Kosher pork and Jews riding sows — how pigs came to define Jewish identity
It might be forbidden, but Jews have a long and complicated relationship with the pig
Bacon
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Books From snoot to tail, a 3,000-year history of Jews and the pig
A professor of religious studies explores how the pig became the ultimate Jewish taboo — and an inadvertent marker of Jewish identity
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Politics Trump’s bacon remark wasn’t kosher, but it may be right
Lamenting the America of old, Trump recently pointed to the jacked up price of a popular pork product
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Food What We Talk About When We Talk About Baconnaise
What is baconnaise? I first began hearing the name bandied around when I began research on bacon substitutes. I heard whispers of it in restaurant bathrooms and in anonymous comment forums dedicated to the goings on of the kosher world. I had to know more about this mysterious substance, this bacon-flavored yet bacon-less mayonnaise, this…
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Food ‘Kosher’ Cloned Bacon Is Going To Change Everything
Jews and bacon: Has there ever been a more complicated relationship? We lust after bacon, we denounce it, we rebelliously consume it, we declare it permanently verboten, we create facon, we declare that inedible, scientists invent cloned bacon, now we have thoughts about it. Suffice it to say that the Jewish culinary palate, thanks to…
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Fast Forward Jewish Woman Sues Denny’s Over Bacon In Veggie Omelet
A Jewish woman has filed a lawsuit against a Detroit-area Denny’s restaurant for serving her bacon. Angela Montgomery, 30, of Sterling Heights, Michigan, said she found bacon in the “loaded veggie” omelet served to her last month at her neighborhood Denny’s. The lawsuit says Montgomery “is a practicing Jew whose religion forbids the eating of…
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Opinion How Tasting Bacon On Pizza Changed This Ex-Hasid For Life
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Kosher kosher kosher! That refrain lingered in my ears loudly, even years after I left the tight-knit Hasidic community I grew up in. The necessity of keeping kosher was instilled in me in the most powerful way from a very young age. It wasn’t enough if the…
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Fast Forward Is Bacon Kosher?
Almost everyone knows that bacon is forbidden under kosher laws, but a rogue group of rabbinic scholars is challenging this assumption, according to a recent article in Haaretz. Dr. Robert Gnuse, a professor in the Religious Studies Department at Loyola University, argues that the kosher and clothing rules found in the Book of Leviticus (where…
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