A Judensau (German for "Jews' sow") is a folk art image of Jews in obscene contact with a large sow (female pig), which in Judaism is an unclean animal. These first appeared in the 13th century in Germany
Background and images
thumb|left|Woodcut from [[Staatliche Graphische Sammlung|Kupferstichkabinet, Munich, c. 1470, showing a Judensau. The Jews (identified by the Judenhut) are suckling from a pig and eating its excrement. The banderoles display rhymes mocking the Jews.]]
The Jewish prohibition against eating pork comes from Torah, in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 11, verses 2 through 8. The arrangement of Jews surrounding, suckling, and having intercourse with the animal (sometimes regarded as the devil often outside where it could be seen from the street (for example at Wittenberg and Regensburg), but also in other forms. The earliest appearance seems to be on the underside of a wooden choir-stall seat in Cologne Cathedral, dating to about 1210. The earliest example in stone dates to ca. 1230 and is located in the cloister of the cathedral at Brandenburg. In about 1470 the image appeared in woodcut form, and thereafter was often copied in popular prints, often with antisemitic commentary. A wall painting on the bridge tower of Frankfurt am Main, constructed between 1475 and 1507 near the gateway to the Jewish ghetto and demolished in 1801, was an especially notorious example and included a scene of the ritual murder of Simon of Trent.
Judensau in Wittenberg
thumb|right|200px|The Judensau at [[Wittenberg]]
The city of Wittenberg contains a Judensau from 1305, on the façade of the Stadtkirche, the church where Martin Luther preached. It portrays a rabbi who looks under the sow's tail, and other Jews drinking from its teats. An inscription reads "Rabini Schem HaMphoras", Latin (in German orthography) for "Shem HaMephorash of the Rabbi", mocking the Tetragram to be a pig. The sculpture is one of the last remaining examples in Germany of medieval "Jew baiting". In 1988, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, debate sprung up about the monument, which resulted in the addition of a sculpture recognizing that during the Holocaust six million Jews were murdered "under the sign of the cross".
In Vom Schem Hamphoras (1543), Luther comments on the Judensau sculpture at Wittenberg, echoing the antisemitism of the image and locating the Talmud in the sow's bowels: