- Shane Warne, Trent Bridge, 5th Test, 10 August 1997
This remains one of the funnest images in the history of Test Cricket. Australia had just retained the Ashes and the commentary at the time said that he was "carrying on like a pork chop". What this particular idiom in Australian English fails to to capture is the end of the sentence which should read:
Carrying on like a pork chop at a Jewish wedding/synagogue.
What this generally means is that someone is overreacting, make a foolish fuss, or behaving in an overly dramatic way about something small, or describing something completely out of place or unwanted. It can also someone acting wildly out of line.
Granted that Australian English is often deliberately evocative, crass and/or rude, it still warrants the question about said pork chop at a Jewish wedding or synagogue. Moreover, since this is a violation of Torah and specifically the food laws (kosher), and Torah is a set of defined law, it should be possible to determine how many violations one could practically break at once.
Since this is a theoretical exercise and we are playing with the realm of law, then we need to read the law to work out how. To violate as many kosher laws in a single meal, you would need to combine specific forbidden animals, prohibited animal products, improper preparation, and illicit mixtures; all at the same time.
So then...
Violation One:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Say to the Israelites: ‘Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud.
- Leviticus 11:1-3 NIV
Generally speaking, the animals that are acceptable to eat are those land animals which have split hooves and chew their cud. This means that beef, lamb, and goat products are generally kosher. Horse meat on the other hand is not. This means to say that Findus lasagne in February 2013 when some Findus products were found to contain up to 100% horsemeat instead of beef, violated kosher laws.
In this first category, we're going to include horse and kangaroo meat, because they are readily available.
Violation Two:
And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. “ ‘Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales.
- Leviticus 11:7-9 NIV
Famously, pigs are unclean to the point where Jewish people may not even touch their carcasses. This is why in the parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus specifically includes the point that the unwise and abjectly foolish son, eventually reaches his lowest point by becoming an hired hand on a pig farm. Jesus is specifically and deliberately trying to offend his audience.
As pigs have split hooves but do not chew their cud, and are explicitly not acceptable to eat, then we're going to include bacon because it is delicious.
Violation Three:
Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be regarded as unclean by you.
- Leviticus 11:12 NIV
Consumption of Prawns are also forbidden aquatic life as seafood must have both fins and scales. It follows that shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks are also strictly prohibited.
Since this is about breaking the letter of the law as many times as we can, then I think that a category break will suffice as opposed to an exhaustive line item break. This means that we're going to include prawns.
Violation Four:
These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.
- Leviticus 11:13-19 NIV
Common birds accepted by tradition today are limited to chicken, turkey, domesticated ducks, geese, and pigeons. This means to that that KFC is perfectly fine under Torah. The problem is that things not explicitly mentioned in the list above are a grey area and since we are concerned with violating the law explicitly, engaging in speculation as to what could break the law, is less useful than actually looking at what it says.
One of the problems that we face when trying to break the law above is that most of the birds listed are also illegal to eat under civil legislation such as the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 in New South Wales, where I live. Since we are concerned with violating Torah but not necessarily about violating civil law, then I had to go through the list to work out what was covered and what was not. The first thing that I could reliably find as being allowable to eat under civil law, was the stork. What makes this particularly interesting is that the Black-Necked Stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus), widely known in Australia as the Jabiru, is the only native species of stork found in Australia.
This means that we're going to include Jabiru.
Violation Five:
Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
- Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21
The Torah explicitly forbids cooking a young goat in its mother's milk. Rabbinic law expands this to strictly prohibit cooking, eating, or deriving any benefit from mixing any kosher meat with dairy.
We have five explicit Violations of Torah, so the only thing left to resolve here is the delivery method. While we could theoretically keep adding forbidden ingredients to a plate, this very quickly becomes unwieldy. This means that the most practical method of actually violating as much or Torah as possible at once... is a pizza. While we could violate this with a burger of some kind, a pizza is actually a far more feasible method of doing this.
If we actually wanted to breas the most kosher rules at once, then what we're looking at is a pizza with:
- beef
- cheese
- horse
- kangaroo
- bacon
- prawns
- jabiru
Violations Six, Seven and Eight:
We can also violate further laws by including uninspected onion, witchetty grubs, and cooking it in a pizza kitchen that handles everything together; which also violates the laws of utensil cross-contamination and this would means that the plates, pizza oven, and pizza paddle themselves are un-kosher.
We can go even further by adding milk to the pizza dough to ensure that the dough also comes in contact with the meats. We would also need to remember to be neglectful and not separate of a portion of dough as rabbinic ritual requires.
Violations Nine and Ten:
This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.
- Exodus 12:14-15
He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’
- Exodus 16:23
If our monstrosity was specifically cooked on the Sabbath during Passover, then because our pizza dough also contains leavening, then we also break two prohibitions for free.
To be fair, this list isn't exhaustive but ten seems like a nice round number and it is still practical. What then does our Ten Torah Violation Pizza Look like? Thankfully the internetz and AI slop can give us a pretty good idea.
pizza with: beef, cheese, horse, kangaroo, bacon, prawns, jabiru, witchetty grub, onion, jalapenos
You know what? There is a word for this... delicious. What I think that we've accidentally imagined, is a Torah-breaking Meat Lovers' Pizza which is practicable and plausible. Admittedly you could just go to a regular burger joint and order a Bacon Cheeseburger on the Sabbath during Passover and comfortably violate six kosher laws at once but since we're testing the limits of the law, this does a marginally better job.
