God is giving torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and, as is reported in this week’s portion, God instructs the Hebrews not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. Moses thinks for a moment.
‘So what you’re saying, God, is we should have two sets of crockery and cutlery?’
God gasps! ‘No Moses. Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.’
‘So really, we’re going to want two different ovens?’
‘No Moses, just don’t boil the kid in the milk of its mother’
‘Ohhhh OK – so you want us to leave 6 hours between eating meat or milk’
At which point God throws up the divine arms in frustration and declares ‘Oh whatever – do it your way!’
It has been a long time since we have lived Torah law. In fact in the 700’s a group known as the Kairites emerged wanting to reclaim the purity of Biblical law and rejecting the growing corpus of rabbinic interpretation. Within decades they were developing their own unique commentary, because it isn’t possible to live entirely by a simple reading of Biblical law.
Growing up I remember being taught that it was likely a local tribal practice to take a kid goat, and to boil it in its mothers milk. In not doing this, we were separating ourselves out from local idolatry and cruel practices. Although I wasn’t given the sources then, this view in part comes from Moses Maimonides, who argues the practice was outlawed as an avoidance of idolatry[1]. Sforno, an Italian rabbi writing in the 1500’s, suggested that the law was designed to avoid a specific Canaanite rite, which aimed to obtain supernatural assistance to increase the yield of their flocks. Such superstition should of course be avoided – we have innovated plenty of our own superstitions to make up for it.
So how did we go from forbidding one specific idolatrous practice, to not mixing any milk and meat? Two ideas come into play; one is Marit Ayin – not being seen to do something that might be misunderstood as something else that is forbidden – so if one was enjoying a milky beef stew, how would an onlooker know it wasn’t goat, and thus assume it was permitted. The second idea is one which has been summarized in the phrase ‘building a fence around the Torah’. Rabbi Ruth Adar describes this as ‘a rule intended to keep us from accidentally wandering off the path of Jewish practice.’[2]
Building a fence means expanding the bounds of a law in order to prevent an accidental sin. This is how chicken and poultry, which can’t themselves be milked, came to be included in this prohibition.
Let’s look at the question of poultry and dairy in a little more detail. A chicken leg cannot physically be cooked in its mothers milk, because chickens don’t produce milk. But we can cook egg and chicken together. Tractate Hullin[3] of the Mishnah (written down around 210CE) presents two different opinions on whether chicken and milk can be combined – we have been disagreeing a long time! Rabbi Akiva argues that separating poultry from dairy is a rabbinic prohibition (so acknowledges it is not commanded in Torah) but still wants them separated. However Rabbi Yose Ha-Galili records that there is no problem mixing the two, and therefore we shouldn’t worry about Nigella’s recipe for kneidlach which includes butter. Rabbi Yose’s position was the norm in some communities at the time of the Mishnah. But from after the Talmud opinions seem fairly united on following Akiva on this one, and the prohibition against eating birds with dairy was codified in the Shulhan Arukh[4], in the 1500’s, but with a clear explanation in the text that the prohibition is rabbinic, not from the Torah. So why did the rabbis decide to take Buttery Chicken Kievs off the menu? In order to put a fence around the torah and to avoid Marit Ayin – as veal is a white meat which could be cooked in its mothers milk, someone might think they were eating chicken but accidentally be eating veal in a delicious cream sauce. So to protect us from this accident (which is arguably already a fence around the torah), poultry was included in the milk and meat separation. However it was clearly not universally observed as a law until post-Talmudic Judaism, sometime around the 5-800’s, and there were Rabbis that were able to enjoy poultry and dairy together without censure.
Jewish law is not and never has been something set or static. As Nicola and our other Cornerstone students will attest to, this is one of my favourite soap boxes. For me, a huge part of the beauty of Judaism lies in these centuries of unfolding and turning the Torah and Jewish law. Torah says ‘Lo Bashamayim hi’ ‘She is not in Heaven’ – meaning Torah is not stuck in heaven with God. Torah is down here on earth for us to grapple with and figure out – and we are to do so in every generation, informed by the past and the learning of those who have come before, but responding to the reality we live in today. Hence when Rashi produced his commentary on the Talmud in 11th Century France, the Tosafists, who wrote their own commentaries a hundred to three hundred years later, regularly disagreed with his understanding, and sometimes directly called him an idiot! Even more poignantly, Rashi and his almost contemporary Rambam, respond to identical questions with almost diametrically opposed answers, purely because of the contexts they lived in.
My favourite example of this comes from around the 1100’s. Rashi and Rambam both try to understand if they can trade with Christians. The Mishnah in Avodah Zarah (the book dealing with idolatry) argues that you can’t do business with an idolater 3 days before their festival and three days after. So Rashi and Rambam try to understand if Christians are idolaters, and therefore cannot be traded with at all because they have a weekly festival – the Sunday Sabbath. Rashi was a vintner who lived in France, surrounded by Christian communities. He looked into their beliefs and faith, and declared they were not idolaters. This, crucially, allowed him to sell his wine to them. Rambam, on the other hand, largely lived in an Islamic world, where images were strictly forbidden and he had significantly less interaction with Christian communities than Rashi. All of this meant that Rambam concluded one could not trade with Christians – something that is likely to have impacted his day to day life very little.
Rashi and Rambam respond to the world that they live in and the experiences they had of it. These informed their legal decisions, and approach to the wider world. Much as continues to be the case today.
Mishpatim, the name of this week’s portion, means laws. The term more commonly used for Jewish law is halakhah. The three letter root of Halakhah is hay, lamed, chaf – halakh – to go, to walk… it is not a destination or even a single path, but a journey. This journey has been travelled for thousands of years, and to innovate and respond to the world around us is not a modern part of Judaism, it is core to Judaism and how it has always been. Of course parts have diverted off or paused along the path, but the vast majority of Judaism continues along the journey, asking in every generation, how do we do this now, what does this mean to me today?
Whether we are just tentatively beginning along the path, or are steeped in Jewish law every minute of the day, we make Judaism compelling and real by responding to it in every generation. Nicola has recently added her voice to the chatter moving along the road of Judaism, and we are so glad you did. So whether you are having a chicken-cheeseburger or chulent for lunch, may we all be blessed with a path that brings us meaning, comfort and joy, and that encourages us to serve one another, and the world, for good.
Shabbat shalom!
[1] Moreh 3:48
[2] https://coffeeshoprabbi.com/2019/04/02/a-fence-around-the-torah/
[3] 8:4
[4] Yoreh Deah 87:3
