(1) The Eternal spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them: (2) Speak to the Israelite people thus:
These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals: (3) any animal that has true hoofs, with clefts through the hoofs, and that chews the cud—such you may eat. (4) The following, however, of those that either chew the cud or have true hoofs, you shall not eat: the camel—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; (5) the daman—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; (6) the hare—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; (7) and the swine—although it has true hoofs, with the hoofs cleft through, it does not chew the cud: it is unclean for you. (8) You shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.
(41) All the things that swarm upon the earth are an abomination; they shall not be eaten. (42) You shall not eat, among all things that swarm upon the earth, anything that crawls on its belly, or anything that walks on fours, or anything that has many legs; for they are an abomination. (43) You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves through anything that swarms; you shall not make yourselves unclean therewith and thus become unclean. (44) For I the Eternal am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not make yourselves unclean through any swarming thing that moves upon the earth. (45) For I the Eternal am the One who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall be holy, for I am holy. (46) These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, and all creatures that swarm on earth, (47) for distinguishing between the unclean and the clean, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that may not be eaten.
(2) For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God: the Eternal your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be God's treasured people. (3) You shall not eat anything abhorrent. (4) These are the animals that you may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat; (5) the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, the mountain sheep, (6) and any other animal that has true hoofs which are cleft in two and brings up the cud—such you may eat. (7) But the following, which do bring up the cud or have true hoofs which are cleft through, you may not eat: the camel, the hare, and the daman—for although they bring up the cud, they have no true hoofs—they are unclean for you; (8) also the swine—for although it has true hoofs, it does not bring up the cud—is unclean for you. You shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses. (9) These you may eat of all that live in water: you may eat anything that has fins and scales. (10) But you may not eat anything that has no fins and scales: it is unclean for you. (11) You may eat any clean bird. (12) The following you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, and the black vulture; (13) the kite, the falcon, and the buzzard of any variety; (14) every variety of raven; (15) the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, and the hawk of any variety; (16) the little owl, the great owl, and the white owl; (17) the pelican, the bustard, and the cormorant; (18) the stork, any variety of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat. (19) All winged swarming things are unclean for you: they may not be eaten. (20) You may eat only clean winged creatures. (21) You shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God.
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
The Sages taught: “You shall do My ordinances..." (Leviticus 18:4), that the phrase: My ordinances, is a reference to matters that, even had they not been written, it would have been logical that they be written. They are the prohibitions against idol worship, prohibited sexual relations, bloodshed, theft, and blessing God, a euphemism for cursing the Name of God. "And you shall keep my statutes", is a reference to matters that Satan challenges. They are: Not eating pork; wearing diverse kinds of material, i.e., wool and linen; performing the ḥalitza ceremony with a yevama, a widow who must participate in a levirate marriage or ḥalitza; the purification ceremony of the leper; and the scapegoat. And lest you say these have no reason and are meaningless acts, therefore the verse states: “I am the Eternal” (Leviticus 18:4), to indicate: I am the Eternal, I decreed these statutes and you have no right to doubt them.
(ב) ואומר כי כל מה שאסרתו התורה עלינו מן המאכלים - מזונם מגונה. ואין בכל מה שנאסר עלינו מה שיסופק שאין הזק בו רק החזיר והחלב; ואין הענין כן כי החזיר יותר לח ממה שצריך ורב הפסולת והמותרות ורוב מה שמאסתו התורה לרוב לכלוכו ומזונו בדברים הנמאסים. וכבר ידעת הקפדת התורה על ראית הלכלוכים ואפילו בשדות במחנה - כל שכן בתוך המדינה. ואילו היתה מותרת אכילת החזיר היו השווקים עם הבתים יותר מלוכלכים מ'בית הכסא' - כמו שתראה ארצות הצרפתים היום. כבר ידעת אמרם "פי חזיר כצואה עוברת דמי":
(2) I maintain that the food which is forbidden by the Law is unwholesome. There is nothing among the forbidden kinds of food whose injurious character is doubted, except pork (Lev. 11:7), and fat (ibid. 7:23). But also in these cases the doubt is not justified. For pork contains more moisture than necessary [for human food], and too much of superfluous matter. The principal reason why the Law forbids swine's flesh is to be found in the circumstance that its habits and its food are very dirty and loathsome. It has already been pointed out how emphatically the Law enjoins the removal of the sight of loathsome objects, even in the field and in the camp; how much more objectionable is such a sight in towns. But if it were allowed to eat swine's flesh, the streets and houses would be more dirty than any cesspool, as may be seen at present in the country of the Franks. A saying of our Sages declares: "The mouth of a swine is as dirty as dung itself" (B. T. Ber. 25a).
God forbid that I should believe that the reason for forbidden foods is medicinal! For were that so, then the books of God’s Laws would be in the same class as any of the minor and brief medical books…Furthermore, our own eyes see that the people who eat pork and insects and such…are alive and healthy to this very day…moreover the more dangerous animals…which are not even mentioned at all in the list of prohibited ones. And there are many poisonous herbs known to physicians which the Torah does not mention at all. All of which points to the conclusion that the Torah of God did not come to heal bodies and seek their material welfare, but to seek the health of the soul, the cure of its illness.
(101) Now of land animals, the swine is confessed to be the nicest of all meats by those who eat it, and of all aquatic animals the most delicate are the fish which have no scales; and Moses is above all other men skilful in training and inuring persons of a good natural disposition to the practice of virtue by frugality and abstinence, endeavouring to remove costly luxury from their characters... (103) One might very likely suppose it to be just that those beasts which feed upon human flesh should receive at the hands of men similar treatment to that which they inflict on men, but Moses has ordained that we should abstain from the enjoyment of all such things, and with a due consideration of what is becoming to the gentle soul, he proposes a most gentle and most pleasant banquet; for though it is proper that those who inflict evils should suffer similar calamities themselves, yet it may not be becoming to those whom they ill treated to retaliate, lest without being aware of it they become brutalized by anger, which is a savage passion; (104) and he takes such care to guard against this, that being desirous to banish as far as possible all desire for those animals above mentioned, he forbids with all his energy the eating of any carnivorous animal at all, selecting the herbivorous animals out of those kinds which are domesticated, since they are tame by nature, feeding on that gentle food which is supplied by the earth, and having no disposition to plot evil against anything.
These laws have baffled interpreters and embarrassed apologists from ancient to modern times. The traditional, orthodox view is that they reflect the inscrutable will of God, so that no explanation should be sought. Already in the Middle Ages Jewish interpreters such as Maimonides argued that the forbidden animals were carriers of disease—the pig, for example, carries trichinosis. This kind of explanation is still defended in some quarters, but it is not very convincing. It cannot be shown to apply to all the forbidden creatures, and other peoples ate pork without serious consequences. Others have tried to find symbolic explanations for the prohibitions. The Letter of Aristeas, written in Alexandria in the second century b.c.e., suggested that chewing the cud was symbolic of recollection, while birds of prey were symbols of injustice. This kind of allegorization is too arbitrary to be convincing. Others have sought an ethical explanation, arguing that the restriction of what humans may eat arises from reverence for life. Some have suggested that the law was meant to limit Israel’s access to animals. Only cattle, sheep, and goats, which are bred for the purpose, may be eaten. The pig is excluded because it is disgusting. This kind of explanation makes some sense in the case of the kid in its mother’s milk, or in the prohibition of eating meat with the blood. It is difficult to see, however, how reverence for life could lead to classifying animals as abominations, or warrant a distinction between fish that have fins and scales and those that do not. In fact, ethical considerations (concern for the effect of actions on other human beings or on animals) are singularly absent from the Priestly code. We shall see that the purpose of the Holiness Code in Leviticus 17–26 was largely to remedy this lack in the older laws.
The only rationale given in Leviticus is that the Israelites should not defile themselves, but be holy, because the Lord is holy (Lev 11:44–45*). Holiness is primarily the attribute of God. Human beings are holy insofar as they come close to God. The opposite state is “profane.” While the positive character of holiness is difficult to grasp, negatively it implies a contrast with the normal human condition. Holy people and places are set apart and consecrated. Observance of a distinct set of laws makes the Israelites holy insofar as it sets them apart from the rest of humanity. But the concept of holiness in itself does not explain why sheep may be eaten, but not pigs.
While any explanation of these laws is hypothetical, many people have found useful the interpretation offered by the anthropologist Mary Douglas. For Douglas, these laws are an attempt to bring order to experience. The problem with animals that have divided hooves but do not chew the cud is that they are anomalous: they deviate from the state that is perceived as normal. The decision as to what is normal is based on observation, but draws a line that is arbitrary to a degree. It is characteristic of the Priestly authors that they like clear and distinct dividing lines. By categorizing things in this manner they impose a sense of order on experience, and this in turn gives people a sense of security, which is especially attractive in times of crisis and uncertainty. Such a system can have unfortunate consequences, however, for people who are deemed to deviate from what is considered normal in their society.
Nicole J. Ruane, University of New Hampshire
One key way in which pigs are radically different from 'clean' land animals is not how they eat, but rather how they mate, and more specifically how they reproduce. That may seem like a strange concern, yet many cultures have pronounced cultural restrictions and taboos around reproduction and sexuality. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, both sex and birth are important sources of ritual impurity (Lev 12; 15). All the clean land animals listed in Deuteronomy have a reproductive feature that is different from pigs: they give birth singly or to twins. Unlike cows, sheep, goats, and deer of various kinds, pigs give birth in litters. In the modern world, the average pig gives birth to 12 piglets at one time; the record is 37! Thus pigs' manner of birth does not resemble that of clean animals, nor, importantly, does it resemble that of Israelites (and all humans). Reproductively speaking, pigs are incongruous with the Israelite community, yet uniparous (bearing singly) animals are considered a part of it, and even observe its Sabbath (Ex 20:10; Deut 5:14).
The biblical text does not directly discuss this reproductive aspect of pigs, yet the multiparity (bearing in litters) of pigs comes into direct conflict with other aspects of biblical ritual involving animals. Aside from the fact that no clean land animal is multiparous, and that most unclean animals are multiparous or egg layers, pigs' manner of reproduction does not allow them to bear a single firstborn (in Hebrew, the pe?er re?em, "womb opener," or bekor, "firstborn"). Either one would need to witness the birth to see which was born first, or possibly the entire litter would be considered the firstborn. This may seem inconsequential, but in biblical thought, the firstborn male of domesticated animals is the most sacred animal, and must be offered to God... Why exactly this is the case is not clear, but it seems to express some sense that the deity owns the firstborn and that by giving the deity the firstborn there will be continued fertility...
Another problematic aspect of pigs' reproduction also relates to ritual-cultural ideology. The Bible is a patriarchal and patrilineal text. It presents a culture based largely on paternity and paternal identity. (Witness the long genealogical lists of males that are so distinctive of biblical style!) The fertility of swine, in which one female bears many offspring at a time, would appear to highlight female fertility and motherhood instead of fatherhood. In fact, the rituals of many ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures specifically use female pigs to represent female fertility. For example, the Hittite ritual text "The Benedictions for Labarna" states, "Just as a single pig gives birth to many piglets, let every single branch of this vineyard, like the pig, bear many grape clusters." Another ritual for the fertility of land (KUB 12.44 iii 16-19) involves throwing a sow's genitals into a ritual pit. Pigs were used in other Hittite rituals to ensure the fertility of women, as in a rite in which it is said "let her give birth often like the pig" (Bo 3617 i 4`-17`). Similarly, the relationship between the fertility of female pigs and human women appears in the Greek and Anatolian rite of the Thesmophoria, in which the fertility of both women and fields is reinstated and enacted. This event requires all married women to bring a piglet which also will be thrown into a ritual pit; at the end of the ceremony the previous year's piglets are dug up and spread onto the fields as a kind of fertilizer. This ritual was performed in honor of Demeter, the goddess of grain and mother of Persephone, who preferred pigs in most of her rites.
While we have no evidence that biblical pork avoidance was a direct polemic against goddess worship, the image of fertility enacted in these rites opposes the biblical concept of fertility...
from science.org.au
‘You’re a pig!’ It might be a common insult but, interestingly, there are a number of similarities between humans and pigs. These include various anatomic and physiologic traits, such as organ placement (and often size and function), skin similarities and some disease progression.
A pig weighing around 60 kilograms will, for example, resemble a human body in many ways, including fat distribution, cover of hair and ability to attract insects. For this reason, pigs have been used in medical research for over 30 years, and are what’s known as a translational research model. This means that if something works in a pig, it has a higher possibility of working in a human.
12) (Vayikra 20:26) "and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine": If you are separate from the peoples, you are Mine; if not, you are "Nevuchadnezzar's" the king of Babylon and his cohorts'. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah says: From where is it derived that a person should not say: "I do not desire to wear sha'atnez; I do not desire to eat the flesh of a pig; I do not desire to cohabit with forbidden relations"? Rather "I do desire it, but what can I do? My Parent in heaven has decreed against it!" — From "and I have set you apart from the peoples to be unto Me."...