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1) The pig isn’t the most non-kosher animal in the Bible. Of course, the pig isn’t kosher, but the Hebrew Bible equally bans the pig, the camel, the hare, and other animals. It isn’t until centuries later that the pig begins to stand out as especially not kosher.

2) During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews who had converted to Catholicism were often called “Marranos” – meaning “Pigs”. This was because they were suspected of practicing Judaism in secret: “pigs” refers to their hypocrisy (they are as kosher as a pig) and duplicity. Further, many Marranos were killed by the inquisition because they were accused of not eating the pig.

3) Karl Marx loved a pork-and-matzah sandwich. Every Easter, a young Karl Marx – whose parents had converted from Judaism to Lutheranism – would make himself a sandwich that featured thin slices Pachal pork and Passover Matzah for bread. Did this foreshadow his revolutionary future or was it just a tasty meal?

4) In the first half of the twentieth century, Russian Jews demonstrated their commitment to the Communist cause by organizing agricultural collectives centered around pig breeding. After all, what better way was there to demonstrate their rejection of religion than for a bunch of communist Jews to raise Pigs? Here’s a Soviet poster from 1931, which declares in Yiddish: “The pig is our main machine for production of meat in the coming years!”

5) While today people often remember the miracle of the oil at Hanukkah, in the most ancient narratives about the Jewish holiday we leant far more about the pig than about olive oil. The Books of the Maccabees (originally written between the second century BCE and the century CE) narrate at length the story of an old man named Eleazer and a woman and her seven sons who suffered gruesome martyrdom rather than eat pig. The pious act is seen as testifying to their commitment to Judaism and rejection of foreign domination – and the pig is the central symbol of both.

6) The pig that appears on the book’s cover was doodled by Jewish-American writer Issac Bashevis Singer. The Nobel laureate would often sign his name by drawing a picture of a pig; in fact, the cover uses the first known image his pig-signature. In doodling a pig to sign his name, Singer was playfully marking himself as a transgressive Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. It should also be noted that Singer was a well-known for his vegetarianism, so he didn’t eat pigs, he only drew them.

7) Ancient rabbis pretended to eat pig while on the lam from the Romans. According to an ancient text written sometime between the 6th-8th century CE, Rabbi Meir was reportedly hiding from the Roman government when some Roman soldiers spot him. He dipped a finger in pig’s blood and then sucked on another finger, which led the Roman soldiers to believe that he ate pig’s blood and therefore wasn’t the rabbi they were looking for.

8) In the Medieval Period, Jews had to stand on a pig to testify in court. Known as the Jewish Oath, Jews were required to stand on a sow’s skin and put their hand on a bible in order to testify in court.

9) Instead of sacrificing one old Roman Jew every year, two pigs were killed instead. In Medieval Rome, there was a Carnival tradition of taking the oldest Jew from the Roman ghetto, forcing him into a barrel filled with nails, and then pushing that barrel down the Mount Testaccio. In 1312, the Jewish community successfully petitioned to end this practice, negotiating to pay a fee to the Catholic Church in its place. That fee was used to purchase two pigs, which were thrown off of Mount Testaccio instead!

10) Even today, Jews often tell their stories by means of the pig. Reading the autobiographies of Jews from a diverse swath of their experiences, the pig sticks its snout into almost every Jewish person’s life when they describe their relationship with Judaism. For example, Abby Chava Stein was assigned male – and Hasidic – at birth. She came out as transgender and, as part of her story of leaving Hasidism, eats bacon. Geddy Lee, the singer and bass player in the band Rush, discovered his Holocaust survivor father sneaking bacon and consequently reimagines both his and his father’s relationship to religious practice.

11) Mama Cass didn’t choke to death on a ham sandwich. Born Ellen Naomi Cohen in Baltimore, Mama Cass rose to fame as a member of The Mamas and the Papas, known for hits such as “California Dreamin” and “Monday, Monday”. Her tragic death on July 29, 1974, at the age of 32, was falsely attributed to choking on a ham sandwich (when, in fact, it was due to a heart attack). If the person choked on a ham sandwich were thin and Protestant, the joke just wouldn’t work. But Cass’s doubly-othered body (Jewish and obese) was viewed by far too many as both funnier and more socially acceptable to laugh at. RIP, Mama Cass.

Read more in Forbidden:
A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig

By Jordan D. Rosenblum

Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, when so-called Marranos (鈥淧igs鈥�) converted to Catholicism, to Shakespeare鈥檚 writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism.

All told, there is a rich and varied story about the associations of Jews and pigs over time, both emerging from within Judaism and imposed on Jews by others. Expansive yet accessible, Forbidden offers a captivating look into Jewish history and identity through the lens of the pig.