By serving meat and dairy together was Avraham violating the Torah? (Vayera)
וַיִּקַּח חֶמְאָה וְחָלָב וּבֶן־הַבָּקָר אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיִּתֵּן לִפְנֵיהֶם וְהוּא־עֹמֵד עֲלֵיהֶם תַּחַת הָעֵץ וַיֹּאכֵלוּ
He took butter and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree as they ate.
Bereishit/Genesis 18:8
רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ׃
The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the the Lord your God.You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
Shemot/Exodus 23:19
רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ׃
The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
Shemot/Exodus 34:26
לֹ֣א תֹֽאכְל֣וּ כָל־נְ֠בֵלָה לַגֵּ֨ר אֲשֶׁר־בִּשְׁעָרֶ֜יךָ תִּתְּנֶ֣נָּה וַֽאֲכָלָ֗הּ א֤וֹ מָכֹר֙ לְנָכְרִ֔י כִּ֣י עַ֤ם קָדוֹשׁ֙ אַתָּ֔ה לַֽיהוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ לֹֽא־תְבַשֵּׁ֥ל גְּדִ֖י בַּֽחֲלֵ֥ב אִמּֽוֹ׃
You shall not eat any carcass that dies of itself, which you may give to a stranger within your gates, and he may eat it, or sell it to a foreigner, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. You shall not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk. {p}
Devarim/Deuteronomy 14:21
The Torah – three times – cautions us to not cook the meat of a kid in its mother’s milk. In each instance, the phrase appears in medias res and is a total non sequitur. Clearly The Torah is attempting to communicate something. It is not merely delivering a prohibition.
Indeed, by repeating itself three times – each time in middle of nowhere – a messsage is being communicated. And I would suggest the message is an ethical one vastly more important than its literal legalistic meaning.
In fact I would suggest that the ethical aspect of the prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk greatly transcends the simple proscription, and is meant to inform our total ethos. We can derive, from both the core idea and its deliberate displacement, the centrality and transcendancy of humane behavior in all aspects of life.
The idea is noble, the Torah’s phrasing pure poetry. The sort of sensitivity that Torah has for an animal mother obviates any need to legislate such sensitivity towards humans. And by repeating this three times in middle of NOWHERE the Torah is driving home the overarching significance of this manner of thinking and behaving ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE.
Of course the sages of the Talmud, obsessed with drilling for new halakhiuc discoveries through their exegetical exertions, have no patience for poetry and no particular interest in the transcendent ethics radiating in this phrase. For them, the fact that the phrase appears three times can only mean one thing, that each reference implies another prohibition.
According to rabbinic thinkng, the first iteration is to prohibit the COOKING of meat and milk together; the second is to prohibit the EATING of meat and milk together; and the third is to prohibit any BENEFITS derived from meat and milk cooked together.
It never occurs to the Sages to ask why the Torah couldn’t simply declare a blanket prohibition against any mixing of meat and dairy, let alone why Torah distills this entire category of prohibitions down the very heart-wrenching scene of a mother goat watching its baby being cooked, in her own milk no less.
The Sages had a penchant for proctologizing phrases in order to deliver ever-fresh harvests of ‘thou shalt nots’. This, in turn, set a halakhic snowball in motion that, over the ensuing 2,000 years, turned normative Judaism into an avalanche of exegetically derived strictures with nary a thought concerning their ethical and moral relevance, if any.
But here is where it gets interesting. Because the same ChaZal (Talmudic sages) who eviscerated the sensitivity inherent in prohibiting the cooking of a kid in its mothers milk and turned it into a bonanza of fresh prohibitions – these very same sages declared that our Patriarchs – Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov – meticulously kept all the mitzvahs of the Torah. And, yet, a glaring example of this not being the case appears in this week’s Torah reading (Parshat Vayera)
וַיִּקַּח חֶמְאָה וְחָלָב וּבֶן־הַבָּקָר אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיִּתֵּן לִפְנֵיהֶם וְהוּא־עֹמֵד עֲלֵיהֶם תַּחַת הָעֵץ וַיֹּאכֵלוּ׃
He (Avraham) took butter and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree as they ate.
Bereishit/Genesis 18:8
Here we have our rigorously mitzvah-observant ur-patriarch Avraham serving his guests meat with both butter and milk.
Hence one must conclude one of two things, that either
- Avraham was clueless about the Torah’s commandments which would first surface between 430 and 645 years later, or
- That ChazaL are totally wrong in their exegetical explanation of why Torah prohibits cooking a kid in its mother milk three times, and that, indeed, a cheeseburger is quite kosher according to the Torah inasmuch as the mother is no longer alive and the cheese is not derived from her milk.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will accept the Sages’ position that Avraham kept the entire Torah. And thereby one can only conclude that the mixing of meat and dairy is perfectly fine according to the Torah. And that instead of obsessing over new prohibitionary derivatives, rabbis should occasionally pick their heads up from their Gemaras and refocus instead on behaviors that elevate rather than debase human conduct.