The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig.

By Claudine Fabre-Vassas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. x plus 401pp.).

How do we define what we are ? This question lies at the heart of many historical and anthropological studies, and has led scholars to look closely at the "other": people and things that help define us by what we are not. Claudine Fabre-Vassas approaches this subject by a wide-ranging ethnographic look at Christian Europe from the Middle Ages to the present, discovering an intricate pattern of self-definition in which Christians draw the boundaries of who they are by contrasting themselves to Jews through rituals of eating pork. As an eighteenth-century song proclaimed: "The more we enjoy the piglet, The better Catholics we become" (p. 147). By carefully detailing folklore beliefs and rituals associated with the slaughter and consumption of pigs, Fabre-Vassas also illuminates patterns of anti-Semitism that run deeply in Christian villages and towns.

In the first section of the book, "The Analogical Being," the author begins her analysis of pig consumption with a core question: how can one avoid thoughts of cannibalism while eating an animal that so resembles humans? She chronicles every stage of the process with care, showing rituals and symbols that help move the piglet from household member to stewpot. The process begins with the purchase of pigs from merchants who bring the piglets from out of town. Then they are made acceptable to the household by a "tongue examiner" who can certify the animal is disease-free, and the castrator, who comes to town with his pan-pipe that echoes the squeal of a castrated pig. In the blood of the sterilization of both male and female pigs, the animals are made ready to enter human homes.

Once there, they are nurtured as children - fed with concern that they "grow" and cared for when sick. Folklore stories show that within these households, the boundaries between human and animal blur. Children are seen as little pigs, whose games and stories echo the life-cycle of the piglet in their household. The matter becomes even more complex when the images of pigs (and children) become interwoven with those of Jews. In folklore, Jewish children are turned into piglets, and with these tales, Fabre-Vassas resolves a paradox that lies at the heart of this book: Most people are defined by what they eat, but for Christians, Jews were associated with what they do not eat, pork. In Christian myth, Jews do not eat pork to avoid the cannibalism involved in eating their own kind and because of this want to eat Christian children to satisfy their desire for tender piglet meat.

The second section of the book, "Two Bloods," analyzes the growth and development of Christian children and shows how each stage is marked and defined by a Christian child's relationship to Jews. Unbaptized infants are "like" Jews, and baptism only begins the process of the child's transformation from Jew/pig to full Christian. For example, altar boys engage in ritual "killing the Jews" symbolically renouncing the "Jew" that is within themselves.

The final section of the book, "Christian Flesh," returns directly to the rituals of slaughtering and preparing pigs, and links these rituals to the Christian calendar, beginning in Lent. During Lent, Christians, like Jews, do not eat pork, so during this period there was an ambiguity between the two groups. Yet, at Easter, Christians reasserted their separate identity by slaughtering a piglet to eat. In a bewildering network of analogies, the slaughtered piglet was the innocent child that Christians believed Jews wanted to kill and eat; the piglet was also Christ, offered as sacrifice in the Easter ham.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is Fabre-Vassas' account of making blood sausages behind the closed doors of women's kitchens. As postmenopausal women presided over bleeding the pig and saving the blood to make the sausages, they further separated themselves from Jews who are forbidden to eat any blood. Making, sharing, and consuming blood sausages marks them as Christian, yet the sausages themselves are looked on as "children," and as they cook, are threatened by the spirits of unbaptized children - little "Jews." The metaphors linking pigs, Jews, and Christians inexorably blend over the Easter-time cooking pots in the kitchens of Europe.

Claudine Fabre-Vassas has demonstrated that although Christians prohibited "sacrifice" of animals, nevertheless the yearly cycle that brings pigs to the table represented a series of ritual sacrifices that helped define Christians and continually fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. Perhaps one of the most telling insights of this book is to see that we can develop and sustain hate without ever once confronting the object of our hate. Our prejudices are more about defining ourselves, less about the "other."

However, many will be uneasy with Claudine Fabre-Vassas' method of drawing evidence from different times and different places. Anecdotes from early medieval Spain are juxtaposed with twentieth century Germany to argue for metaphors that defy space and time. And yet sometimes only when scholars dare to take a broad perspective can they see patterns that reveal meaning in actions that seem trivial. Readers may question some of the conclusions or even propose alternative ones, but they cannot help be astonished at the power of symbols and metaphors (even mixed ones) to the human mind. This is a fascinating work to those interested in prejudice, Judaism, Christianity, or even cooking. To begin to understand how these things fit together, though, one would have read this complex work of ethnography.

Joyce E. Salisbury

University of Wisconsin - Green Bay