ABSTRACT
We have seen numerous times in prior chapters how Jewish eating practices have served to separate Jews from their neighbors. Biblical laws differentiating pure and impure animals, post-biblical and rabbinic enactments outlawing certain gentile foods, talmudic, medieval, and early modern developments pertaining to the separation of meat and dairy, would all, under certain circumstances, have made it difficult if not impossible for Jews to have joined their neighbors at a common table. Yet it has not always been evident to all Jews that such an outcome, intended or not, was desirable. In some settings, Jews enjoyed comfortable relationships with their gentile neighbors and might have desired to cement those relationships through shared drinks or meals. In other settings, Jews were dependent upon their neighbors for their protection, livelihoods, and such, and would have found it difficult, socially and pragmatically, to maintain the sorts of separations that Jewish eating regulations demanded. Boundaries, though having their purpose, are not always desirable. Jews recognized this, of course, from the very beginning.
