Answers to Questions by Yair Davidiy (2 August 2017, 10 Av, 5777)
https://www.quora.com/How-many-Israeli-Jews-eat-swine/answer/Yair-Davidiy
How many Israeli Jews eat swine?
Deuteronomy 14:8 The pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.
Due to the immigration from Russia and the Ukraine there is demand for pork in Israel. Nowadays pork may be obtained quite easily nearly everywhere. In the past it was restricted to Christian centers like Nazareth, or to certain Israeli kibbutzim. Despite this my impression is that most restaurants in Israel are basically almost Kosher by American Jewish standards. They may not always have a Certificate. The lack of a Kashrut Certificate however is usually due to the establishment being open on Shabat, or to not being strict enough on such matters as separating meat from milk products.
Figures from 2010, not clear
Poll: Fewer than half of Israelis see themselves as secular
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/po...
Moti Bassok Sep 13, 2010 1:05 AM
8% of Jewish Israeli adults define themselves as ultra-Orthodox, 12% as religious, 13% as traditional-religious, and 25% as traditional but 'not very religious,' according to Central Bureau of Statistics survey.
[That gives us a total of 58% who consider themselves religious to some degree.]
They all may be presumed to not eat pork.
Of the secular 42% more than a fifth said they kept Kosher food laws i.e. 8% of the total in addition to the 58%.
Figures from May, 2016,
Pew survey: Israeli Jews more likely to avoid synagogue, less likely to eat pork than their American cousins
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/ne...
16% of Jews in Israel say they eat pork versus 57% in the USA.cf.
Pew survey: 57% of US Jews eat pork, Torah study grows By Uriel HeilmanNovember 3, 2015Â
http://www.jta.org/2015/11/03/li...
Of the 16% of Israeli Jews who said they eat pork chances are they would be mostly immigrants from Russia where kosher meat was not available and Judaism was proscribed. In this case it is more a matter of habit rather than ideology. About 30% of the immigrants from Russia are not technically Jewish so many of these may well have a taste for pig meat.
Another sector of pork eaters could be some of the secular kibbutzim who in the past eat pork out of ideological conviction.
I knew personally two cases of people eating pork who claimed to be Jewish but technically they were not.
Pork is a "Hok" i.e. a type of commandment for which there is not necessarily any logical reason. Nevertheless pig meat is not healthy.
There is no logical reason why a Jew who eats pork should otherwise be more morally corrupt (in the secular sense) than someone who does not.
Nevertheless this is what I have found in enough cases to make it noteworthy.
Muslims do not eat pork. It is said that Druze are permitted to eat pork but the very few I knew did not.
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