Jewish Sages and Rabbis during the centuries asked the question: What does this verse mean? Or what is behind this idea?

What people don’t know very much is that all these questions were asked in the context of Jewish tradition and Jewish law. When the Sages in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 86a) analyze the verse "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20:13), they want to explore all the details of the law in order to fulfill God’s commandments. They know very well that a person isn’t supposed to steal and that is not the question for them.

In the past, the structure of Jewish tradition gave Rabbis and Jewish scholars the freedom to explore the texts without violating God’s commandments. Maimonides, the Baal Shem Tov and the Maharal of Prague were very creative in their commentaries, but still very God-fearing.

Our generation is a little different. God-fearing is not the most valuable virtue in these days. People don’t hurry to the Rabbis to know the details of the law and how to fulfill properly God’s commandments. Rabbis –on the other hand- tend to search for a new meaning in the scriptures forgetting that most of the members of our congregations not only don’t share the same basic suppositions, but also even don’t know the "Peshat", the literal meaning of the verses of the Torah.

Tomorrow we’ll read in the Torah one of the most famous laws in the Jewish tradition.

This law is so famous that even people who are not Jewish identify us with it.

In the past, within Jewish tradition, almost every great Rabbi explored this law for which the Torah doesn’t give a logical explanation. Nevertheless, and despite their different opinions about the subject, all these Rabbis agreed that eating pig was forbidden and so did the members of their congregations.

In our days –however- things are not so simple. People came to the Rabbis and ask them: What does the verse "The pig is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh" mean? Jewish people, today like in the past, share the same passion about searching for a deep meaning in the scriptures, but on the contrary of what happened in the past, Jewish people don’t share the same practices.

Today, when a Jew comes to this Synagogue and wants to know what the Rabbi thinks about our verse, we must tell them with love but firmness: this verse means primarily, exactly what it says: that you can not eat pig. That means that because you are Jewish, all pig products are forbidden to you. That means that you can not eat a pepperoni-pizza, a hot-dog you bought in the street, a ham sandwich or pork ribs.

When two hundred years ago some of the Rabbis told people that Kashrut laws awaken our awareness on hunger in the world, that was a big innovation. Thirty years ago it was a sensation when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel disqualified as non kosher the vegetables picked by the Black people in the southern states under inhuman conditions. Ten years ago it was revolutionary to say in a sermon that the Kashrut laws of the Torah are the equivalent of the ecology concern of today.

If something is revolutionary today for a non-orthodox Rabbi like me it is to remind the members of my congregation that the Torah forbids us–among other things- to eat pig in all its different forms.

However, what will transcend in the history of Beth Israel is neither what any Rabbi did, does or will do, nor what he said, says or will say. What will really make history at Beth Israel Synagogue is what the members of Beth Israel do or will do with their Jewish life: each teenager who commits himself to put on Tefilin, each Jewish girl who lights candles on Shabbat, each adult who decides to change his diet customs after 40, 50 or 60 years and stop eating pig and shrimp. That will make history at Beth Israel and will strength our Jewish identity.

As the author of "Sefer Hachinuch" says, "After the deeds goes the heart".

Lets us commit from this day on, to increase not only our Jewish consciousness but also our Jewish practice.