The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World by Jordan D. Rosenblum

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World by Jordan D. Rosenblum Zev Garber jordan d. rosenblum, The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Pp. xiii + 193. $99.99. Jordan D. Rosenblum is interested in one subject: how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws and how ancient Others—including the Greeks, Romans, and early Christians—critiqued these practices. Regarding the purpose and practice of kashrut in the Torah compared to food habits by Others in the ancient Near East, for example, researchers and scholars are not of one opinion. There is a mass of evidence, often contradictory, about the motives—social, political, psychopathic, religious—that appear to have influenced societal permitted and nonpermitted animal–fish–fowl food hunt and preparation, by whose authority, and so forth. It seems that there is no satisfactory explanation of humanity's propensity to pollute, uproot, and kill living forms in water, land, and air. Yet there are examples of cultural and religious thought defending the legitimacy of culinary practices. The goal of this book is to examine this paradox in the dicta of Jewish dietary belief and practice as defended within (Self) and critiqued from without (Other). For Rosenblum, how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices covers the spectrum of human behavior and thought. Patterns of food gathering generate diet and table manners. Food language and ways reflect conceivable abuse and misuse. For example, Hebrew leḥem ("bread") and qārôb ("near," exemplified by mealtime activity and companionship) are semantically related to milḥāmâ ("war") and qorbān (here, sacrificial animal [End Page 323] offering), societal activities that extend life by taking life. Nonetheless, battle for leḥem is instinctive, and selfless caring and devotion to the welfare of animals is a core Jewish concern suggested by the biblical-rabbinic teaching against animal cruelty (ṣacar bacalê ḥayyim). This instruction and other teachings have guarded the value of animal life in the study of Jewish religion. Raḥămîm ("merciful compassion," from reḥem, "mother's womb") and Menschlichkeit (decent behavior) are experienced by humans in relation to the ascendency of the animal from victim to shared kindred with humans. To explicate answers to a whole array of Jewish dietary regulations, R. resorts to a plethora of stories, teachings, and case histories from kosher food trends and how ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. The chapters are informed by pages of footnotes, a selected bibliography, and a wide range of sources, including Hebrew Scriptures, rabbinic sources, Greco-Roman and early church writings, medieval sources, and contemporary scholarship. In the introduction, Rosenblum charts the book's divisions and sections and explains his rationale for selection and interpretation. Kosher laws are first encountered in the Torah, but it is in ancient biblical interpretation that the basic meaning and applied innovative practice related to biblical dietary regulations are extracted. In R.'s methodology, core beliefs are seeded in revelation, reason, and allegory and are informed by a variety of issues, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. R. is less interested in an inclusive discussion of items and issues (e.g., women and kashrut—there is no detailed discussion of why Esther [Greek addition] does not partake of the king's food or why Judith provides her own food when eating at the table of the non-Jewish general Holofernes) than in illustrating genres and their features. The result is a thinking person's literary guide to ancient Jewish dietary mores that complements nicely epochal approaches in the study of Judaism. Drawing from the wells of Jewish scriptural, rabbinic (tannaitic and amoraic), and Hellenistic tradition and contrasting Hellenistic non-Jewish examples, Rosenbloom depicts the kosher ethos in sociological, religious, and ethical categories to bring about a caring and moral society. R.'s writing is disciplined; his research is well founded; and his goal is to clarify the muddle that exists in academic and religious approaches. In chap. 1, R. lists and summarizes primary biblical verses and themes related to kashrut but without explanations of context. For example, the dietary laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are divine...