Q&A: The 6-Hour Interval Between Meat and Dairy
The 6-Hour Interval Between Meat and Dairy
Question
I once heard that Dutch Jews used to wait only one hour.
Is that a custom, or a rabbinic decree, or what?
I also understood that there is an opinion or reasoning that says five hours and one minute is enough, since you’ve already entered the sixth hour and that counts as such.
In practice, how should one conduct oneself?
Answer
This is a custom. One should follow the parents’ custom. The Shulchan Arukh writes that six hours is preferable.
Discussion on Answer
Where do we find in the sources that parents’ custom is binding? From what I checked, everywhere the Talmud mentions “do not forsake,” it is only regarding the custom of a community.
I’ve explained more than once that because of changes in mobility in the world, custom and the prohibition of “do not form separate factions” shifted from geographic location to ethnic origin. See the case of two synagogues in one city and its application to our times.
I agree regarding customs that are practiced uniformly by the entire ethnic community. But if among people of the same background, and even in the same synagogue, there are different customs, what reason is there to require someone specifically to follow their parents’ custom?
It works the other way around. Basically, you continue your ancestors’ custom, and by virtue of that, also the customs of the community.
I once heard from someone who studied and received rabbinic ordination, who argued with some woman who said that in their family they used to wait 3 hours. According to him, Jewish law presents the options as either 1 hour or 6 hours, and he explained that the reason for 6 hours is that in those days, or in that place, people ate every 6 hours (maybe they ate 2 meals a day, or maybe one large meal and weren’t hungry again before 6 hours). So I thought that 3 hours was a stringency beyond 1 hour. By the way, I heard that the Ari used to have a meat day and a dairy day.
And presumably in the other place, if they ate another meal, whatever it was,
they would wait at least an hour; that makes sense. By the way, it’s good in terms of digestion processes, so maybe that’s also why.
Otherwise it’s like running a washing machine, stopping it to put in one more garment, stopping it to put in another one, and so on.
Rafi. Within twelve hours people eat 3 meals, with two intervals between the meals, and each interval is 6 hours. Eating breakfast at 7 in the morning, lunch at 1 in the afternoon, and dinner at 7 in the evening is within the range of what’s accepted even nowadays.
Fine, so whenever people started eating with 6-hour gaps between meals, that’s probably when the custom arose. Either way.
Also, eating at 7 is a bit early unless you get up at 3 or 4. Someone who gets up at 6 or 7 probably eats at 9 or 10. To each his habits.
I heard that at 1 they would finish the meat meal, and at 4 they would drink tea with a slice of bread and butter.
This is a remnant of the ancient Ashkenazic custom, which followed the view of Rabbenu Tam that the separation between meat and milk is only for the sake of noticeable distinction. The German Jewish custom of waiting 3 hours is another version of that same approach. Among Sephardim, Maimonides established 6 hours because of meat caught between the teeth. The Rema and the Shakh wrote that one should take Maimonides’ view into account, and from then on Eastern European Jewry moved to observing 6 hours. I think Rabbenu Tam would have answered Maimonides that the action of saliva in the mouth spoils the taste of the meat between the teeth, so there is no concern.