Fabre-Vassas argues that the cultural tension between those who did and those who did not eat pork helps set the stage for a murderous anti-Semitism.... Taking her cue from Claude Levi-Strauss, [she] studied the culinary habits of southern France, and the way in which the pig began to be associated with the Jew in the anti-Semitic imaginings of peasant culture, and by implication the rest of Europe.
A stunning compendium of porcine and theological folklore.... With remarkable acuity, The Singular Beast shows how the pig, the Jew and the Christian have been locked in a fatal and macabre pas de trois for the past two millenniums.
Times Literary Supplement
[A] masterful demonstration of the role of the pig as that animal which, because of its own natural and cultural anomalousness, came so powerfully to symbolize the dialectic of identity and difference obtaining between Christians and Jews.
Journal of Religion - David Gordon White
Fabre-Vassas's work in particular illuminates the fear of otherness that, as a dimension of human consciousness, underlies the relationship between those who are persecuted and those who persecute... The extensive and detailed research in The Singular Beast provides ample evidence of how Jewishness became imbued with all manner of hateful traits.... Through ethnography and text, Fabre-Vassas offers a rich and nuanced protrait of anti-Semitic beliefs and practices that remained deeply embedded in twentieth-century European society.
Religious Studies Review - Janet Liebman Jacobs
Fabre-Vassas's work in particular illuminates the fear of otherness that, as a dimension of human consciousness, underlies the relationship between those who are persecuted and those who persecute... The extensive and detailed research in The Singular Beast provides ample evidence of how Jewishness became imbued with all manner of hateful traits.... Through ethnography and text, Fabre-Vassas offers a rich and nuanced protrait of anti-Semitic beliefs and practices that remained deeply embedded in twentieth-century European society.
— Janet Liebman Jacobs
[A] masterful demonstration of the role of the pig as that animal which, because of its own natural and cultural anomalousness, came so powerfully to symbolize the dialectic of identity and difference obtaining between Christians and Jews.
— David Gordon White
From the author's introduction: "We know that the world's cultures
readily designate others by what they eat; in Europe we call one
another frogs, roast beefs, or macaroni eaters...a very rare
exception should have aroused suspicion: Jews are called `pigs,'
imagined to be bloodthirsty, identified precisely as what they forbid
themselves." This study details the folkloric beliefs and rituals
associated with the slaughter and consumption of pigs from the Middle
Ages until today, and explores what they reveal about the cultural
boundaries between Christians and Jews. Translated from the French
(1994, <'E>ditions Gallimard).
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Fabre-Vassas argues that the cultural tension between those who did and those who did not eat pork helps set the stage for a murderous anti-Semitism.... Taking her cue from Claude Levi-Strauss, [she] studied the culinary habits of southern France, and the way in which the pig began to be associated with the Jew in the anti-Semitic imaginings of peasant culture, and by implication the rest of Europe.
Fabre-Vassas's work in particular illuminates the fear of otherness that, as a dimension of human consciousness, underlies the relationship between those who are persecuted and those who persecute... The extensive and detailed research in The Singular Beast provides ample evidence of how Jewishness became imbued with all manner of hateful traits.... Through ethnography and text, Fabre-Vassas offers a rich and nuanced protrait of anti-Semitic beliefs and practices that remained deeply embedded in twentieth-century European society.
[A] masterful demonstration of the role of the pig as that animal which, because of its own natural and cultural anomalousness, came so powerfully to symbolize the dialectic of identity and difference obtaining between Christians and Jews.
A stunning compendium of porcine and theological folklore.... With remarkable acuity, The Singular Beast shows how the pig, the Jew and the Christian have been locked in a fatal and macabre pas de trois for the past two millenniums.
Time Magazines Literary Supplement
