism and adopt the Hellenistic culture because that was the dominant culture of the time. They were the “winners” and people like to be associated with winners. Maybe the writer was trying to show Jews how terrible it would be to turn their backs on Judaism and to follow the Greeks. Or, maybe the story was directed at Jews living in the diaspora who might have already started down the slippery slope of over-assimilation. Or, maybe the writer was trying to create a rallying story that would help to unify the Jewish people. Or, maybe Antiochus really was that bad!

We will never know the answer. What is fake, and what is real? And, does it really matter? We know that there is always jockeying for power, and the stories we tell ourselves, and are handed down through the generations, are the underpinnings of everything that we do.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Roberts taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter