The Singular Beast

Fabre-Vassas's work in particular illuminates the fear of otherness that, as a dimension of human consciousness, underlies the relationship between those who are persecuted and those who persecute... The extensive and detailed research in The Singular Beast provides ample evidence of how Jewishness became imbued with all manner of hateful traits... Through ethnography and text, Fabre-Vassas offers a rich and nuanced protrait of anti-Semitic beliefs and practices that remained deeply embedded in twentieth-century European society. -- Janet Liebman Jacobs Religious Studies Review [A] masterful demonstration of the role of the pig as that animal which, because of its own natural and cultural anomalousness, came so powerfully to symbolize the dialectic of identity and difference obtaining between Christians and Jews. -- David Gordon White Journal of Religion A stunning compendium of porcine and theological folklore... With remarkable acuity, The Singular Beast shows how the pig, the Jew and the Christian have been locked in a fatal and macabre pas de trois for the past two millenniums. Times Literary Supplement Fabre-Vassas argues that the cultural tension between those who did and those who did not eat pork helps set the stage for a murderous anti-Semitism... Taking her cue from Claude Levi-Strauss, [she] studied the culinary habits of southern France, and the way in which the pig began to be associated with the Jew in the anti-Semitic imaginings of peasant culture, and by implication the rest of Europe. The New York Times Fabre-Vassas... has written an examination of Christian attitudes toward Jews, particularly during the Middle Ages... [I]n the historical anti-Semitic literature, the Jews were associated with the pig's lowly traits... Fabre-Vassas offers a solid, scholarly study. Library Journal