Ulysses Essay 31 (49:17)

Chapter 4 (Calypso) Note 2

“Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s”

Leopold, preparing tea and bread and butter for Molly’s breakfast in bed, decides that he will perhaps upgrade her repast by bringing her something more substantial and that he will also buy for his own breakfast (after considering other alternatives such as ham and eggs or a mutton kidney) “better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s”. He goes upstairs to tell the still sleeping Molly that he is slipping out for a few moments, but when he asks her whether she wants anything special for her breakfast, she replies sleepily in the negative. Undeterred (and not really surprised) by Molly’s unenthusiastic response, Bloom makes his way out of the house on his way to Dlugacz the butcher to buy himself the pork kidney. Just before closing the front door he feels in his pockets and realizes he has left his latchkey at home in another pair of trousers, but decides not to go back so as not to disturb his sleeping wife and instead leaves the door minimally ajar.  “Looked shut.

All right till I come back anyhow.”

Dlugacz’s butchery on Dorset Street Upper is one of the few fictional Dublin establishments mentioned in Ulysses, although Gifford, quoting Thom’s 1904 Dublin Almanac, notes that in 1904 there indeed was an actual pork butchery on Dorset Street Upper owned by a Mr. Michael Brunton. It is well-known that Joyce derived the name Dlugacz from Moses Dlugacz, an ordained rabbi and a scion of a long line of Ukrainian rabbis, who was Joyce’s student and friend in Trieste from 1912 to 1915. In Trieste Dlugacz tried unsuccessfully to find a position as a rabbi and after teaching Hebrew classes to the Jewish youth of Trieste for a while, he eventually opted to go into business on the via di Torre Bianca as a wholesale supplier of (non-kosher) cheese and meat products to the Austrian army. Moses Dlugacz was an ardent Zionist who eventually emigrated to Palestine (then a British mandate), and this fact seems to be reflected in the sheet of paper in which Dlugacz the Jewish butcher wraps Bloom’s pork kidney: a flier canvassing subscriptions for leasing agricultural land near Tiberias in the Galilee. Apparently the Jewish pork butcher too, like his Trieste namesake, was a declared Zionist who was receiving mail from the (actual) Palestine Land Development Company located at Bliebtreustrasse 34-35 in Berlin.

The Dlugacz pork kidney episode is of course rife with irony. Here is Dlugacz, the Jewish butcher and proud Zionist, earning his livelihood by selling pork to Dublin’s Catholics and specifically to Bloom, the archetypal wandering (half-)Jew. The Jewish religious ban on eating pork is historically a central tenet in Judaism although the relevant instruction in Leviticus does not single out the prohibition on eating pig meat as being more important or more significant than similar bans on eating the meat of various other species. The general rule stated in Leviticus (11:3) is that only four-footed animals that are both cloven-hoofed and chew the cud are permitted to be eaten. The text then goes on to enumerate examples of mammalian species that are forbidden because they fulfil only one of these two conditions: three species (the camel, the rock-badger and the hare) that only chew the cud but are not cloven-hoofed and one species (the pig) that is cloven-hoofed but does not chew the cud (ibid. 11:4-7). Thereafter the text states that all seafood is forbidden except for fish that have scales and fins (ibid. 11:9-10); that many enumerated species of birds may not be eaten, such as ostriches, vultures, owls and pelicans (ibid. 11:13-19); and that all insects are forbidden, except for locusts and grasshoppers which (somewhat surprisingly) are deemed to be kosher (ibid. 11:20-23). 

Thus the prohibition on pig meat is not at all prominent in the biblical text, being buried among numerous other forbidden species. So how and why did the ban on eating pork become so important in Jewish consciousness and history to the extent that the pig is often termed in the Talmud “davar acher” (a euphemism meaning “another thing”) rather than “chazir” the standard biblical and modern Hebrew term for a pig? After all the pig does at least fulfil one of the two conditions for being kosher (it has cloven hoofs) unlike the horse whose meat is doubly treif (i.e., not kosher) because horses neither chew the cud nor do they have cloven hoofs. Scholars argue about this point, but it is relevant that Islam, which like Judaism also evolved in the hot climate of the Middle East, similarly unequivocally forbids the eating of pig meat, although the Koran does not specify other dietary restrictions (except for banning the intake of alcohol). Probably prevention of infection with the pig tapeworm (Taenia solium) is the rationale behind the widespread Middle Eastern taboo on eating pig meat. The pig tapeworm is easily transmitted to humans who eat undercooked infected pork and can even sometimes cause infection when the meat has been ostensibly well-cooked, especially in hot climes. Taenia solium can spread to all the organs of the body, including the brain and heart, where it can cause the dangerous (and rarely even ultimately fatal) condition of cysticercosis. In this respect the pig tapeworm differs strikingly from the beef tapeworm (Taenia saginata) which only affects the digestive system, engendering at most only minor gastro-intestinal symptoms.

The historical importance of the Jewish ban on eating pork is first referred to in the Second Book of Maccabees which deals with the Hasmonean revolt against the tyrannical rule of the Greco-Syrian tyrant Antiochus IY Epiphanus during the years 167-160 B.C.E. Antiochus was determined to Hellenize his Jewish subjects (see Note 3 – “Hellenize it”) and besides erecting a statue of Zeus in the Temple, he attempted to outlaw circumcision among the Jews and to impel them to eat pork. The episode related in Maccabees II

(7:1-41) tells of Hannah, the mother of seven sons who were tortured to death from oldest to youngest for refusing to eat pork. This was done in full view of their mother who proudly encouraged them not to give in to the king’s command and disobey God’s law even on pain of death. Finally, she too was executed. Each son in turn explained to the king why he preferred torture and death to eating pork, one of the sons saying simply: “What do you hope to gain by doing this? We would rather die than abandon the traditions of our ancestors.” (II Maccabees 7:2).

Given the historical and emotional significance of the pork issue for most Jews (even for those who are not otherwise religiously observant), pig breeding been the subject of controversy in the modern State of Israel which somewhat contradictorily declares itself to be both “democratic” and “Jewish”. In 1962, in response to political pressure exerted by the religious parties (which have held the balance of power in most Israeli governments, notwithstanding their relatively small size) a law forbidding the breeding of pigs was passed in the Knesset. The law made an exception for the small minority of Christian Arabs who were permitted to breed pigs in towns and villages where they constituted the majority. (Obviously Israel’s much more sizeable Moslem Arab minority had no problem in supporting the law, consistent with the total prohibition in most Moslem countries on the sale of pork). Also use of pigs for medical purposes was permitted by the law, and indeed many orthodox Jews in Israel have had porcine biologic prosthetic valves implanted in their hearts.

However things have changed in Israel since the early 1990s when following the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., there was an unprecedented influx into Israel of half a million Russian Jews (of whom many were half-Jews, a la Leopold Bloom, or even quarter-Jews). For the overwhelming majority of these immigrants who had been distanced from Jewish tradition for most of the twentieth century, pork and bacon were staple foodstuffs. In no time and for all intents and purposes the pig-breeding law became a dead letter, and pork butcheries are now common in towns which have sizeable Russian immigrant communities, such as Ashdod and Netanya. Numerous exclusive non-kosher restaurants in Israel routinely offer pork dishes, sometimes euphemistically termed “basar lavan” (“white meat”) on the menu so as not to upset more emotionally charged (albeit non-observant) clients. And the most upscale supermarket chain in Israel (“Tiv Ta’am” – “Best Taste”) is geared to the Russian community, offering not only porcine products of every type and size, but also a wide range of non-kosher seafood, as well as imported Volga caviar (also not kosher). Tiv Ta’am also keeps its stores open on Shabbat thereby further provoking outrage on the part of the powerful orthodox Jewish minority. In turn, the orthodox parties, which have a monopoly on marriage and divorce in Israel, have made things difficult for the Russian immigrants by often refusing to recognize many of them as Halakhically Jewish (and demanding that they undergo a lengthy and difficult conversion process to Judaism if only the father or grandparent of a prospective bride or groom is known to be Jewish). Many Israelis from all sections of the populace are upset when, for instance, a front-line I.D.F. soldier who considers himself proudly Jewish, who observes Jewish traditions and festivals, and who is willing to lay down his life for the country, is treated in this manner by the religious authorities, especially when many ultra-orthodox yeshiva students get exempted from military service.. As a result a general consensus is evolving in Israel (and in the Knesset) favoring the institution of some sort of parallel civil marriage procedure. However, it is unlikely that the so-called “status quo” governing the religious aspects of Israeli society (agreed between Ben-Gurion and the leaders of the orthodox factions just prior to the Declaration of Independence in 1948) will ever be legally changed; rather, as with the pork issue, life itself will hopefully dictate a slow but definite metamorphosis towards a more tolerant and equitable commonality.