Dead Pig Football

President Josiah Bartlet:

Here’s one that’s really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

The question assumes that it is important that people avoid becoming unclean. Why should that be? Uncleanness is not a punishable crime. If a member of the Israelite covenant community touched the skin of a dead pig, they were unclean until the evening (verse 39) which means they could not come to the sanctuary on the same day. If they handled the skin, they should also wash their clothes (verse 40) which, one might assume, football players would do anyway after a match. Given that the use of pig skin is hardly essential to playing American football, ancient Israelites would presumably have used a different leather if they had played American football but they would not have had to call off a match against the Moabites just because the ball was made of dead pig skin.

What’s more the function of these laws was to set apart the Israelites as a holy people of YHWH (cf. verses 44-45; see also Lev 20:24-26). Laws touching all of life were a constant reminder that Israel was to be distinct from other nations. But this does not mean that all the laws were of equal weight and significance. Idolatry and immorality whose seriousness is underlined by the punishment specified for them are the real deal, as it were. Dietary laws were YHWH’s forget-me-not and forget-not-that-you-are-to-be-holy.

The different cultures suggested by the reference to three football clubs [*] highlights how strange it would be to make dietary laws a universal norm, thereby erasing cultural distinctives. It would be like requiring all teams to wear the same jerseys. The church has always made a distinction between, on the one hand, laws which reflect God’s character which God’s people are to imitate at all times and in all places, and on the other hand, laws which were given to Israel specifically to mark them out as distinct and remind them of the call to be holy to YHWH.

See also Hayim Donin's comments on the dietary laws.

[*] The Washington Redskins, founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves and renamed “Redskins” after they moved to Fenway Park, were under pressure from major sponsors to change their name and since July 2020 are the Washington Football Team.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is the intercollegiate football team representing the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana.

West Point is The United States Military Academy in New York.

Holy eating

Hayim Halevy Donin observes that the food laws are regularly associated in the Torah with a call to holiness (e.g., Exod 22:31; Lev 11:44; Deut 14:21) and concludes

"To distinguish between "the beast which is to be eaten and the beast which is not to be eaten" (Lev. 11:47), is an aspect of the broader requirements that Israel learn to "distinguish between the unclean and the clean" not only in food, but in all areas of life -- the sexual, the moral, the ethical, the spiritual. The laws of kashrut do not stand isolated from the purposes and goals, from the disciplines and demands that are part of the total picture of Judaism. To treat kashrut in isolation is to distort and misunderstand it."

"Holiness meant and means becoming master over one's passions so that one is in command and control of them, and not they of him. The one who has been trained to resist cravings for forbidden foods that tempt him may also have strengthened his capacity to resists his cravings for forbidden sexual involvements that may tempt him too; it may also strengthen his capacity to resist forbidden unethical questions that may hold forth the promise of tempting financial or status rewards. The transference of this religious discipline to other areas is not guaranteed, but there is no denying the inherent value in religious discipline intended to train one to resist bodily drives and urges just to satisfy a craving or experience a pleasure."

"Kashrut is a good example of how Judaism raises even the most mundane acts, the most routine activities, into a religious experience. What narrower minds look upon as a picayune concern with trifling kitchen matters is really an example of how Judaism elevates the mere physical satisfaction of one's appetite into a spiritual act by its emphasis on the everpresent God and our duty to serve Him at all times."

To Be a Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 1994 [1972]), 100-101