Cohn, Jacob. The Royal Table - VWC: Faculty/Staff Web

18 THE ROYAL TABLE
should believe that the reasons for forbidden foods are
medicinal! For were it so, the Book of God's Law would
be in the same class as any
of the minor brief medical
books * . . Furthermore, our own eyes see that the people
who eat pork and insects and such ... are well and alive
and healthy at this very day . . . Moreover there are more
dangerous
animals . . . which are not mentioned at all in
the list of prohibited ones. And there are many poisonous
herbs known to physicians which the Torah does not men-
tion at all. All of which points to the conclusion that the
Law of God did not come to heal bodies and seek their
material welfare, but to seek the health of the soul and
cure its illnesses." 20 But it seems that practically all
the rest of the great Jewish thinkers have persisted in
seeking hygienic reasons for the prohibitions. "I maintain/'
says Maimonides, "that food forbidden by the Law
is unwholesome. There is nothing among the forbidden
foods whose injurious character is doubted except pork and
fat. But also in these cases is the doubt unjustified." 21
It must be borne in mind that the distinguishing signs which
the Torah gives for identifying
clean animals are not the
causes of their cleanliness, nor does the absence of these
signs make them unclean. The Torah simply says that
those which are clean can be distinguished from the un-
clean by certain signs. Hence it is maintained by some
that it is useless to look for hygienic meanings in these
criteria proper, even though there may be some medical
intent in the general prohibition. 22 Yet a host of health
regulations have been pointed out by the commentators of
all ages in the designation of certain animals as clean and
the banning of others as unclean.
* Abarbanel, Commentary to Leviticus, Section Shemini.
* Maimonides, Gride for the Perplexed, Part HI, Chap. 48.
M Ibid.