November 2011
4 posts
Israel Imports Geese That Taste Like Swine
Even in Australia, where I’ve been unable to keep up with the latest in semitic swinology, news of Israel’s chief rabbi’s declaration that Israel is to start importing geese from Spain that taste like pork has flooded my inbox. The AP reported on the story.
It’s a simple story. Three non-Jewish chefs all verified this particular goose’s “swinish flavor,”...
Talking Pork on Taste Matters
Had a great time at the Heritage Radio Network behind Roberta’s in Bushwick, Brooklyn today. Taste Matters with Mitchell Davis is a phenomenal radio show. I’ve just begun subscribing to the podcast and recommend it highly. You can listen to this week’s episode on pork, pickles, bacon and Pork Memoirs on the Heritage Radio Network website here.
Tune in For Semitic Swinology on the Radio
Today at 11am EST, I’ll be talking with MItchell Davis on Taste Matters, a radio show from the Heritage Radio Network out of Roberta’s back garden in Bushwick. Tune in for talk of bacon, the middle East, Jews and Muslims and with time permitting, pickles. Listen here or subscribe to the podcast.
Visiting a Foreign Country Pork Angst
One look at the blogosphere the other day and it appears that non-pork eater angst when traveling is universal.
On visiting the US from Pakistan for the first time and how to avoid the pig and stay Halal. - Hey, I’m the Tuna Sandwich Guy!, The Orange Country Register
On Moving to Spain as a kosher Jew and figuring out how to avoid the pig and stay kosher. (sound familiar?) - ?Que Es...
October 2011
2 posts
A Pork-Free New York Knick
Amar’e Stoudemire has really made a home here in New York as a New York Knick, no more clearly represented than by his recent decision to keep his own version of kosher diet. Bon Appetit reports:
Last summer, Amar’e announced to Hardy [his chef] that he was interested in learning more about a kosher diet. A recent trip to Israel had strengthened Stoudemire’s spiritual...
Ohio Prison System's Pork Issues
This week the AP reported about the Ohio prison system’s failure to accommodate Muslim diets. Abdul Awkal claimed that his prison diet violated his basic freedoms and sued the prison system. As a result, Ohio removed pork from all of its prison meals, though that has not been enough, reports the AP.
The state’s recent decision to drop pork from all meals accommodates religious...
September 2011
6 posts
Anti-Muslim Pork Attacks
While working in DC with a Muslim civil rights organization, Engy Abdelkader, a Muslim human rights lawyer, received a call from a woman in Maryland who had a ham sandwich thrown at her.
Pork has taken on a regrettable role in anti-Islam activity in the United States, writes Abdelkader in the Huffington Post.
But Abdelkader doesn’t seem to think that pork has any significance beyond...
Profiles of a Semitic Swinologist
Semitic Swinology made it into the news this week.
Adam Chandler, a one-time pork memoirist, wrote about Pork Memoirs for Tablet Magazine and interviewed me on why I created the website, and why I have devoted the past five years of my life to researching the pig. Chandler’s piece really gets at the heart of the larger, more intellectual and cultural goals behind this project. He also...
WatchAdam Goldberg (The Hebrew Hammer) goes shopping for kosher groceries at a regular supermarket when his bagger steps in and takes away his bacon bits.
5 tags
Treyf Invaders
Some utopian-minded Jews have been known to question whether abstaining from eating certain animals, such as pigs, should necessarily lead to the virulent resentment of those forbidden creatures that is all too common in Jewish society.
Most, however, are not burdened by such questions, and for them, a new shooting and killing video game has been created by Rabbi Garfinkel of New Jersey based...
The Russian Delis of Ashdod
Yuval Ben Ami, a friend and travel writer, is “staying on the move in Israel and the Palestinian Territories through a month of trial.” He’s documenting his journeys in and around Israel and the West Bank, called his September Journey, and writing insightfully (as he always does) about this crazy region where due to the accident of birth, he is inextricably tied.
On day 8 of his...
August 2011
1 post
Obituary of a Lawyer Saved by Pork Chop
A lawyer and human rights advocate from Philadelphia, Jerome Shestack, dies at 88 today reports the AP. He was a Jewish man who took law and human rights to the national stage as president of the American bar association in 1997-8 and as President Carter’s ambassador to the commission on human rights in 1979, among his other top posts.
He was also a poet, and a religious man who credited...
July 2011
5 posts
Kosher Pork, A Queens Lunch Special
(photo taken by Oded Hirsch, published by New Yorker)
For a brief few hours today, OU-certified pork was available for sale in Queens. You would have had to be quick to enjoy the guilt-free break from normal kosher dietary law, but the artist Oded Hirsch was in the right place at the right time.
Philip Gourevitch blogged in the New Yorker about the embarrassing mistake at the Associated...
Exporting IHOP to Saudi Arabia
Applebees and its sister restaurant, IHOP, are expanding to the Middle East, reports the Independent. IHOP is making a big push in what is its largest international development deal in the brand’s history, opening up forty restaurants in places where they’re betting pancakes will be a big hit. These places include American breakfast loving countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,...
Pork and Muslims; Pork and Jews
There’s nothing I like more than illicit pork. Cominganarchy.com writes an interesting story about buying pork in Dubai.
Nevertheless, a number of supermarkets in Dubai have pork sections. Signposted as being for “Non-Muslims only” — but there are no ID checks or interrogations of the buyers — these are especially common in the parts of town where Western expats are concentrated. One such...
I Guess There's Such Thing as Too Much Bacon
I just came across this terrible, yet bizarre story in The Smoking Gun of a grandmother hosing her grandson in the face with a high powered hose for eating what she considered to be too much bacon. Marilee Ann Kolynych was arrested and is set for a hearing on July 7th.
A witness told Press that Kolynych chased her grandson around the yard before throwing him to the ground and “sitting on top of...
June 2011
12 posts
4 tags
Pork Memoirs This Week: Oprah and Raw Bacon
Oprah.com featured Pork Memoirs on its site, and quoted two recent memoirs by GiladMuth and Jackie Lilinshtein. And this week, writer and chef Alix Wall writes a memoir about her mother’s survival in hiding during the Holocaust, and how her Jewish family came to ascribe a special significance to prosciutto and melon. Above photo of the writer’s mother and her Polish nanny and...
Jews on Bikes Telling Jokes
Jweekly covers biker Jews in Jews on Motorcycles? Yes, and They’re Riding Chai. One great joke from one of the bikers reads as follows:
“Did you hear the one about the guy who goes into a Chinese restaurant, sits down and orders pork? And the rabbi’s sitting right there, not saying anything,” begins one.
“But he’s watching the whole time, right?”...
The Violence and Trauma of Hellenization
Fay Voshell in The American Thinker writes about circumscision, the anti-circumcision movement, and the dangers of the collective belief that one worldview is the answer for all peoples.
Voshell references the persecution of the Jews under the Greeks in antiquity, making specific reference to the how pork was used as a shaming tactic.
Lest anyone think accession to Hellenizing forces was...
Jewish Pork in Montreal
Just came back from a fun and intellecutally rigorous weekend in Montreal. I was invited out to a one day Jewish learning conference in Montreal called Le Mood (Limmud elsewhere in the world) to present on the complicated relationship between Jews and pork.
Organizers of the event hosted me in their homes so graciously and seemed genuinely fascinated by the topic, so we chatted about pigs...
The Silver Bullet
Death and Taxes reports on the “silver bullet,” a pork-fat laced bullet for combating Islamic terrorism.
This idea, which is an uncomfortable combination of ingenious, hilarious and absolutely terrible, was proposed by a former Marine sniper who calls himself Midnite Rider and the Warrior of Yaweh.
The pig bullet inventor and anti-Virginworld enthusiast, uses the pithy mantra, “One...
Pig as Key to Middle East Peace
The recurring theme in endless short, snarky articles on the web: pigs will bring peace to the Middle East.
Today in Cincinnati’s City Beat:
Pigs are dominant in all-American cuisine, for better and worse. It might be the only thing that could bring peace to the Middle East — maybe Jews and Muslims can bond over their joint disgust with America’s love affair with pig eating.
This joke...
Chicken Strip and Pulled Pork Party USA
A new political party hoping to shake things up in 2012: The Chicken Strip and Pulled Pork Party USA.
Their platform reads:
Chicken Strip and Pulled Pork Party USA believes citizens of the USA should have easy and affordable access to Chicken Strips and Pulled Pork Sandwiches.
In commenting on Obama’s speech yesterday, this absurdist and farcical political party provides a...
When Pigs Fly
Man, I’ve got to hand it to those folks down in Birmingham, Alabama. Their Kosher BBQ cook-off may just have the greatest name ever: When Pigs Fly!.
Jake Honigman writes about competing at the When Pigs Fly! cook-off for the Forward’s food blog.
Food and Family
Not directly swine-related, but you can’t appreciate the pork taboo without appreciating Jewish food. Two of my recent articles about Jewish food on the Forward’s food blog tell different stories about familial foodways.
5/18/11 - Shabbat Meals: Family Just Tastes Different in Israel - Spiced Moroccan Fish
4/24/11 - Gefilte Fish 2.0: A Grandson’s Turn
April 2011
1 post
Pork Memoirs Has Moved →