The sad story of the pork war in France (‘Pork or nothing’, G2, 14 October) reminds me of Primo Levi, the greatest humanist of the 20th century, writing, in The Periodic Table, of his father, a Jew in 1930s northern Italy. He wrote: “My father was known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this with a carefree heart: superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease at breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgment or hoped for my complicity.” Whatever your view on the eating of pork, what a beautiful picture it is of humanity.
Keith Thomas
Liverpool
