Tortilla Soup/Aztec Soup

[James Harbeck]

>people are forever trying to explain the levitical prohibitions
>against certain foods on an entrely rational basis.  while i'm not
>willing to go all the way on explanations that turn on rather high-
>level cultural assumptions, i think there's a lot in them.  but of
>course the Tora(h) isn't going to explain; unclean is unclean.

The most persuasive explanation I've read to date was one that
asserted that neighbouring peoples favoured certain foods, modes of
cooking, styles of dress, etc., and the proscriptions are meant to
set the people of Israel apart -- "we're not them, we're not like
them, we don't dress or eat like them." This is of course an
oversimplification of what I recall to be a more nuanced approach to
a very complex issue. But I rather think that, prima facie, it makes
more sense than, for instance, the frequently trotted out assertion
about pork being banned due to the risk of trichinosis, an affliction
that takes long enough to develop that a clear causal relationship is
not going to leap out as it would with, say, salmonella.

James Harbeck.

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