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THE COMEDIAN WOODY ALLEN once said, "Why pork was proscribed by Hebraic law is still unclear, and some scholars believe that the Torah merely suggested not eating pork at certain restaurants."1 Allen's humorous observation about the dietary practices of some modern American Jews points to the resonance of a particular culinary abstention - the prohibition against pork. Comments about this dietary regulation, however, are far from a modern phenomenon. Both Jewish and gentile discussions about the absence of pig from the Jewish table survive from antiquity. While Greek and Roman sources consider the absence of pig to be a marker of Jewish cuisine (and thus Judaism), early Jewish and rabbinic sources see the presence of pig to be a marker of non-Jewish cuisine (and thus not Judaism). As such, beginning in antiquity, pork becomes a perspectival marker of Self and Other with respect to Judaism.
According to the anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, for food to function as a metaphor of "Self," it requires "two interlocking dimensions. First, each member of the social group consumes the food" - to which I would add, or does not consume the food- "which becomes part of his or her body. The important food becomes embodied in each individual. It operates as a metonym for being part of the self. Second, the food is" - or is not - "consumed by individual members of the social group who eat the food together."2 By refusing to eat pig, Jews are never able to ingest Romanness and thus can never truly become Roman. On the other hand, according to some rabbinic sources, because Romans eat pig they are, as such, embodied as pigs. Once again, to quote Ohnuki-Tierney: "The beauty and purity of we are embodied doubly in the body of the peopL· and in the food that represent,) them, and, conversely, the undesirable qualities of the other are embodied in their foods and foodway."3 The act of eating pork is thus understood as embodying, but the individual and corporate body that this practice creates is construed as positive by Roman sources and negative by early Jewish and rabbinic sources.
Although often mentioned among other practices (for example, circumcision) and in connection with other peoples (for example, Egyptians), Greek and Roman sources...