Departures (36 page)

Ruth was still watching him. “You’re going ahead with this.”

“You know me too well.” He sighed. “I’m going to investigate it, anyhow.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I sort of have to,” he said, but he was talking to her back. Sighing again, he went into his study. His books would not
argue with him. He went first, as would anyone unraveling a problem of Jewish law, to the
Shulkhan Arukh, the Ready Table
of Joseph Karo. Published in 1564, it was still basic almost five centuries later, and its commentators reached to modern times.

Chapter 46 sounded promising: “Laws Concerning Forbidden Food.” He turned to it in some hope. It had nothing to do with pork, but dealt with meat and milk dishes; with eating food prepared by Gentiles or from utensils used by Gentiles; with wormy fruit, vegetables, and fish. Karo, reasonably enough, had never entertained the prospect of a pig that chewed its cud, nor had the rabbis who came after him.

Kaplan did find a reference to swine in Chapter 5, “Laws Regarding the Cleanliness of the Place for Holy Purposes.” There Karo remarked, “The mouth of a swine is considered like a chamber pot, for the reason that it pecks at excrement.”

The rabbi frowned. In modern times, pigs were no more filthy than any other domestic animals. Perplexed, he got down the
Guide for the Perplexed
, Maimonides’ great twelfth-century effort to reconcile religion and science. He found the reference to pork in Chapter 48 of Part III:

“I maintain that the food which is forbidden by the Law is unwholesome. There is nothing among the forbidden kinds of food whose injurious character is doubted, except pork, and fat. But also in these cases the doubt is not justified. For pork contains more moisture than necessary, and too much of superfluous matter. The principal reason why the Law forbids swine’s flesh is to be found in the circumstance that its habits and its food are very dirty and loathsome. It has already been pointed out how emphatically the Law enjoins the removal of the sight of loathsome objects, even in the field and in the camp; how much more objectionable is such sight in towns. But if it were allowed to eat swine’s flesh, the streets and houses would be more dirty than any cesspool, as may be seen at present in the country of the Franks. The saying of our Sages is well known: ‘The mouth of a swine is as dirty as dung itself.’ ”

Again, the medical argument that swine’s flesh was inherently dirty: a physician himself, Maimonides would naturally reason thus. And again, it did not necessarily apply now, or indeed even in Maimonides’ day; chickens hardly had cleanlier habits than pigs. The quotation from the Talmud was in the same vein, if of even weightier authority than Maimonides.

Who else had spoken of the pig? He thought of one source, and pulled a well-thumbed book from a shelf apart from the
religious tomes. As usual, Ambrose Bierce had a word for it: “Hog,
n
. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for the delicacy of its habits, the beauty of its plumage and the melody of its voice.…”

Smiling, he put the
Devil’s Dictionary
away. Bierce’s mordant wit helped put things in perspective. He was certain his predicament would have amused the old cynic immensely, and perhaps inspired a fresh verse or two from that worthy bard, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.

At that, the mythical Father Jape might have sympathized with Kaplan. In Bierce’s time, Catholics refrained from eating meat on Fridays. Somehow the Catholic Church had survived when the prohibition was lifted.

But the ban against pork was centuries older than Christianity itself. And Judaism, unlike Christianity these last seventeen centuries, was mostly a minority religion, all too often a persecuted one. Jewish dietary laws expressed and emphasized the separateness of the Jews of the Diaspora from the peoples among whom they lived. Because they helped Jews maintain their cohesion, they became emotionally ingrained in believers; that was why even the thought of modifying them brought such a wrench with it.

And yet, he thought, Judaism always retained a certain flexibility other faiths lacked. In the Middle Ages, Jewish thought never accepted Aristotelian science as part and parcel of the tenets of the faith as the Church had—and therefore never had to go through a painful repudiation when Renaissance scientists showed that Aristotle did not, after all, know everything.

Adaptation to a changing world had been going on ever since. Among the observant in both Israel and the United States, a common item was a switch that could be set in advance to turn electrical appliances on and off on the sabbath, when kindling a light was forbidden.

So—there was the question: was eating one of Delahanty’s R strain an accommodation to be gratefully accepted, or was it abomination? Whichever way he decided, he was going to be in trouble. He wondered if he ought to call another rabbi, someone older and maybe wiser. He thought it over, decided not to; it felt too much like passing the buck. The problem had been dumped in
his
lap, and he had to deal with it now. The time for others to judge would be later.

Ruth knew better than to disturb him in his study, but she pounced when he emerged. “Well?”

He spread his hands. “I don’t have any answer yet, I’m afraid.”

“Wonderful.”

He did his best not to notice the sarcasm. “The trouble is, the authorities so automatically think of pigs and pork as being beyond the pale that they don’t even discuss conditions under which it might be permissible.”

“Shouldn’t that tell you something?” Ruth asked pointedly.

“The rabbis of the Talmud didn’t have modern technology to complicate their lives. All they had to worry about was famine, insurrection, and Roman legions—they didn’t know when they were well off.”

“Now what?”

“I think I’ll call Delahanty back. Maybe he can tell me something that would make this all make sense.”

“I can tell you something that would make this all make sense: forget it.”

But Kaplan was already hitting the phone buttons. The chief of Genetic Enterprises came on the line at once. He seemed so bright and eager, Kaplan thought, and almost as intrigued as the rabbi over mutual problem. It had to be honest intellectual curiosity; even if every Jew in the country started eating the new product, it wouldn’t bump consumption up more than a couple of percent.

“Damn, too bad,” Delahanty said when Kaplan told him of the unpromising turn of the research. Without being asked, he went on, “How about this, then? Suppose I shoot you all the information about the R strain. That might help.”

“So it might.” Kaplan paused and continued. “I want you to understand, Dr. Delahanty, no matter how intriguing the possibilities are here, there’s no guarantee I can find these beasts of yours acceptable.”

“Well, of course.” Delahanty sounded surprised. “You have to do what you think is right, Rabbi. I’m just glad you didn’t laugh at me and hang up.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t talk with my wife.”

Delahanty laughed. “Am I? Do you have your floppy ready?”

“Just a second.” The rabbi loaded a disk into the base of the phone unit. “All right, go ahead.” There was a faint whir from the drive as the floppy recorded the data Delahanty was sending. When it was done, Kaplan said, “Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

“I ought to be thanking you.”

“Nonsense. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.” After they said their good-byes, Kaplan took the floppy over to the computer and played it back.

Most of it, he discovered, consisted of Genetic Enterprises advertising videos. If half of what they said about the R strain was true, as soon as the first little porker turned thirty-five, it was going to get elected President. Rhapsodies over how nutritious the meat was, however, did not matter to Kaplan. Ordinary pork was perfectly edible. The problem lay elsewhere.

The rabbi learned that the R strain’s digestive tract was modeled after that of cows, sheep, and goats, but was not created from their genetic material. From the tone of the video, he gathered others had tried that approach and failed.

He was glad Genetic Enterprises had done something new; it was a minor point in favor of the R strain. Leviticus 19:19 said, “Thou shalt not let the cattle gender with a diverse kind.” In the
Shulkhan Arukh
, Karo extended that to working with a team of different animals, such as a horse and an ox, and said that two mules working together should be examined to ensure that both were the get either of a stallion and jenny or of a jack and mare: otherwise they were animals of diverse kind. Some authorities, in fact, noted Karo, reckoned one mule an animal of diverse kind and forbade its use. If the R strain had some of the genes, say, of a sheep, that argument could have been raised against it.

Kaplan waded through a series of charts and graphs extolling the R strain’s ability to put on flesh quickly. Again, that was beside the point. Moreover, while it was important to farmers, the rabbi found it mind-numbing after a while. He hit the fast-forward button.

He jabbed the stop control. There stood Peter Delahanty. He hadn’t changed in the year or so since Kaplan had seen him last: he was fair, just past thirty, good-looking in an abstracted way, and very sincere. This had to be the press conference he had mentioned. Maybe, Kaplan thought hopefully, it would give a tidy summary of all the data with which he had been bombarded. Lionel was certainly cuter than a pie chart.

The questions Delahanty had gotten were interesting, and his answers did help clarify matters, but only from a dollars-and-cents standpoint. Kaplan listened for fifteen minutes or so. He was about to give up and turn off the disk when a reporter with
a bushy gray mustache stood up and asked, “Will they interbreed with unmodified pigs?”

When Delahanty said no, Kaplan felt like Archimedes in his bath. For that matter, a naked, dripping man running through the streets shouting “Eureka!” would attract no more attention in Los Angeles than back in ancient Syracuse, unless the police decided he was on angel dust and shot him.

He called Genetic Enterprises again; by now he did not have to look up the number. “I have the determination,” he said when Delahanty came on the line.

“And?”

“In my opinion, Jews may eat animals of the R strain, as they may any other beasts that have divided hooves and chew a cud.”

“Do you really think so? Do you mind if I ask you why you say so?”

“I was hoping you would,” Kaplan said truthfully; he had enough ego to want his reasoning appreciated. “The key is that properly speaking, these R strain beasts are not pigs at all.”

“No? What would you call ’em, then? They look like pigs, they oink like pigs, they taste like pigs—though I don’t suppose you’d know about that. You told me you weren’t going to find the R strain kosher just to be doing it; it seems to me that’s what you’ve done. I don’t want that, Rabbi Kaplan.”

Kaplan almost burst out laughing. Of all the ridiculous situations in the world, for him to be explaining to an Irishman why a pig wasn’t a pig had to fall into the top ten.

He said, “I was going to say no until I heard you tell the press that the R strain and ordinary swine weren’t fertile with each other.”

“No, they’re not,” Delahanty agreed. He sounded doubtful, then suddenly excited. “Oh, I follow you, I think. One scientific justification for calling two populations distinct species is that they can’t breed together. Is that it? Wouldn’t it just make the R strain a different kind of pig, though?”

Admiring his quick wits, Kaplan quoted Leviticus 19:19: “ ‘Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind.’ The clear implication there, of course, is with a diverse kind of cattle. But the R strain can’t gender at all with pigs. And if they can’t gender with pigs, how can they be pigs, no matter what they look like?”

After a minute Delahanty said, “You’d make a good Jesuit, Rabbi.”

Kaplan grunted. Being a good Jew struck him as quite hard
enough, without the added burden of lifelong chastity. Despite all his other strictures, Karo did not enjoin anything of that sort: In Chapter 150, he recommended cohabitation nightly for married men of strong constitution, twice a week for laborers working in the town where they lived, and once a week for those working in a different town. His injunctions included scholars, although Rabbi Eleazar said that “he used to have cohabitation with such awe and fear that it appeared to him as if a demon was forcing him to do it.”

While he was musing on Karo’s prescriptions, Delahanty said something he missed. “I’m sorry?” he said, embarrassed.

“I asked how serious you were about all this. Giving an opinion is easy, but do you mean it?”

“Of course I do,” Kaplan said indignantly.

“Then—” Delahanty hesitated, went on. “Look, if you think I’m out of line, tell me and I’ll shut up, and I certainly won’t think any less of you. But I would like to ask … having said what you’ve said, would you eat meat from the R strain yourself?”

He should have guessed the question was coming, but it took him by surprise just the same. Suddenly and bitterly, he understood how Ruth felt. Intellectually, he had convinced himself that the R strain was acceptable. Emotionally, Lionel, pink and plump and curly-tailed, was a pig, no two ways about it.

“Rabbi?” Delahanty said when he did not reply at once.

Having given the response he had, Kaplan saw he had no choice now. “I would eat it,” he said. “I will eat it. By your phone code, Genetic Enterprises is in Westwood or somewhere close by. Give me your address; I can be there in a half hour. I don’t care to make commercials for you, though, if you don’t mind.”

“I put you on the spot,” Delahanty said. “I apologize; that was nasty of me. Don’t let me make you do anything you wouldn’t want to.”

“You’re not. Tell me that address now, please.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Kaplan said firmly. He wrote down the street number Delahanty gave him, exchanged another minute or so of small talk, and hung up.