Why is it forbidden to eat a kid in the milk of its aunt or its neighbor, but permitted to eat schnitzel in the egg of its aunt or its neighbor? Yellow cheese with a hamburger is understandable. Which halakhic facts are my interpretations inconsistent with?

Schnitzel with its mother’s egg should be even more severe. Here you cook her milk with her son, and there you fry her very self with her son’s future egg.

With God’s help, 2 Tammuz 5780

To A. — greetings,

The reason for a commandment does not have to cover all the details and cases. Morally speaking, the Torah did permit (after the Flood) killing an animal for human consumption, but it set various boundaries so that a person would not lose the moral discomfort involved in eating animal flesh, until humanity is repaired once again and there will no longer be any need to eat animals. As explained in Rabbi Kook’s “A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace.”

One of those boundaries is the prohibition on using the mother’s milk to cook the meat. That already fixes in a person a sense of discomfort. In domestic animals, the problem is expressed through the prohibition of cooking in milk, whereas with wild animals and birds the moral problem is expressed through the commandment to cover the blood. With domestic animals, the Torah commanded, “You shall not slaughter it and its offspring on one day,” whereas with birds the “red warning light” is switched on through the commandment of sending away the mother bird.

The various restrictions on eating meat are the “warning light” alerting a person that eating the flesh of animals is not morally “smooth.”

Best regards,
Shatz

It should also be noted that the egg is not the bird’s natural food; rather, it is the bird’s first life-stage, and in essence the egg and the bird are one and the same, two stages of the same creature.

And as a joke about a diner who asked the waiter: “Give me the youngest chicken possible.” The waiter brought him … an egg 🙂

I mentioned some of the facts. In order to make an argument like an a fortiori inference, you need to present an explanation for the prohibition and then derive from it a stricter and a more lenient case. Without that, there is no argument here.

But it’s obvious that a kid in its mother’s milk is forbidden because of morality. What do you say to that?

Fine, if it’s obvious to you, then enjoy. To me it’s not obvious at all. By the way, in my view nothing in Jewish law is connected to morality, not even the prohibition of murder or theft.

Then go and learn from Rabbi Akiva, who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” — this is a great principle in the Torah, without the continuation, “I am the Lord” [Sifra, Kedoshim, chapter 4, 11]. And it also says in Bava Metzia [30b], “And you shall do what is right and good,” without the continuation, “in the eyes of the Lord.” Hillel the Elder bases the whole Torah on morality: “He said to him: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Torah, and the rest is its explanation; go learn” [Sabbath 31a].

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten any of that. It doesn’t touch on our issue by even a hair’s breadth.

If it doesn’t touch on our issue “by even a hair’s breadth,” then I really have nothing to add. Maybe you’ll grant me the privilege of learning the secret hidden in your words?

With God’s help, 3 Tammuz 5780

To A. — greetings,

Cooking a kid in milk is not, in itself, morally objectionable. After all, what does the kid care, once it has been slaughtered, how its meat is cooked — in its mother’s milk or in soy milk? It no longer feels anything…

Even according to the moral rationale for the prohibition, it is a restriction on the eating of animal meat, which was permitted, and it is meant to sharpen the sense of moral discomfort in this permitted act. If you are already eating meat, then refine yourself a bit by showing some degree of sensitivity, and at least do not slaughter the mother and its offspring on the same day and do not cook the kid in its mother’s milk. With birds there are other restrictions that sharpen the moral discomfort involved in eating them — sending away the mother bird and covering the blood.

However, the rationale of sharpening moral discomfort (proposed by Rabbi Kook) is not the only one. Maimonides, in Guide for the Perplexed, suggested that cooking a kid in its mother’s milk was an idolatrous ritual intended to improve the fertility of the soil, and that is why it is juxtaposed to “The first of the first-fruits of your land you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God” — that is, bringing first-fruits to God so that He will send blessing in the produce is permitted, but cooking a kid in its mother’s milk is forbidden, since it is one of “the statutes of the nations.” As support for the idea that cooking a kid in milk was an idolatrous rite, Professor Cassuto cited Ugaritic texts.

Others explained that the prohibition of cooking meat in milk is one of the mixed-species prohibitions. Just as the Torah forbade wearing mixed fabrics, sowing mixed species, and plowing with an ox and a donkey together, so too the Torah forbade cooking meat and milk and eating them. Clearly, the Torah does not forbid every mixture of one kind with another; rather, it restricts man so that he not run wild in changing the orders of creation, but understand that great caution and many limitations are needed when one comes to alter the natural order.

I suggested an explanation in a different direction, based on the fact that “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” is the last commandment in the “Book of the Covenant” given to Israel immediately after the Ten Commandments, and it serves as a kind of elaboration of the Ten Commandments. The final commandment in the Book of the Covenant — the prohibition of meat and milk — parallels the final commandment, “You shall not covet.” Eating butter and milk together with a “tender and choice calf” was the tastiest delicacy, after all; that is what Abraham, the great host, chose to offer his guests. And as a safeguard for “You shall not covet,” the Torah requires a person to give up the height of culinary pleasure.

Best regards,
Shatz

“And in the course of time Cain brought from the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord. And Abel, he also brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat portions; and the Lord paid heed to Abel and to his offering.”

“You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of My feast remain all night until morning. The first of the first-fruits of your land you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.”

Was the original source speaking at all about milk or about fat? From the context it seems that it is specifically talking about fat.

It’s not clear.

Paragraph 3, line 5
…As support for the idea that cooking a kid in milk was an idolatrous ritual, he cited…

Paragraph 4, line 4
…that he not run wild in changing the orders of creation…

With God’s help, 3 Tammuz 5780

To the previous commenter — greetings,

See the verse: “Curds of the herd and milk of the flock, with the fat of lambs and rams of Bashan, and goats, with the finest wheat kernels.” The first phrase, “and milk of the flock,” is the construct form of “milk,” and its first vowel changes accordingly.

But the second phrase, “and the fat of wheat kernels” — the construct form of “fat” remains vocalized differently.

Therefore it is clear that “in its mother’s milk,” where the first letter is vocalized that way, is the construct form of “milk.”

Best regards,
The Middle Grammarian

It’s obvious that by the time the vowel signs were created (after the period of the Sages), the prohibition had already been shifted from one reading to the other.

One can debate when the vowel signs were defined, but the Bible was a book that was read and studied throughout all the dispersions of the Jewish people all over the world; wherever there were synagogues, they read the Torah. This was not a text found in some genizah where people could make a mistake about how to read it; it was the text read and studied by hundreds of thousands of Jews throughout the world.

Even in places where the interpretation of the Pharisees and of the Sages was not accepted, they read “in its mother’s milk” in the sense of actual milk — for example, the tradition of Beta Israel in Ethiopia (which corresponds to various Second Temple-era interpretations that the prohibition is to slaughter a kid that is still nursing from its mother) shows that they understood it to refer to milk and not fat.

And that is also logical, because fat is forbidden for eating in an ox, sheep, or goat anyway, so what would be special about the mother’s fat as opposed to the father’s fat? “Its mother’s milk” is certainly milk.

Best regards,
Shatz

But if someone wants to break the verse into pieces, you can do that endlessly. For example: “A shovel in the snow — a person should ask his mother to let her milk drip onto the snow so the stuck shovel will be freed.” 🙂

Best regards,
Shatzius von Livinhausen, Institute for Lower Criticism

More power to you for the interpretations, Shatz.

And for further study — see Oren Sa’id’s article, “You Shall Not Cook a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk,” on his blog “Torah and Science.”

Best regards,
Shatz

There’s no point being grammatically precise about something that wasn’t grammatically precise. The Torah wasn’t vocalized precisely for two thousand years. Certainly not in the first thousand years. And even the script itself changed. So there’s no point insisting on grammatical precision; one can only estimate what and why.

And if one can say, “Do not read your children but your builders,” and the like, then one can also say, “Do not read milk but fat.” Simple enough.

And I’m not issuing a ruling, just raising a possibility that isn’t unreasonable.

A. In the Talmud, Sanhedrin 4a, about whether the authoritative basis is the reading or the written form — in any case, the discussion there is whether one should also take into account how it is written or whether one should relate only to how it is read.
In any event, what is clear from the Talmudic discussion is that already two thousand years ago it was clear how to read it.
B. The Torah circulated throughout the world for 2,000 years, and out of 300,000 letters there is only the difference between two spellings and a few other plene and defective spellings. If that isn’t precise, I don’t know what is.
C. If the point is that the Torah is not precise in the sense that it can be understood in several ways — then of course that’s true, which proves that the Torah must necessarily come together with the tradition, meaning the Oral Torah.

To the previous commenter — greetings,

And now that we’ve come to this, according to your claim that nothing is precise, we could also say that it should be read: “For Him, you shall cook a kid in its mother’s milk,” and interpret “for Him” — for God — you shall cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

And by the same method: “For Him — for His sake — murder,” “For Him — for His sake — commit adultery,” “For Him — for His sake — make for yourself a graven image,” etc. So for the sake of Heaven anything is permitted 🙂 Like Micah’s mother, who dedicated the money to the Lord in order to make a graven image and a molten image…

Best regards,
Shabbetai Tzvi Frank

And in order to rule out this kind of “interpretation,” at Mount Sinai they had to see the sounds, so that it would be clear that it was “not” and not “for Him” 🙂

The Torah was given 3,300 years ago. What happened in the last 2,000 years is derived from what happened in the first 1,300.
Even if we assume that from Ezra the Scribe (450 BCE) there is a tradition, there are still 850 years where it’s not clear what happened to the Torah. More precisely, it’s clear there was a mess there. They found books. They discovered commandments. Etc.

What I argued follows from the contexts:
1. Abel brought an offering also from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat.
2. The verse before the prohibition says, “nor shall the fat of My feast remain all night until morning.”
3. The verse itself begins with “the first of the first-fruits” (which recalls Abel’s offering).
4. And suddenly appears the prohibition: “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.”

This doesn’t contradict the possibility that it means actual milk. But there is still room to say that the intention was fat, because of the previous verse in the context of a kid for the Passover sacrifice.

A. Actually, it seems to me one should conclude the opposite: if during 2,000 years, when they were scattered all over the world, the Torah was nevertheless preserved with great precision, why say that in the 1,300 years before that, when they were all in the Land, there was a mess?
As for the finding of the book in Josiah’s time — we’re talking about the Temple’s scroll (even if we don’t accept the Sages’ interpretation that it opened to the rebuke).
As for the commandments, it’s clear they failed to observe some of them — they worshipped idols, etc. But it’s also clear that there were people who knew all the commandments (the prophets). After all, it’s not reasonable to assume that one fine day someone decided to put cowhide on his head and determined that it should be square and contain such-and-such passages and be black, etc.
B. As for the claim from context — that is exactly what I said is irrelevant so long as one understands that the Torah is understood only through tradition. (You didn’t address the argument.)

And regarding learning from context — the closest context is the adjacent word “its mother’s,” attached to “milk,” and from that it is clear that this means milk that comes from the mother. With fat, there is no difference whatsoever between the mother’s fat and the father’s fat, and both are forbidden in themselves, even without cooking with a kid.

Best regards,
Shatzl

To A. There is a Rashi that the nations used to taunt Israel: why do you keep meat and milk and shaatnez? These are commandments without reasons or understanding. (If memory serves me right.)

Interesting.

Rashi’s first comment in the section of the Red Heifer.

Right. Its mother’s milk. That wrecks what I said.

What does this have to do with morality? It’s permitted, for example, to cook meat of an impure animal in the milk of a pure animal (though not to eat it, only to cook it for a non-Jew, for example). And if we say, well sure that’s permitted — the cow isn’t the pig’s mother! Fine, okay, but the cow also isn’t the lamb’s mother. In short, cooking a lamb (or a chicken) in cow’s milk is no more prohibited than cooking pork in cow’s milk.
So claiming that this is because of morality doesn’t seem right to me.

Bread to eat and clothing to wear, see Nachmanides on Deuteronomy 14:21: “And the reason for ‘for you are a holy people to the Lord your God’ is connected with ‘You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk,’ for it is not a disgusting food, but He forbade it in order that we be holy in our eating, or that we be holy and not become a cruel people who have no compassion, milking the mother and taking from her the milk in which to cook the young. And although all meat in milk is included in this prohibition, for every nursing female is called a mother and every suckling young is called a kid, and that is the normal manner of cooking — behold, in all of them there is cruelty.”
And since that is so, surely your thumb won’t be too short to come up with a resolution for the moral explanation even from your question about the milk of an impure animal.