The title really cuts to the meat of the matter: "No Pork on the Fork."

I had the honor of appearing in this short documentary, which premiered last weekend at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. The filmmakers apparently didn’t hold it against me that the cover of my book "Smokelore" contains some 50 images of pigs and nary a cow.

Directors Adam Hirsch and Jacob Ross focused on the Atlanta Kosher BBQ Festival, one of many such contests across the nation, which takes place every October in Sandy Springs. Jody Pollack, the good-humored head of the event, is one of the stars of the show. (That’s the four of us pictured below, from left: Adam, me, Jody, Jacob.) I appear in the film a good bit as well, droning on about how barbecue has always been bigger and more diverse than its bubbas-and-boars image. Not that there’s anything wrong with bubbas and boars. I mean, those are my peeps!

The kosher barbecue festival has a costumed cow mascot that looks like something out of the movie "Bull Durham." Teams with names like the Wandering Que and the BBQ’N Hebrew Hillbillies cook kosher briskets on smokers whose coals have to be fired under kosher supervision. It all adds a level of complication to the already complicated task of cooking good brisket.

Congratulations, Adam and Jacob, for creating a fun and informative film. I especially appreciated the ironic quote you used to begin the documentary. It came from Lewis Grizzard, the late Atlanta newspaper columnist and well-known barbecue lover, who I’m pretty sure was not a member of the Hebrew Order of David.

"You don’t put coleslaw on [barbecue]," sayeth Lewis. "I think that’s in Deuteronomy somewhere." *

People in Memphis and parts of the Carolinas would dispute Grizzard’s interpretation. So it goes with barbecue’s many sectarian distinctions.