Shemini 5772

This week’s parsha presents the laws of kashrut (eating kosher), specifically the animals that may be eaten and those that are prohibited. “These are the creatures that you may eat among all the animals on earth; any animal that has a cloven hoof that is completely split into double hooves, and which brings up its cud…But these you shall not eat…the pig, because it has a cloven hoof that is completely split, but will not regurgitate its cud.”

Why does Torah single out the pig as unfit to consume?

Jewish wisdom teaches that we are what we eat: the qualities intrinsic to our food affect us not only physically, but spiritually as well. Torah prohibits eating certain foods to keep us from assimilating their negative characteristics.

Rabbi Ari Kahn on aish.com notes that the pig is the only species that possesses the unique combination of traits – split hooves without cud chewing. With its split hooves, the pig appears kosher from the outside; only an inner analysis of its digestive process reveals a deficiency that renders it unfit for kosher consumption. The pig therefore is equated to a hypocrite – it shows its split hooves to demonstrate its acceptability, yet hides an unacceptable, critical inner flaw.

Rabbi Kahn picks up on the etymological significance of the Hebrew word for pig, chazir, which has the same root (chet, zion, resh) as the Hebrew word for “return.” He writes that many authorities cite a teaching that the pig will become kosher when Moshiach (Messiah) comes. The Midrash alludes to the time when the Jews, exiled since the Roman domination, will return to Jerusalem.

Rabbi Kahn remarks that several authorities, including Rav Menachim Azarya DeFano, Rav Chaim Ibn Attar and the Chatam Sofer, suggest that the pig will undergo an “evolutionary process” and develop a cud, rendering it kosher.  Writes Kahn: “If the pig can change and become kosher, and cease to be a symbol of hypocrisy, certainly [people]…can undergo a fundamental change and return to the inherent good with which G- d endowed every man.”

As parents, we see that children easily spot and question the inconsistencies and dishonesty inherent in hypocrisy. We should do everything possible to ensure that our words and actions reflect what is truly in our hearts, and that our external appearances do not belie any internal inconsistency.