In the early years of statehood, the majority of Jewish Israelis, including nonreligious ones, refrained from eating pork. The evolving status of nonkosher food in general, and of pork in particular, symbolizes – probably more than anything else – the new reality, according to which such meat, which had been sold in the past mostly under the counter and given the vague name “white steak,” has now established a presence on the menu of many restaurants and is sold openly in new delicatessens and food chain stores throughout the country. Although the religious public, and most of the traditional population in Israel, regard pork as a symbol of impurity, and for them eating it is a serious transgression, for many Israelis it is now a commodity judged by taste and price. The increasing legitimization and expansion of the nonkosher meat industry and the eating of pork constitute a fundamental change of lifestyle and the decline of religious authority, both underscored by demographic and economic transformations.

The Jewish halakhic prohibition on eating pork and raising pigs is an ancient and blanket ban. The pig is a forbidden food not only because it is identified as a repulsive animal but also because it signifies the persecution and humiliation of the Jews for many generations. The story of Hannah and her seven sons, who were put to death during the Maccabean revolt for refusing to eat pork, has become a symbol of firm resistance or martyrdom and the abomination of the pig for both religious and national mythologies. Berl Katznelson, the secular Zionist thinker, called, before statehood, for the ban on pork for national reasons: