My niece is soon to marry a young man who is supposed to be a Jehova wittness. He is a nice guy,kind of quiet.
We have family dinners at our house,my brother is divorced and lives in a tiny house,so his family is always invited.
I hadn’t noticed,probably because of being so busy feeding 25 people, but my brother said that Eric doesn’t eat pork. A staple around here.He also mentioned that he is a Jehova wittness. Don’t know much about them but I didn’t know
that they didn’t eat pork.My niece is one for doing or saying something to shock and dismay so I don’t really know what to think.
I’m not sure that I see the question, but I’m guessing you’re wondering if JW’s really don’t eat pork.
There are a few fundamentalist Christian religions that adopt the definitions of “unclean” foods in the Old Testament- pork products, fish without scales, etc. Seventh Day Adventists are a typical example.
JW’s are fundamantalists, too, but I can’t find anything on any JW websites that specifically states that they consider some foods unclean. Having looked through a couple of links there that talk about JW’s beliefs about cleanliness and respect for life and basic practices, I haven’t found anything that says they’re specifically prohibited from eating pork. In fact, the respect for life page says that JW’s must respect animal life, but are allowed to kill animals for food.
That being said, it’s only polite to respect the guy’s decision if he doesn’t want to eat pork, whether it’s for religious or personal reasons. And it would be a pretty cool gesture for you to read up on some of the pages linked above just so that you can understand the particular beliefs the guy has. Nobody says you have to believe the same things, but I’m sure the guy would really appreciate someone else in the family at least being knowledgable about his religion.
Nurlman
Thanks for the reply. The guy has never said that he doesn’t eat anything. As a matter of fact he rarely says anything. Usually he just sits and smiles. As I said I don’t even know that he is a JW.
I guess that I will provide an alternate meat and see what happens.
The Idea about reading up on JW is a good one.
I wasn’t kidding about my niece and the shock statements It used to be anything for attention.
I just asked my coworker, who is a Jehovah’s witness, and he says the only restriction on his diet is that he cannot eat food with blood in it (i.e., blood sausage- which I won’t eat either and I’m not religious at all), but he tied that to the fact he can’t have blood transfusions more than emphasizing that blood is ‘unclean’-
I’m an ex-Jehovah’s Witness (as my web site at http://members.aol.com/beyondjw will attest), and I can assure you that JW’s can indeed eat pork. The main thing they can’t eat is blood (or meat that has not been properly bled).
However, over the years there have been some – well, many – tweaks to the JW understanding about what constitutes “eating blood”. Back in the 1970’s (when JW’s all over the place were waiting for the world to go kablooie in 1975), some of us were worried about eating certain kinds of chocolate bars because they were rumoured to have been prepared with a blood by-product. Whether that was a local rumour or something more general, I dunno.
However, given that, it is not inconceivable that a JW might shy away from, say, pork sausages. I mean, you’ve heard about what goes into sausages, right? It’s quite possible there’s a fair bit of blood in there. Or not (I don’t know much about what’s in them – by choice).