Abraham,Abraham wrote:I have yet to understand religious dietary restrictions.
Pork is unacceptable to Orthodox Jews too.
Unless, way back in time, eating pork was a serious risk due to trichinosis, thus it was a good idea to avoid or something along those lines and has simply evolved into a loopy religious practice.
It has absolutely nothing to do with health or disease for Jews (and not only Orthodox Jews necessarily). It is Biblically proscribed as one of the many Jewish dietary laws which if you care for my personal interpretation, were Divinely inspired and meant to teach us the principle of separation.
The ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, is very important in Judaism. Imposing rules on what you can and cannot eat ingrains that kind of self control, requiring us to learn to control even our most basic, primal instincts.
Of the "beasts of the earth", you may eat any animal that has cloven hooves and chews its cud. Lev. 11:3; Deut. 14:6. Any land mammal that does not have both of these qualities is forbidden. The Torah specifies that the camel, the rock badger, the hare and the pig are not kosher because each lacks one of these two qualifications. Cattle, sheep, goats, deer and bison are kosher.