Problem in Rationing

And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh.

--Deuteronomy 14:8

When the government of Israel worked out a system of meat rationing, no one thought it odd to find pork on a restricted list reserved for diplomatic missions and Christian residents. Most Israeli Jews, whether orthodox in religion or not, prefer kosher meat to the traditionally forbidden flesh of pigs. As the food situation grew worse, however, the supplies of kosher meat ran low, and the government did not have the foreign exchange to import all it needed. Three months ago, in a desperate effort to maintain Israelis' fortnightly meat ration, the government allocated some locally grown pork to a few nonkosher butcher shops in Haifa.

When rabbis throughout Israel protested, government pork sales were discontinued, but the administration of Socialist Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion insisted that there was nothing wrong with selling pork on the free market. With a go-ahead sign like that, the owners of Israel's 30-odd pig farms began to sell their swine. Restaurant customers soon found their drab diet of cod fillets varied by the introduction of pork cutlets at $2.80 a portion, and housewives were able to purchase some nice cuts at $3.75 a lb.

The rabbinate was quick to denounce the booming sales of Judaism's "abominable meat." Last week Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog led religious Israelis through a week of protest. Jerusalem was posted with signs titled "Ye Who Defile," which called both pig eaters and pig breeders "empty, godless people devoid of any respect for Israel or its values." At mass meetings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, rabbis pronounced an adapted version of an ancient curse: "Accursed be he who raises pigs, his partners, helpers and assistants, and sevenfold curses on him who raises pigs in the Holy Land of Israel."*

Although many normally observant Jews, driven by the meat shortage, were eating pork, most of them felt uneasy about it. Said Legislator David Ha'Cohen, a member of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's party: "I don't keep a kosher kitchen in my home, but to see Jews ordering pork chops in butchers' shops licensed by the Jewish state hurts something deep inside of me."

This week, the orthodox Agudat Israel Party has a bill before the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to ban all sales of pork to Jews. Other Knesset members discussed importing more kosher meat on the free market; they were confident that the sale of pork would then dwindle.

*The original curse (1st Century B.C.) included a malediction against "the man who teaches his son the sophistry of the Greeks."

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