What Christopher Hitchens taught me, yours truly, about Jewish law and pork. The noted half-Jewish atheist, who died in December, may have uncovered the answer to one of the Torah's greatest mysteries – why aren't pigs kosher?
Christopher Hitchens
Smell Test
After a lifelong curiosity about the prohibition against pork, one writer finds a satisfying answer—in the writings of the late Christopher Hitchens
By Shmarya Rosenberg • Tablet Magazine
I was, for many years, an imperfect atheist.
After decades in Chabad and other haredi and Orthodox communities, I concluded that logic dictated that God—at least as Jews have usually defined Him—does not exist. But at the same time, I still had a personal belief in that God, something rooted deep inside of me, a belief that transcended logic.
Then I bought a copy of God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, who died last month at the age of 62. When the book arrived I nervously leafed through it, read the first few pages, and placed God is Not Great on a table next to my reading chair, where it sat for years untouched, on the bottom of what became a very large pile. In other words, I chickened out.
So, there I was, a cowardly atheist and a blind believer—a paradox that remained tenuously in place until…