By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
“Food is far more than just sustenance.” That idea is the inspiration behind John M. Efron’s research in “All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat” (Stanford University Press). Efron, Koret professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that “food is culture, and the evolution of culture has a history, and the history of food is fascinating, important, and intersects with many other aspects of culture.” He focuses on meat because Jewish dietary laws – in this case, what meat can be eaten and how that meat should be slaughtered – played a major role in the relationship between Christians and Jews in Germany over the centuries. 
Efron believes that meat serves as a marker of Jewish practice. He notes that the biblical dietary laws center around the eating of meat, although no mention is made of the reason behind these rules: “The biblical prohibition is a direct order and nothing more. It does not explain why it is necessary for warm-blooded animals to chew their cud and have cloven hoofs. It simply has to have those features if Jews are to eat them.” The author includes a short discussion of the reasons why the pig stood out as the animal Jews can’t eat – rather than the camel, for example – explaining the connection of the pig to ancient Rome.* However, his real interest lies in the discussion of meat in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present day. 
In medieval Germany, comparing people to animals served as a way to define them and create a hierarchical society. Efron writes of how illustrated works published in German during that time used animals to represent outcast groups, including, but not limited to, Jews. For example, Jews were described as owls who live in darkness, which represented their refusal to accept the light of Jesus. Owls were also thought to be filthy creatures whose carnal desires caused them to be labeled sinners. Jews were also compared to goats: the beards of the goats were thought to resemble those of religious Jews and both were considered “obstreperous.” As for the Jewish relationship to pigs, it was less that Jews were compared to pigs than shown “suckling at the teats of sows, drinking their urine, eating their excrement, and even giving birth to piglets.” However, in these works, Jews were not shown eating the flesh of pigs. 
As Germany moved from a rural to an urban setting, meat became even more important. Rather than the majority of meat coming from hunted game as it had in the past, domesticated animals became the main source. This meant an increase in the number of butchers needed to slaughter the animals and provide meat for purchase. While Germany had many secular rules that controlled what Christian and Jewish butchers could do, there was increased interest in Jewish methods of slaughter. This was partly because, even under emancipation (when Jews became citizens of Germany) and moving away from traditional observance, many still ate kosher meat. This limited their ability to mix with the Christian population, something that caused debate about whether Jews could be true members of German society if they could not or would not break bread with other Germans.
Efron includes detailed information about the rules and regulations of butchers that is too complex to discuss in a short review. However, it is worth noting the relationship between Jewish and Christian butchers. Since most Jewish butchers did not want to spend the time necessary to remove an animal’s sciatic nerve (which Jews were forbidden to eat due to an injury to Jacob in the biblical story found in Genesis 32:23-33), that meat was often sold to Christian butchers to sell to their customers. The same was true for the meat of those animals that were not considered kosher enough or that were not correctly slaughtered. This helped make kosher meat affordable for those who wished to consume it. 
Efron discusses how Christians and Jews shared some ideas about meat. For example, he notes that they both believed “that the characteristics of animals could be imparted to those who consumed them,” even as they differed on exactly what that meant. The Jewish slaughtering methods were used to judge Jewish morality and ethics, something that grew as animal rights societies increased. These groups were against Jewish methods, believing it was more humane to stun animals before killing them, rather than killing them with a single stroke of a sharp knife across the throat. This idea continued even when non-Jewish sources agreed that animals suffered less under kosher slaughtering because the methods used to stun animals were often either unsuccessful or created more harm.
The restrictions on kosher slaughtering were, at first, part of the general restrictions on Christian and Jewish butchers, though. Efron notes that these restrictions were based on, to list just a few, “concerns about public hygiene, urban living conditions, increasing meat consumption, meat-related health scares, and party politics.” However, that did change as the effort to restrict or stop kosher slaughter continued through contemporary times. The author includes a discussion of the role kosher slaughter played in Nazi Germany, noting that the Nazi ideal (at least according to Hitler) would be for everyone to become vegetarian. The chapter on the Nazis’ belief in a world Jewish conspiracy shows how Jews were portrayed as evil and unhealthy, and more animal than human. However, even today, the ethics of kosher slaughter are being debated and the practice has been banned in some countries.
Efron includes a chapter on Jewish cookbooks that illustrates the transformation of Jews from Jews in Germany (a separate group unconnected to the rest of society) to German Jews (Germans of a particular religion). Since German Jews were considered Germans, rather than Jews, outside their homes, these cookbooks gave them ways to be Jews in their homes. Germany was the first country to produce Jewish-themed cookbooks and Efron notes that a great number of the recipes focus on meat. The importance of kosher meat is also discussed in terms of what occurred after World War II ended; the author offers details about how concentration camp survivors were looking to consume kosher meat in displaced persons’ camps. Meat there was a symbol of life returning to sanity; eating kosher meat also allowed them to resume Jewish practices that had been banned once the Nazis came to power. 
“All Consuming” is an impressive, scholarly work that uses meat to discuss Jewish culture and the Jewish place in the German Christian world. The work features a great amount of detail, but, since Efron keeps scholarly jargon to a minimum, the work is understandable even by the non-specialist. Anyone interested in food studies will definitely want to add this work to their shelves. Those curious about the development of Jewish life in Germany will also find much of interest. 
* Those wanting in learning more about the relationships between Jews and pigs may find “Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and Pigs” by Jordan D. Rosenblum (CJL: Jews and pigs over the ages) and “Evolution of a Taboo: Pigs and People in the Ancient Near East” by Max D. Price (Off the Shelf: A taboo like no other by Rabbi Rachel Esserman) of interest.