The New York Times’ City Room blog has issued what Tablet Magazine is referring to as “perhaps the most Jewish ‘Times’ correction ever.” The post, published yesterday and written by Andy Newman, focused on the arrival of three female mulefoot hogs at the Queens Zoo, an event said to be a rare occurrence. The last sentence seemed innocent enough:
It was not immediately clear whether the meat of hogs with uncloven hooves was considered kosher.
The correction was first noticed and shared via Twitter by Tablet writer Yair Rosenberg.
Update, 4:26 p.m. | City Room, based on its extremely poor religious training, made the mistake above of wondering aloud whether meat from a pig with an uncloven hoof would still be considered nonkosher.
Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the kashrut division of the Orthodox Union, the largest kosher certification organization in the world, quickly set us straight.
“Actually this pig is even worse than all other pigs,” he said. “Not only does it not chew its cud, it doesn’t have a split hoof.”
Split hoof = kosher. Unsplit = nonkosher. The thing that makes pigs nonkosher is that they don’t chew their cud. We will remember this. Thanks, Rabbi.
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