- Separation of milk and meat
-
- This
�commandment� is solely based on one commandment that is repeated
three times in the Torah and applied in a way that it was never meant to
be applied. Because of this verse, Orthodox Jewish rabbis have taught the
people to completely separate all dairy from all meat products. This goes
very far: separate dishes, separate kitchens, separate towels, you name it.
Let�s analyse this verse and see what is actually being said.
-
- The choicest of the first
fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the Lord, your God.
- You
shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk.
(Ex 23:19)
-
- The choicest of the first of
your soil you shall bring to the house of the Lord, your God.
- You shall
not cook a kid in its mother's milk."
(Ex 34:26)
-
- You shall not eat any
carcass. You may give it to the stranger who is in your cities, that he
may eat it,
- or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people
to the Lord, your God.
- You shall not cook
a kid in its mother's milk. (Deut 14:21)
-
- That�s it! Based on these words the entire Jewish milk and meat issue
has emerged. The words in Hebrew are
-
-
- From this verse the rabbis have decided that this
verse tells us that it is prohibited to draw any benefit whatsoever from
the combination of milk and meat in any way shape or form! I often wonder
how you can get all that from this verse. If you look at the texts, of the
three instances this commandment occurs, two are related to sacrifices.
Those are the instances in Exodus. As to say that if you are going to
bring an offering to God, you should not bring an offering where you boil
a kid in it�s mother�s milk. This may have had something to do with
the pagans that did these things while living in the Land and were removed
for that reason. Only the last one is in the context of consummation.
However, the commandment remains the same. It is still �You will not
cook�� and didn�t change into �You will not eat�� Let�s look
at all the prohibitions in the text on Deuteronomy 14. After a long list
of clean animals follows a list of unclean animals.
Now the word for �to eat� in Hebrew is
אכל
(achal) and the word for �to
cook� is
בשּל
(bashal). Now look at the wording:
-
-
- See the distinction: don�t eat
this, don�t eat that,
don�t eat so, don�t boil
the kid... All the things we cannot eat,
the Torah says that we cannot eat.
Why doesn�t the Torah also tell us not to eat
milk and meat but only not to boil
a kid in it�s mother�s milk? And why, if milk and meat are generally
forbidden to consume together, does the Torah explicitly say that you can�t
boil a kid in the milk of it�s mother?
So, since we are into nitpicking, than it's totally justified to eat a chicken sandwich with a milkshake,
since we run no risk whatsoever that the chicken is mixed with the milk of
it's mother! Why isn�t there a general ban on eating milk and meat? Obviously, this
had nothing to do with consuming milk and meat together, but this was one
of the pagan rites of the Canaanites. It is perfectly okay for us to
consume a cheeseburger or baloney sandwich with a hot cup of coco without
waiting hours to drink a cup of coffee with cream after having eaten meat.
The prohibition is totally baseless, since it is based on a verse that is
repeated three times verbatim, that has nothing to do with dietary laws.
-
-
- There is so much more that can be said about rabbinic interpretations and
exegesis from Scriptures. I want to direct you to a lecture of Dr. Michael
L Brown about the high standards of rabbinic authority, how rabbinic
authority even surpasses prophetic authority. You can listen to the
lecture here: http://www.realmessiah.com/Listen/Entries/2008/12/11_Are_the_Rabbis_right.html
