The Human Side of the Story

For the week ending 25 December 2010 / 17 Tevet 5771

The Piggies That Wiggled Away

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l
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Jews understandably have an aversion to pigs. But what happens when Israel’s biggest importer of quality wooden toys discovers that the Country Life toy farms he has imported from Toys R Us includes three little wooden piggies?

The importer, in this case, was an Orthodox Jew who believed that these pieces offended Jewish sensitivities and therefore replaced them with three lime-green geese. His ingenious solution might never have been noticed except that one customer complained that the geese did not match the picture of the pigs on the box he purchased and that the pig sty which remained inside hardly seemed to be the proper home for the geese.

Subsequent pressure from secular purchasers forced the importer to replace the pigs. But at least some Jewish children were spared the negative impact of three little piggies went to market.

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