They should be, since they are cud-chewing ruminants, and have divided hooves. That also goes for antelope and deer.
Horses are not kosher because they have an undivided hoof and do not chew the cud.
Sure he was. He just wasn’t a very good one! 
No wonder my Jewish friends won’t eat my delicious barbequed rock-badger!
mmmm…rock-badger… ::drools::
Actually, the “rock-badger” of the bible is thought to be the Rock Hyrax Procavia capensis (or P. syriaca), also sometimes called “coney.” Hyraxes are thought to be more closely related to elephants and manatees than anything else.
Let’s just say Moses wasn’t a cladist.
I remember a Harry Turtledove story “The R Strain”, about what happens when researchers genetically engineer a pig to chew the cud (in order to make pigs a more efficient eater and therefore cheaper to raise). They ask a rabbi whether the modification would make a pig kosher. It’s an interesting story, though I don’t remember the details or the ending. (I read it over a decade ago, after all)
It reminds me of a joke where YHWH is giving his rules to Moses, who most respectfully ask for what appears to be clarifications, actually adding each time all sort of extrapolations and rules all by himself, while YHWH, more and more irritated, keeps on stating :“No, I only meant “thou shall not stew the goat in its mother’s milk”” until he eventually gives up (when Moses begins to wonder about the disposal of supposedly unclean kitchenware or somesuch) saying in a tired voice “Ok, Moses, do as you see fit”
I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but I was reading the book Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman wrote about their motorcycle trip around the world, and at one point, in Mongolia, they were served soup with animal testicles-bulls, pigs, sheep, cows, etc.
That got me wondering-would testicles, provided them came from a kosher animal, still be allowed? Even if the animal is still alive after castration?
According to this site, the only parts of kosher animals that are not kosher are the sciatic nerve and one kind of fat. Presumably everything else is kosher.
Since it is now after sundown, perhaps we may get some more expert answers soon. ;j
This may be a bit of a hijack, but this is the third time I’ve seen this particular admonishment this week, and I’m just wondering: Why not?
Regarding the babirusa question, one of my friends told me that a group of Jewish soldiers in SE Asia captured a babirusa and wanted to eat it but decided to ask a rabbi if it would be kosher. The rabbi said no, presumably because it was a type of pig. (I doubt, unless he studied zoology extensively, the rabbi would have known whether or not these animals can chew their cuds.)
Your understanding is wrong. The two criteria are laid out (cloven hoofs and chew the cud) and examples are given of animals who fits one criteria but not the other and are therefore not permitted. (There’s no need to give examples of an animal who fits neither criteria.)
The actual OP should also be directed at Islam. For Islam, the criteria is simple that pigs are unclean, there’s no categorization or classification. See Straight Dope Staff Report: Do Jewish and Islamic dietary laws have anything in common?
Since peccaries technically are not pigs, then in theory they could be halal. But I would guess that in prectice, because of the close resemblance, peccaries would also be considered unclean. I suspect that Mohammed wasn’t a cladist either.
Not to be a smartalec, but in this case the proper and accurate answer would be, “Because God said so.”
We are after all talking about the kosher food classifications germane to Orthodox Judaism, based in Talmudic exposition of the Torah. And according to Orthodox Jews, the Torah is supposed to have been given to Moses by God Himself.
Ergo, while there may be hygienic, folkloric, or other underpinnings for the custom-made-into-law, within the context of the discussion, it needs to be taken as a divine commandment.
;j ← First time I’ve ever had the opportunity to use him appropriately!
I wonder if Satan chews his cud, if he does, I guess that would make him kosher.
Of course; I didn’t mean to suggest that it was only a swine that the letter of the law was meant to exclude. I just meant that “clovenness” and “ruminant” are not of themselves “good”; that the arbitrary-sounding criteria were arrived at to include the specific animals that were allowed (cows, goats) and exclude the specific animals that were not (horses, pigs). And thus, as we’ve seen, animals outside of the contemporary knowledge of the scholars who created those criteria might be excluded “on a technicality.”
I mean, it seems likely to me that they wanted to say that cows were OK, goats were OK, and (I assume) sheep were OK to eat, but they wanted it to sound mysterious and arbitrary. Rather than specifically naming the approved animals, they invented more technical-sounding rules. No?
lissener:
Except that this flies in the face of the dietary laws of birds and locusts, where the Torah does list specific species (in the case of birds, the forbidden ones, in the case of locusts, the permitted ones) rather than a technical-sounding rule.
There is a practical difference: Bottom line is that the technical-sounding rule allows Jews to determine the permissibility of eating unfamiliar species (bison, anyone?). The listing of species as in the case of the birds does not allow for such determination.
No part cut from a living animal is kosher. This goes way back to Noah being told (among a few other things) not to eat a limb torn from a living animal. If the testicles are from a bull slaughtered in the proper manner, they are kosher. The Whole Jewish Catalog has a series of helpful photos showing extra steps that must be taken when cooking a heart. It’s things like this that give Jewish Cuisine such subtleties.
The piece of information that allows the Rabbi to decide was the fact that the new pigs couldn’t interbreed with old pigs. Therefore they were different species, and no longer pigs. He ate some of the new pork at the end.