The Kosher Pig
Israel, Richard
THE KOSHER PIG When Jewish law doesn't quite work RICHARD ISRAEL A pious Jew was told by his doctor that he had a rare disease, one that could only be cured by his eating pork. The man was...
...May we give our baby the same name as a living third cousin even if my wife isn't Jewish...
...These people wanted pieces of halacha that could still be appropriated...
...We have returned to the problems that Hillel and Shammai faced with their classic questioners...
...He just wants regular kosher food...
...Liberals are not much better equipped if they hold that ultimately we are all autonomous and can make whatever decision we wish...
...Since in a traditional minyan a son can not be called to the Torah after his father nor one brother after another, in a minyan which calls up women, may a wife be called to the Torah after her husband, a son after his mother...
...There are no guarantees...
...In one sense they are very traditional...
...They were not interested in the whole system...
...My roommate used one of my meat pots to cook vegetable soup, but washed it with his regular non-kosher dishes...
...A few illustrations: May you have milk after lard...
...It is to encourage us to work in such a direction that our tradition holds up Hillel as a model teacher, not Shammai...
...The quasi-halachic answer: No, because if you are still asking the questions, you should be reminded of the restrictions of the system...
...After dessert, may we put cream in our coffee...
...Though full of fear and trembling, I am committed to salvage operations...
...We are interviewing a candidate for a job in our math department...
...May an immediate relative sign an egalitarian ketubah...
...I understand that Ashkenazic Jews and Reconstructionists do not name children after living relatives...
...His last article in moment, "Letter to the Mother of a Lesbian Daughter,"appeared in July-August 1980...
...The puzzle we are left with is: Can the halacha be applied to non-halachic questions or must we rely upon the punch line of the old joke and say that you can't get there from here...
...They are attempts to apply the classic categories of Jewish law to new situations...
...It is therefore irrelevant who signs the document...
...The quasi-halachic answer: Since she has been sleeping with him for over a year, it is obvious that in this particular case, the system hasn't worked...
...There is something in the premises of their questions that prevents a halachic answer from being given...
...As such, it would be appropriate to follow traditional practice which prohibits an immediate relative from signing a contract since a relative may have a vested interest in the contract and may not serve as an ordinary disinterested witness...
...Consider changing your framework so that you can start out closer to a halachic question...
...Or "I know that one should not eat bread during Passover...
...The problem is that the questioners either do not know about or have rejected some of the basic presuppositions of the Jewish legal system...
...Even though we love each other, he doesn't want me to move in with him unless I agree to keep kosher, something I have always refused to do...
...In any event, I love the questions...
...He discovered some questionable blemishes on them...
...Can you tell us who could make such meals for us and send them over...
...He has written asking us to order kosher meals for him...
...Shammai's way is certainly the less ambiguous, the less time consuming and the easier to justify: Throw them out on their ears...
...I have come to believe that we should try to answer these quasi-halachic questions with quasi-halachic answers: We should make the real halachic issue clear, describe why a traditional halachic answer won't work for their questions, and then try to function out of the questioner's framework, bringing to bear whatever Jewish sources seem to help...
...Can they be salvaged or should we let them sink...
...Such a sweet cat...
...They will tax all of our patience and ingenuity...
...There is something very reasonable about each of these questions...
...Thus, the shochet and the sick man took the dead pig to the rabbi and asked, "Rabbi, is this pig kosher...
...If we take such questions and questioners seriously, we do not make the liberties they have already taken with the system more available...
...My initial response to each of these questions was to try to answer a different question...
...Then, as is customary, the shochet examined the animal's lungs...
...If she goes to the mikveh and finds it spiritually rewarding, it is hard to imagine that the atmosphere of a well-run mikveh would not encourage her to consider marriage as a more serious option than she previously had...
...Is it against his religion to sleep with me when I am having my period...
...Still, people who are trying to use the vocabulary of the tradition, even though they can't do much with its syntax, may be offering us an opportunity to teach them...
...The quasi-halachic answer: Since you have consciously altered the traditional document, it may be presumed that you are treating your modern ketubah as a real and serious document...
...The questions of Jewish law that I am asked are generally rather straightforward...
...The rabbi looked and declared, "It may be kosher, but it is still a pig...
...Some of the questions I get are the questions of innocents...
...A limited halachic answer is available: Yes, because the laws of milk and meat do not apply to prohibited animals...
...Rabbi Richard Israel is Executive Director of the HilleI Council of Greater Boston...
...Are they kosher for maror at the Seder...
...Good advice may bring a few of them back to better questions...
...May an unmarried woman go to the mikveh...
...May the daughter of a Kohen be called to the Torah in the Kohen slot if she works with the Chevra Kaddisha or must she first give up her work with the dead since such activities are prohibited to a male Kohen...
...Even I, who try to resolve questions about kosher pigs, must frequently throw up my hands in exasperation, quite unable to figure out a way even to think about the questions...
...May I, an unmarried Jewish woman living with the same Jewish man for a little over a year, go to the mikveh...
...He says he knows that it will be Passover, but he doesn't care whether or not the food is kosher for Passover...
...My father died during Adar II, but there is only one Adar this year, no leap month...
...The real issue is one we must deal with constantly these days...
...May I use the pot...
...Since my wife and I are not familiar with these terms, we think we are probably neither...
...Otherwise, why would you have bothered...
...May an immediate relative sign an egalitarian ketubah...
...Does the prohibition against weddings during the period between Pesach and Shavuot also apply to our upcoming intermarriage...
...If you have been asked to check out any Kosher pigs lately, please tell me about them...
...The man was determined to triumph both over his disease and its cure...
...They will take whatever liberties they will, with or without our permission...
...There is also something bizarre about them...
...Rabbi, should I keep kosher...
...Traditionalists who deal with them forthrightly will often reject their questions and them...
...The limited halachic answer: Since a Jewish man would never be willing to sleep with a woman in a state of Nidah, unmarried women are not permitted to go to the mikveh—as a way to keep them from becoming sexually available...
...There is much to recommend such a response...
...May I say Kaddish for my cat...
...They are questions the Shulchan Aruch never even though about, questions I have come to think of as Kosher Pigs...
...I should like to present a selection of some of my favorites...
...But there are many people out there asking questions that they feel are questions of Jewish law, or, at the very least, questions of Jewish propriety...
...When is his yahrzeit...
...He would eat pork as prescribed and indeed as is required by Jewish law under such circumstance, but he did not have to eat an animal that had been cruelly killed in the manner of the local peasants...
...Are questions that appear to mock the system to be taken at face value or can they be used to instruct the questioner...
...What about toast...
...For obvious reasons, the shochet was not thoroughly familiar with pig lungs and felt that he could not take it upon himself to determine how serious the blemishes were...
...Over the years, I have also been asked a third kind of question by friends and strangers and by colleagues who knew that I was interested in such things...
...He bought a pig and took it to the town shochet who listened sympathetically to the story...
...We are going to dinner at the home of a woman whom we know uses lard in her baking...
...No luck...
...I am married, non-Jewish and having an affair with a married Jewish man...
...To pick and choose is not to observe the halacha at all...
...The shochet got a special knife that would never be used on a kosher animal and ritually slaughtered the beast in accordance with Jewish tradition...
...The traditional Jewish response to that position is that if it isn't the whole system, it isn't anything...
...The limited halachic answer: Since the traditional document presumes that it is the man's actions that initiate the marriage, a marriage contract in which both the man and the woman are equal initiators would be a non-ketubah...
...The Torah never said that you should not boil a pig in its mother's milk...
...Peyote buttons are very bitter...
...It would add a lot to our relationship...
Vol. 7 • March 1982 • No. 3
