Not to stay off topic but this one interest me. But in order to get the hide one has to handle the corpse so isn't that "dirty" as well?
An observant Jew wouldn't be the one skinning the pig, if that's what you mean. But handling and tanning the hide, the removed skin, that's fine, and products made with it are ritually neutral, except on Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av when leather of any animal is avoided (though it's a rather arcane question, since for obvious reasons Jews haven't historically done much swineherding). It is NOT a question of pigs somehow being elementally vile, where anything and everything pertaining to them imparts (gasp! shudder!) spiritual cooties--pigs are, presumably, part of creation, and everything created was found good. It's a question of Jewish ritual law forbidding the eating of pigs' flesh (edible parts) and the handling of their carcasses--period.
Now obviously my football example was extreme but I've had Jewish friends tell me that any touching of pig product was against the very fundamental follower's religion. Is that not true?
The haredim? Well, clearly I don't know every Jew nor have I read every rabbinic opinion, but I did have a traditional Orthodox education and I've never heard of anything like that. For many years my family lived in southwest Brooklyn, which is Haredi Central USA, and I can tell you people there like their pigskin Hush Puppies loafers and oxfords as much as any other Americans. Footballs haven't actually been made of pigskin since long before our time, so that one's probably a moot point; nonetheless, I can confidently generalize that haredim do buy their kids standard-issue footballs from Wal-Mart without a thought. Now, I
have occasionally heard of people asking their rabbi whether porcine insulin is kosher for diabetics in situations where alternatives are available (answer: yes, injections aren't eating), but never about touching pigskin--the answer there is really so obvious to anyone who knows Jewish law that it strains credulity to imagine an observant Jew, who presumably has some background in Jewish law, asking the question seriously. If there is some group, some subsect out there who actually practice this, then that would be a matter of
minhag, custom, not
halakha, law--along the lines of how certain Catholics bury statues of St. Joseph in their lawns when praying for help with household-related problems: OK, you can
kinda, sorta see the relationship to official doctrine concerning St. Joseph's sphere of 'patronage' here, but no one familiar with canon law is going to take the idea that this is somehow actively prescribed seriously, even though they'd probably also say doing so is fine, so long as one understands it isn't
required and why.
And that some do have seperate beds for times of menstruation?
Sure, and not just the haredim in this case--Modern Orthodox and many Conservative Jews also practice taharat hamishpachah, the ritual discipline of refraining from sexual intimacy during menstruation. It's the perception of its meaning which you were implicitly ascribing to them that I was objecting to. In halakha, the responsibility for observing this one explicitly devolves on women--you kick your husband out of your bed, not the other way around! But it's not really about that, either; halakhically the point is one of spiritual discipline--you periodically practice together the sublimation of our second strongest drive after hunger; the specific occasion is
chukkim, fiat, logically arbitrary but accepted as ritually required. A Modern Orthodox or Conservative Jew might observe that, in origin, this practice has obvious similarities to menstrual taboos found in 'primitive' societies worldwide, the sense that this mysterious flow of 'blood' without harm or injury must be a divine doing, and that therefore it's spiritually dangerous to others for a woman in this potent state to participate in the rituals of ordinary community life (e.g. temple sacrifices)--or for anyone who has come into contact with her 'blood' to do so, either. Nonetheless, in rabbinic Judaism, whatever exactly our ancestors might or might not have perceived as 'justifying' this practice is considered beside the point for our own spiritual purposes. We follow ritual laws (or not) because of the spiritual value we find (or not) in observance for its own sake, not because we believe God finds pigs or menstrual fluid, like, seriously disgusting and shall smite you with unimaginable suffering should your actions suggest you disagree.
...Not to stay off topic, of course!
