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Meat with Milk and the Oral Law

Answered by Rabbi Ari LobelFurther responses from Rabbi Boruch Clinton

Question

I still don’t understand the law of milk & meat. If the Torah states that we are not to “cook a kid-goat in the milk of its mother,” why do we extrapolate and forbid any form of meat combined with milk and milk-related products?

Answer

I think your question implies a slight misconception about the ‘extrapolation’ of Jewish Law. According to Jewish tradition, Moses received both the Written and Oral Law from G-d on Mount Sinai; on top of this, he received the 13 rules of Biblical Exegesis (also known as the hermeneutic principals) which serve two main functions:

1) They can be used to derive new details of Law in response to changing situations; in other words, the extrapolation is not left solely up to human logic, but rather new details emerge through the blending of human sensibilities with the system of logic supplied by G-d himself on Mount Sinai.

2) They are the means by which the details of the Oral Law handed down at Sinai can be traced to their source in the Written Law.

It is the latter function in particular that is relevant to your question. The laws of meat and milk were given to Moses by G-d, and were subsequently taught to the Jewish people – it was G-d who informed Moses that the verse ‘ thou shalt not cook a kid in it’s mothers milk’ must not be limited to the case it presents. In other words, He told him that the laws of meat and milk are not limited either to a kid or to its mother’s milk. Thus, the Rabbis of the Talmud did not start with the verse and extrapolate the laws, but rather they started with the laws and used the 13 principles to see how they are implied in the verse; G-d phrased the commandment in the Written Law in a way that would incorporate all those details.

Yours sincerely,
Ari Lobel

[Reposted from the archives]

Answered in cooperation with STAR-K Kosher Certification, Baltimore, MD

Follow-up questions (2)

Question

Your response that G-d informed Moses not to limit the criteria to a kid is non-responsive. What about goats milk and beef, etc., all the other fence creating instructions? Plus it brings up the question “If Hashem told this to Moses, why isn’t written that way?” Surely there were goat and camel, not to mention mare milk during the time of the Exodus?

Answer

As demonstrated by the commentary of Rabbi S.R. Hirsch (Exodus 23:19), the Biblical phrase used is actually the most efficient and explicit formulation possible to communicate this specific legal concept: The Talmud (Chullin 113b) points out that the Hebrew word “gedi” only exclusively denotes “kid-goat” when used in conjunction with “-of the flock” (“gedi-izim“). There are instances (Song of Songs 1: 8; Judges 14: 6) in which “gedi” alone is to be understood in a broader sense. Now, since Biblical law only prohibits combinations of the meat and milk of kosher species of the bovine or sheep/goat families (and not birds or “chayos” like deer), the simple designation “milk and meat” would be far too broad, and a more complete listing (bearing in mind the overriding stylistic brevity of the Bible’s Author) would be far too wordy.

In light of these contextual limitations, one can see “its mother’s milk” as an extreme clause further defining the case (i.e. “even the meat and milk of two animals otherwise closer than any others, an offspring and its mother, may not be combined”).

So it would seem that a careful reading of the text itself reveals a reasonable match with the received oral tradition.

I hope this helps,

Rabbi Boruch Clinton

Question

Why do we not eat chicken with milk? Chickens are not mammals they’re birds. They do not nurse their offspring.

Answer

You are absolutely correct: the Torah does not forbid us from eating chicken with milk (as they don’t fit the law’s defining elements). As we learn from the Talmud, the sages extended the Torah law to include the meat of a chicken out of fear that the similarity between chicken and animal meat might lead to accidental mix ups.

I hope this helps,

Rabbi Boruch Clinton