The Pig and the Two Signs

Jews affirm that the pig is not kosher and may not be eaten. The Torah gives two signs for a permitted land animal, a fully split hoof and the chewing of the cud (Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14), and requires both. The pig has a split hoof but does not chew the cud, and is named explicitly among the forbidden creatures; because it displays one sign but not the other it became, in later Jewish thought, the very emblem of something that appears clean on the outside while failing the test within.

Jewish tradition has long debated whether the pig prohibition needs, or should be given, a reason at all. Maimonides, in the Guide for the Perplexed, proposed a hygienic rationale, arguing that pigs were kept in unclean conditions in the ancient world and that their flesh was harmful to health, a position later medical and dietary developments have made harder to sustain as a literal argument. Other authorities classify the law instead as a chok, a statute without a disclosed rational basis, grouped with the other kashrut rules as commandments whose purpose is obedience itself rather than a discoverable practical benefit, a distinction rabbinic tradition draws throughout its treatment of ritual law.