I’ve spent the past twen­ty years of my career for­ag­ing through Jew­ish his­to­ry along­side a trusty — and very treyf—com­pan­ion: the pig. No mat­ter where I turned through­out Jew­ish his­to­ry, I found the pig. In fact, even when I was off the clock (does such a con­cept apply to an aca­d­e­m­ic?), I found the pig. Watch­ing TV, I would catch a Jew­ish pig joke. Read­ing a biog­ra­phy of Ged­dy Lee, the singer and bass play­er for the band Rush, I encoun­tered a scene in which his Holo­caust-sur­viv­ing father eats bacon and eggs. The pig stalked me like I was a truf­fle. Final­ly, I relent­ed and wrote For­bid­den: A 3,000-Year His­to­ry of Jews and the Pig. I col­lect­ed all of my pig facts and told the sto­ry of Jews and the pig, from prover­bial snout to tail.

What are my pig facts, you inquire? Well, I’m delight­ed you asked. (Of course, if this were a par­ty, my fam­i­ly would roll their eyes and try to sub­tly tell me — per­haps by kick­ing me under the table — to shut up about the pig already and stop embar­rass­ing them.) So with­out fur­ther ado, here are some inter­est­ing pig facts from the last three thou­sand years or so:

1. The pig isn’t the most non-kosher ani­mal in the Bible. Of course, the pig isn’t kosher, but the Hebrew Bible equal­ly bans the pig, the camel, the hare, and oth­er ani­mals. It isn’t until cen­turies lat­er that the pig begins to stand out as espe­cial­ly not kosher.

2. While today peo­ple more often remem­ber the mir­a­cle of the oil dur­ing Hanukkah, in the most ancient nar­ra­tives about the Jew­ish hol­i­day, we learn far more about the pig than about olive oil. The Books of the Mac­cabees (orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten between the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BCE and the sec­ond cen­tu­ry CE) nar­rate at length the sto­ry of an old man named Eleazar and a woman and her sev­en sons who chose to suf­fer grue­some mar­tyr­dom rather than eat­ing pig. This pious act is seen as tes­ti­fy­ing to their com­mit­ment to Judaism and their rejec­tion of for­eign dom­i­na­tion — and the pig is the cen­tral sym­bol of both. While today Jews cel­e­brate by eat­ing latkes and jel­ly donuts, in antiq­ui­ty, they cel­e­brat­ed by not eat­ing pig.

3. In the medieval peri­od, Jews had to stand on a pig to tes­ti­fy in court. Known as the Jew­ish Oath, Jews were required to stand on a sow’s skin and put their hand on a Bible in order to tes­ti­fy in court.

4. Dur­ing the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, Jews who had con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism were often called Mar­ra­nos—mean­ing ​“Pigs.” This was because they were sus­pect­ed of prac­tic­ing Judaism in secret: ​“pigs” refers to their per­ceived hypocrisy (they are as kosher as a pig) and duplic­i­ty. Fur­ther, many Mar­ra­nos were killed by the Inqui­si­tion because they were accused of not eat­ing pig.

5. Karl Marx loved a pork-and-matzah sand­wich. Every East­er, a young Karl Marx — whose par­ents had con­vert­ed from Judaism to Lutheranism — would make him­self a sand­wich that fea­tured thin slices of Paschal pork and Passover matzah for bread. Did this fore­shad­ow his rev­o­lu­tion­ary future, or was it just a tasty meal?

6. In the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Russ­ian Jews demon­strat­ed their com­mit­ment to the Com­mu­nist cause by orga­niz­ing agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tives cen­tered on pig-breed­ing. After all, what bet­ter way was there for a bunch of com­mu­nist Jews to demon­strate their rejec­tion of reli­gion than to raise pigs? In the words of a Sovi­et poster from 1931, spo­ken in Yid­dish, ​“The pig is our main machine for pro­duc­tion of meat in the com­ing years!”

7. The pig that appears on my book’s cov­er was doo­dled by Jew­ish Amer­i­can writer Isaac Bashe­vis Singer. The Nobel lau­re­ate would often sign his name by draw­ing a pic­ture of a pig; in fact, the cov­er uses the first-known image of his pig sig­na­ture (pig­na­ture?). In doo­dling a pig to sign his name, Singer was play­ful­ly mark­ing him­self as a trans­gres­sive Jew, but a Jew nonethe­less. It should also be not­ed that Singer was well known for his veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, so he didn’t eat pigs, he only drew them.

8. Mama Cass didn’t choke to death on a ham sand­wich. Born Ellen Nao­mi Cohen in Bal­ti­more, Mama Cass rose to fame as a mem­ber of The Mamas and the Papas, known for hits such as ​“Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’” and ​“Mon­day, Mon­day.” Her trag­ic death on July 29, 1974 at the age of thir­ty-two was false­ly attrib­uted to her chok­ing on a ham sand­wich (when, in fact, it was due to a heart attack). If the per­son chok­ing to death on a ham sand­wich were thin and Protes­tant, the joke just wouldn’t work. But Cass’s dou­bly oth­ered body (Jew­ish and obese) was viewed by far too many as both fun­nier and more social­ly accept­able to laugh at. RIP, Mama Cass.

9. Even today, Jews often tell their sto­ries by means of the pig. Lis­ten to the sto­ries of Jews with a diverse array of expe­ri­ences and you’ll find that the pig often sticks its snout in when they describe their rela­tion­ship with Judaism. For exam­ple, Abby Cha­va Stein was assigned male — and Hasidic — at birth. She came out as trans­gen­der and, as part of her sto­ry of leav­ing Hasidism, ate bacon. And, of course, there is the famous scene in the movie Annie Hall in which Alvy has din­ner in Chippe­wa Fall, Wis­con­sin with Annie’s fam­i­ly and ham is served.

   Though I can no longer add sto­ries to my book, I con­tin­ue to find tales of the pig as my research takes me in new direc­tions. I’ve asked the pig to exit stage right, but it con­tin­ues to hog the spotlight.