Israeli Supermarkets to Outlaw Pork

The pig is not the most popular farm animal in the Holy Land. You won't find him in the Bible Zoo and only God knows how the pig made it onto Noah's Ark. Here in Israel, religious Muslims and Jews abhor the animal and it's against the law to raise pigs on this so-called sacred earth.

So why was I seeing Jerusalem delicatessen counters brimming with bacon, pork chops and pate of wild boar?

“There's a loophole,” explained one Israeli friend. “Pigs aren't supposed to be raised on holy soil, and the soil of Israel is holy –so they build pig farms on planks, raised a few feet above the ground. That way no law is broken.”

But even the farms with pigs trotting the boards like bad dancers could face closure. A Russian born Jewish billionaire named Arcady Gaydamak just bought a controlling share of Tiv Taam, one of the country's biggest supermarket chains and purveyors of pork. He made it clear that selling pork “offends Jewish tradition”, and he plans on banning its sale. The first polls show that secular Israelis, who are in the majority, think this is going too far. But Gaydamak is said to be planning a run as mayor of Jerusalem, a city where ultra-orthodox families are 20% of the population and growing. The ultra-orthodox Jews are only too happy about Gaydamak's intention to banish the pig.

Gaydamak is an enigmatic figure –the French would like to talk to him about certain arms sales in Africa— but he is emerging as a populist leader. He bought a football club. He's youngish and dapper with a flair for theatrics. He recently erected a tent city in a Tel Aviv park for Israelis who wanted to move out of range of rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

But with the pig becoming thin on holy ground, adventurous Israeli carnivores may have to experiment with other, more kosher, exotic beasts.

Alas, it won't be the giraffe. An Israeli friend told me that rabbis have ruled that giraffes are kosher, but religious scholars can't agree on where to make the cut along the giraffe's elegantly long neck.

--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem