Kosher is determined by its species (and also by how an animal is slaughtered). A kosher animal must have both hooves and chew its cud. Pigs have hooves but do not chew their cud. Therefore, I have been taught, there is no way for pork to be a kosher food. Do you know what the reasoning was behind what you learned? And who told you? (Not an attack, I'm genuinely curious!)
That was as deep as I dug into it. Found a restaurant in Israel that actually served pork. I had bacon and ribs there. I was in a real bacon craving on the 4th week :P. It was in a non-tourist area and the english spoken there was not the best :) I asked one of the folks there and then double checked with the military liason from the Israeli Air Force at the base we were at. The pig farms there were all buildings on a concrete slab with no dirt at all. Not sure what they were fed. I also ate camel at the Jewish holiday after the fasting was over that took place in March. BTW: if you're not Jewish, March is a bad time to be in Israel, as there's no leavened bread during a period here.
I've heard teh same thing from some of my Jewish friends here. Since our local SuperJew(TM) has several rabbis in the family, I tend to believe what she says, at least about her family's branch of judaism. The criteria of being not on dirt was cited as most of the reason they were kosher, though not being well versed I did not ask about the criteria of being a ruminant or having non-cloven hooves. When it was first described to me, the process was essentially keeping the pigs on a raised floor/catwalks so they would never wind up walking/lying in their own excrement.
I don't remember now if she mentioned which branches acknowledge this as properly kosher and which don't.
NO idea. They get to be filthy because they can chew their cud? Like I said, my info's all third hand and I don't entirely understand the logic/rationales behind it.
tidesong is correct. a pig can never chew its cud, which is a requirement. but maybe it could be kosher if you wrap it in shellfish and put cheese all over it....
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I don't remember now if she mentioned which branches acknowledge this as properly kosher and which don't.
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but maybe it could be kosher if you wrap it in shellfish and put cheese all over it....
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