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I would like to ask everyone to please calm down. 1)KC_Lion was merely quoting a line from the motion picture Pulp Fiction. For whatever reason, he didn't type the reference or link to the scene, but this is what he was doing. He was not telling you how to live your lives. If he had thought to include references none of this would have happened.

2)Non-Jews are indeed not required to avoid pork or any other unclean animal for food--just for sacrifices. However, there are rules for food preparation that in all likelihood are not observed by our slaughterhouses: in order to be permitted, the animal must be Halakhically dead (ie, all its body parts must stop moving, other than mere nerve spasms) before it is butchered. If the animal is butchered before it stops moving then it was butchered while technically alive which is forbidden middeRabbanan (eating meat from an animal while the animal it was cut from is still alive is forbidden midde'Orayta' and is a capital offense). Fortunately (as I understand it), it is not the responsibility of the eater to know how the animal he is eating was killed. It is sufficient that he avoid all meat that he knows was butchered improperly. Fish and seafood do not require butchering. They are permitted once taken from the water.

Jews are most definitely forbidden to eat pork and a large number of other species, as well as any meat that isn't slaughtered and prepared according to G-d's laws. None of this has anything to do with hygiene but are forbidden strictly by Divine decree, ie, G-d said not to, and that is sufficient reason not to.

I know most American conservatives are into "western civilization," the eighteenth century "enlightenment," and feel that Americans should subscribe to whatever the religion of the Founding Fathers happened to be. Unfortunately, this may be good "conservatism," but it is not good religion. The True G-d has an authority over all civilizations, all human traditions, all human philosophies, all nations, and all founders. If some FReepers are so "libertarian" that they regard the holy Commandments of G-d as no better than Communist tyranny, then they should be on some atheist libertarian site rather than a conservative one that honors G-d.

A final word, which will doubtless be condemned by many: FReepers like to fantasize about wrapping moslems up in dead pig meat, but I wonder how often they stop to think how offensive this might sound to Orthodox Jews who in the past have also been persecuted, sometimes for their food laws? Remember, "western civilization" has many negatives as well as positives. It does not recognize the True G-d and seems to sit in judgment on His Commandments. Might not this be one reason we have arrived at "gay marriage?"

You can take "western civilization." I'll take A-mighty G-d.