Imu Shalev: Welcome to Meaningful Judaism, where we try to answer why we do what we do in Jewish life. So many of our practices can feel like they’re just there; we do them but we’re not connected to them, we don’t feel their meaning. In this podcast, we search for that meaning by diving deep into the Torah text. Meaningful Judaism is a project of Aleph Beta Labs, and I’m your host, Imu Shalev.

Welcome to another episode of Meaningful Judaism. Our topic today is cheeseburgers, or why they're verboten, just totally forbidden. We're going to talk about why we can't mix milk and meat together. This episode is the second in our series on kashrus. You can find the first episode in our podcasting feed, but you don't need to listen to it in order to enjoy this episode. For this episode, I partnered with Aleph Beta scholar and editor Beth Lesch, and I think we should just jump right into the conversation with her that recounts my journey to get to the meaning behind milk and meat. Here's me and Beth.

Imu: Okay, Beth, welcome. Welcome back to our kashrus investigations.

Beth Lesch: Thanks, Imu. It's great to be here.

How the Law Affects Our Lives

Imu: Awesome. So what I wanted to talk to you about today is another major kashrus law, and that is the law against mixing milk with meat, basar b’chalav.

Beth: The “Cheeseburger Law.”

Imu: The cheeseburger law. So, Beth, knowing the laws against milk and meat, what are the most frustrating parts of the laws against eating milk and meat, for you?

Beth: Okay, practically, it's inconvenient. I'm a little bit of a foodie. I like googling new recipes and trying things out, and it sometimes feels a little bit like kashrut is this handicap. It's like, “Oh wait, no, can't make that one. Oh, well, choose a new recipe.” So there's a little bit of that.

Imu: The idea of a steak being seared in butter in a cast-iron skillet. That looks good. It looks good when I see it on…

Beth: Everything else seared in butter is delicious. Butter makes everything better, butter should make steak butter. So, yeah, I feel like it's delicious, and I'm missing out a little bit, and yeah, that's a little bit annoying.

Imu: But I don't think that's the most frustrating part of not mixing milk and meat together.

Beth: Are you pointing out the fact that my kitchen is ridiculous? Is that what you're getting at? I have 12 big plates, 12 small plates, 12 bowls, forks, knives, spoons, food processor, yada, yada, yada. And then I have a whole duplicate set of the same exact thing, but for meat. One's dairy, one's meat. And we have two sinks and we have to be very careful not to mix them.

And the best part of all is when a friend who doesn't keep kosher is at my house hanging out and they want to help and they say, “Can I help do your dishes?” And I'm like, “Oh yeah, you totally can. Just please make sure to pour your coffee into the right side of the sink. And by the way, don't turn on water that's so hot that it would burn you.” They think I'm crazy, it honestly sounds insane.

Imu: Yeah, it does sound insane. There are non-Jews who will come into my kitchen and be like, “Oh, wow, why do you have two sinks?” And, as if this is any explanation, I’ll be like, “Oh, one is for dairy and one is for meat.” It's the most absurd thing.

Beth: “This one is for peanut butter.”

Imu: Exactly, it's so random. But this law of not mixing milk and meat together just expresses itself in a lot of expense and a lot of weird rules. You know, here in Teaneck, the real estate of your house is significantly different if your kitchen is big enough to support two sides, two sinks. If you want to do construction, if you want your house to be saleable, it really needs to have a kitchen that supports this law.

Beth: Yeah.

Imu: But that wasn't even the most frustrating thing that I was thinking about. Do you know the most frustrating thing?

Beth: What were you thinking about?

Imu: Now, the most frustrating thing is, for people who wait six hours between milk and meat, you don’t want to be fleishig (meaty) all day, so people avoid meat. They're avoiding, you know...

Beth: I went to the supermarket Erev Rosh HaShanah to get some prepared kosher food for our meal, and I was at the counter, and it was like 9:30 in the morning. And there was one meat thing that looked good, and I asked the woman behind the counter, and I was like, “Do you like it? Is it worth it? Is it good?” And she was like, “Yeah!” And she sliced off a piece and handed it over to me, and I was like, “Are you crazy? You think I want to take a bite of that meat at 9:30 in the morning? There’s so much opportunity to – who knows who's going to come and offer me an ice cream cone?” You know?

Imu: You have to always be calculating, “Do I want to be dairy right now, or do I want to be fleishig?”

Beth: It’s so ridiculous.

Imu: Yeah, and it's huge. And it really just comes from this one law of “do not mix milk and meat together.” But the truth is, I'm really just hyping this up. I think, for me, I don't have a problem not eating cheeseburgers, and I'm pretty used to waiting in between milk and meat. I think the reason we're doing this, we're pointing this out is, I think there is great meaning in some of the laws and rituals that we just don't even bother asking the questions about anymore. We just get used to the ritual, and what we're trying to do here is poke at that. We're trying to say, “Look, this isn't just a law. This is a law with tremendous consequence and a lot of frustration, and it impacts a lot of our life.” To not know the meaning behind this law really is, I think, a shame because it does control for so much of our lives.

The Context for the Prohibition

Imu (Narrative Insert): So now that we know the stakes, we start our journey into the text to find some answers. 

Imu: Okay, so if we're trying to get at the meaning behind milk and meat, classically in Aleph Beta Land, where do we look?

Beth: At the Torah.

Imu: Exactly, great. So come with me into Exodus 23, which is the first time the Torah gives us this law. It's in Parshat Mishpatim. And here it is, the verse that hopefully will tell us the meaning behind not mixing milk and meat. And it's לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ – You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. It doesn't say, “Don't mix milk and meat together.” It says, “Don't cook a kid in its mother's milk” (Exodus 23:19).

Beth: I just want to be crystal clear: Nowhere does it say, “Don't eat a cheeseburger.” If you're looking for a source, this is as good as it gets.

Imu: Exactly, and in fact, many people get frustrated by the rabbinic interpretation of this Biblical law and they say, “Wow, you really made a mountain out of a molehill. I'm not going to cook a baby goat in its mother's milk, because I'm not a monster, but I don't have a problem eating a cheeseburger. That's an entirely different thing.”

Beth: Right. And then, I guess – so as a reader of the text, the question I have is, why would the Torah choose to word it this way? Let's say, let's give the rabbinic tradition the benefit of the doubt and say, “Okay, Rabbis, I know you have a lot of rules about how to interpret things, and you followed your rules, and you got from A to B, but the Torah could have just said it more plainly. It could have said, ‘Don't mix milk and meat, don't benefit from milk and meat, don't have cheeseburgers, have two dishwashers.” So why would the Torah opt not to have said it more clearly?

Imu (Narrative Insertion): Exactly. And even setting that aside, there's also another problem. Let’s pretend the verse did say, straight out, “Never mix milk and meat.” It still doesn't tell us why. 

Imu: It doesn’t say לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ lma’an...so that you will be Godly. It doesn’t tell you anything, it just says, “Don't cook a kid in its mother's milk,” nothing else. So that feels a little bit like a dead end. But I kind of pulled one over on you, Beth. What's the obvious thing I didn't do in this verse with you?

Beth: You didn't read the whole verse, Imu!

Imu: I didn't read the whole verse. This is just the second half of the verse.

Beth: You’re a charlatan!

Imu: Yes, I've been accused of that many times.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): That's right. This verse we've been reading, Exodus 23:19, it actually has a whole other half to it, and that's potentially really important. Context can be a game-changer in trying to understand what the Torah is getting at. So we widen our lens a bit and see if looking at the whole verse together changes anything.

Beth: Okay, you want me to read it? Okay. רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ – The best of the first fruits of your land, תָּבִיא בֵּית יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ – You should bring them to God's house. It's the law of bikkurim. At the start of the harvest, the most beautiful lemons that are ripening on your tree, bring those to the kohen.

Imu: לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ – Don't cook a kid in its mother's milk.

Beth: Hmm.

Imu: Okay, so if we're looking for context, we actually get something that seems extremely random. You have “don't cook a kid in its mother's milk,” and you have “bring bikkurim, bring your first fruits to the Temple.” It sounds like the two most unlike laws you could ever pair together.

Beth: Yeah. My gut reaction, what is bikkurim about? It's about showing thanks to God. And what is not boiling a kid in its mother's milk about? It has nothing to do with showing thanks to God, so I don't know where this leads me.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So, we thought we had some context that would help us. Didn't pan out, but I decided to double down. If getting a little context didn't help, maybe the best move was actually to get even more context. And it turns out that the two laws in verse 19, they were actually part of a set of four laws across verses 18 and 19, and they kind of formed their own little section. So we decided to go back just one verse and see if widening the lens a tiny bit more would help. Why don't you read verse 18?

Beth: Okay. לֹא־תִזְבַּח עַל־חָמֵץ דַּם־זִבְחִי – So, you should not offer up a sacrifice, you shouldn't offer an offering up to Me, with chametz (leavened bread). You shouldn't put the korban (sacrifice) that you're offering up to God, the animal korban, on top of a piece of leavened bread. That’s what it means?

Imu: Basically, don't bring chametz as part of a korban.

Beth: Don't bring chametz as part of a korban. And וְלֹא־יָלִין חֵלֶב־חַגִּי עַד־בֹּקֶר – Don't let the fat of My feast, I think it means the korban that I'm enjoying, maybe the korban from a festival, don't leave it overnight (Exodus 23:18).

Imu: Right, so if I'm bringing a sacrifice, if I'm buying an entire animal, and we didn't eat everything at night, well, I'd love to take home the leftovers. I don't want to get rid of it. So the law is, you can't leave it over until the morning. You need to consume it that night. No leftovers.

Beth: Okay.

Imu: That's it. These are the laws. Looking here, I'm investigating what is the meaning behind milk and meat, and I feel like I'm getting stuck after stuck. It doesn't tell you the meaning. The first half of the verse connects it to bikkurim, somehow. And if you zoom out a little bit more, then we have four random laws: Don't bring chametz on the mizbeiach (sacrificial altar). Do not leave over from a chag (holiday) offering till the next morning. Bring first fruits. Don't cook a kid in its mother's milk. Four weird, strange laws that seem to have nothing to do with one another.

Beth: Yeah, yeah. Where are we going to go with this?

How Are These Four Laws Related?

Imu: My theory is that, if we can find the way that these four laws are all related, that they're all part of the same idea, then we'll have something, some conceptual framework, that will shed light on that last law, לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So, on our journey to discover the meaning behind separating meat and milk, we now have to figure out how to take four laws that seem to have nothing to do with each other and find some commonality, something that explains how they form a unit. And I had an idea of where to start. 

Imu: So when I first got here with my chavrusa (study partner), Ari Levison, we took a look at these four laws. We stood back and said, okay, what are some commonalities that pop out at us? And Ari noticed something really interesting that had to do with the first half of verse 18 and the first half of verse 19: Don't bring chametz and bring bikkurim. So here's what Ari noticed. Chametz is something we normally talk about when?

Beth: Pesach.

Imu: On Pesach. And bikkurim is something we normally talk about when?

Beth: Shavuos.

Imu: Right, Shavuot we call Chag HaBikkurim (the Holiday of First Fruits), it is the holiday of bikkurim, and it is probably the only Biblical law, one of the only Biblical laws related to Shavuot, to bring bikkurim. So we've got two out of the four of these laws: One is a Pesach law and the other one is a Shavuot law.

Beth: Are you going to tell me now that the other parts of the verse, one of them is Tu B’Shvat and the other one is Yom Kippur? Do they each have their own holiday?

Imu: Let's see, let's take a look at it. Let's see. Let’s take a look at לֹא־יָלִין חֵלֶב־חַגִּי עַד־בֹּקֶר. So, first of all, what kind of offering are we talking about here? Don't leave over the fat of what?

Beth: חַגִּי. 

Imu: What does that word mean?

Beth: Chag. My chag, my festival.

Imu: Yeah. And now let's think about the actual law: Don't leave over any of the holiday offering until the morning. We've actually seen that law in the Torah before, connected to a specific holiday. It's one of the rules of the Korban Pesach (the Passover Offering). If you come with me to Exodus 12, when we're taught the laws of Korban Pesach, one of the laws that gets taught about it is that you actually need to eat the Korban Pesach that night.

And it says, in Exodus 12:10, וְלֹא־תוֹתִירוּ מִמֶּנּוּ עַד־בֹּקֶר, “You shall not let anything remain until the morning.” (Exodus 12:10) So if we're looking back at verse 18, we're taught a Pesach law, seemingly: Don't bring chametz on the mizbeiach. And then we have another Pesach law: לֹא־יָלִין חֵלֶב־חַגִּי עַד־בֹּקֶר, “Don't leave that chag offering until the next morning.”

The next verse begins with Shavuot law: Bring bikkurim. And then the second half of the verse, לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ, the algebra suggests what?

Beth: There should be something “Shavuos-ish” about it.

Imu: There should be something “Shavuos-ish” about it.

A Holiday Connection

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So the pattern we uncovered is that these four laws are holiday laws. The first two are Pesach laws, and the pattern suggests that the second two should be a pair of holiday laws as well. If the third law, bikkurim, is clearly a Shavuot law, that suggests that the fourth law should also be a Shavuot law. But that leaves us with a new problem. 

Imu: It would suggest that לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ is only true on Shavuot.

Beth: Right, but we know that it's not. We know that you can't eat cheeseburgers all year round and then just desist on Shavuos.

Imu: Right, so we've got to observe it all year round. So something doesn't fit.

Beth: So...dead end?

Imu: Dead end, maybe. Or, if we stand back and cock our head a little bit, and we actually take a look at some of these —

Beth: Like this, to the side?

Imu: Yeah. Other side.

Beth: That does help.

Imu: So when I noticed this, it made me take a second look at the rest of the laws here, and I realized something kind of crazy. Which is that, all these laws, even though they're connected to the holidays, they actually have a year-round expression. Like the first one: לֹא־תִזְבַּח עַל־חָמֵץ דַּם־זִבְחִי. We assumed that, because it was talking about chametz, that it was a Pesach law, but it's not written in a language that specifically references Pesach. It really sounds like it's a rule all year round. And even if this verse here is actually referencing Pesach (which is, by the way, the way many commentaries read it), regardless, it's still actually true that the idea in the verse applies all year round. If you look at other places in the Torah, that actually bears out. It's true that you cannot bring chametz into the mizbeiach all the time. So it's not just limited to Pesach. And if you look at them, all four of the laws here seem to follow that same pattern.

So, actually, maybe these are not laws that are constricted to a holiday, but maybe that they are holiday-like, or that there's some energy of the holiday that is bound up with these laws. 

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So we’re trying to find the commonality across all the laws, and it feels like every time we try to take a step forward, something gets in the way. Is the common thread holidays? That almost works, but it doesn’t really fit with the law of milk and meat. And now, we have a new theory: Maybe the common thread is that they're year-round laws that have a connection to the holidays. But there’s a problem with that too, and I’m talking here about chametz. Think about it. How could chametz be anything but a holiday law? Doesn't it commemorate leaving Egypt in a hurry during the Exodus? That's a Pesach thing, not a random Tuesday thing, and yet it really feels like it's a random Tuesday thing. The Torah really does say that chametz is never allowed with sacrifices any day of the year. So in trying to fix one issue, we just found another. 

Imu: And I'll just say, we are trying to figure out milk and meat here.This may feel like a bridge too far, but I actually think asking questions about this law – about לֹא־תִזְבַּח עַל־חָמֵץ דַּם־זִבְחִי – is going to lead us to the key to understanding all four of these laws, and eventually לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ.

Beth: All right. I'm intrigued, I'm intrigued. Show me what you're thinking.

Law 1: The Meaning of Prohibiting Chametz

Imu: So what's the reason, when you think about why we get rid of chametz, what's the reason for that?

Beth: Okay, so the reason is, we were leaving Egypt, but we didn't have enough time for our dough to rise. So every year, for the days of Pesach, we eat bread that also hasn't had enough time for the dough to rise. We eat unleavened bread as a remembrance back to the night they left Egypt.

Imu: So we assume that the reason why we observe the laws of getting rid of chametz is because we left Egypt in a hurry, and, yada, yada, yada, the bread didn't have enough time to rise. That actually leads us to three problems. The first problem is, why would God be celebrating that detail all year round in the Mikdash (Temple)? Why does God not allow chametz in the house all year round? It's like my mom who never allowed chametz in the basement all year round, to make Pesach cleaning easier. Is that what it is for God? Is it that He's very worried about the Pesach cleaning?

Beth: Your mom was very frum (pious), she was, all year round, commemorating the fact that the Egyptians left in a haste [sic]. Of course she is. Yeah, that's a great question. Why would God, all year round, be commemorating the fact that we left in a haste?

Imu: It's absurd!

Beth: Yeah, I hear that. 

Imu: So that's our first question about chametz. The second is, while we're playing with this assumption that the reason why we get rid of chametz is because we left Egypt in a hurry, if you look back at Exodus 12, isn't it interesting that we actually get the commands to get rid of chametz from our homes before we ever left Egypt? So this is before the tenth plague. God actually tells Moses to tell the people a whole bunch of laws around the Korban Pesach. And he tells them…

Beth: Oh right, we get all these laws about what we're going to eat that night, and also how we're going to celebrate the holiday for future years, and matzah is on the menu. That's so weird.

Imu:Yeah, totally. And not only is matzah on the menu, but there's this command where God says תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר מִבָּתֵּיכֶם – you should get rid of, or take a break from, all leavening in your houses (Exodus 12:15). 

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So not only does God seem to have a problem with chametz all year round, which doesn't really make sense if chametz is just about leaving Egypt, but also God gave us the command to get rid of chametz before we even left Egypt.

Imu: But there's a third question that I have. You ready for it?

Beth: I'm ready.

Imu: So even if we take that reason very seriously, that the reason why we get rid of chametz is because we left Egypt in a hurry and our dough didn't have time to rise. So what did we get with our dough?

Beth: Oh, matzah. We had matzah.

Imu: Right, what they made was matzah. And so, God's like, “I'm going to institute every year, as just a symbol to remember how great it was that you left so quickly, your dough didn't even have time to rise. We're going to make a matzah holiday, and everyone's going to make matzah to remember this amazing event.” What’s strange to me is, you could commemorate that you left quickly by eating matzah. Why do we need to get rid of all the chametz? And let me just take this question a step further. There's another symbol on the night of Pesach that we used to remember the experience of the Exodus.

Beth: I know this one. Maror, the bitter herb. But it's not like we're not allowed to have sweet herbs or whatever. We don't have to put away all of the broccoli and sweet things. We don't have to put them out of our houses. We just have the maror.

Imu: It's not like God is so threatened by the other herbs that will cloud out the maror, so we need to get rid of it. Even just the explanation at face value that we don't eat chametz because we left Egypt in a hurry, it just doesn't seem to hold up. There has to be something inherently problematic about chametz itself, so I think we should try and figure out what that could be.

Why We Need a “Shabbat” from Chametz

Imu (Narrative Insertion): Before we go any further, let’s just remember where we are and how we got here. We’re trying to figure out why chametz would never be allowed in the Temple all year round. And the reason we’re even talking about that is because the law of chametz is linked to the law against mixing milk and meat. They’re part of the same group, and the theory is, if we understand the deeper idea behind one, we're hoping it will reveal the deeper idea behind the other. So I know it seems like we’re far afield from milk and meat, but I promise you that if you dive deep with me into chametz, we’ll come out of it with the key that will help us understand kashrus as well. Alright? Let’s do it.

So, what could possibly be wrong with chametz that makes it something God doesn’t want with His offerings, ever? The truth is, I think we already got a clue back when we read about the first time that God commands us about getting rid of chametz. So, back in Exodus 12, remember the language there? The word that the Torah uses is תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ. There's something strange about it.

Beth: Oh wait. Is that — תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ is like Shabbat?

Imu: Yeah, right. God didn't say, “Incinerate the chametz in your midst.” The word is “Shabbat,” He said תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ. It's a very strange word to use for getting rid of something. It's “take a break from,” or “take a rest from” chametz.

I think the Torah is evoking the language of Shabbat with chametz for a reason. It's trying to make you think about Shabbat, and here's what I'll argue: Shabbat is a rest from human creativity. When we work for six days, we're creating, we're creating, we’re Little Creator and God above us is the Big Creator. We take one day out of every seven to recognize the fact that there is a greater Creator than us. So we desist from creativity, and we recognize that the world was created by God. That's not the only reason we keep Shabbat, and there's another element of Shabbat, which sort of harmonizes. Which is that, when we are always creating, you can sometimes objectify that which you create. You can start trying to treat everything and everyone as a means to help create and produce.

So a major element of Shabbat is giving your workers a rest. Giving slaves, maidservants, even your son, your daughter – anyone dependent on you takes a break. Because when you're always creating, when you're always working, you can sometimes objectify. So you take a break, and two things happen simultaneously: The people beneath you get a break and you recognize Source, you recognize God above, you recognize the Master Creator.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So if you understand the idea behind Shabbat, conceptually, as taking a break from creativity, then might it make sense to consider that, whenever humanity, whenever we do something that is supercreative, maybe the great human endeavors also warrant a Shabbat. 

Chametz: A Revolution in Human Technology

Imu: And, crazy as it sounds, I actually think that chametz is one of the greatest human technologies to ever have been invented, which I know is going to sound absurd in 2023, but it would not have sounded absurd thousands of years ago.

Beth: Can you walk me through that? Breadmaking, chametz, is technology?

Imu: Yes. So you actually need to go way back to the agricultural revolution, when humanity transitions from hunter-gatherers to domestication of plants and animals, because, pre-agricultural revolution, you have a humanity that is picking fruit off the tree, they're picking berries off the bush. They're directly connected to the source of their food. They know exactly where it comes from. Beth, when you want an apple, when you want berries, where do you go? What trees are you picking it off from?

Beth: Oh, I go to the refrigerator tree.

Imu: Right. You're picking it from the refrigerator, where you probably got it from the store, where it was originally on the back of some truck that got from the co-packer that went to the farmer. The amount of steps between your fruit and the source of that fruit is enormous. But that wasn't the case when humanity was hunter-gatherer. They knew exactly where their fruit came from, and they were directly connected to the source, to the ground, and to God. Comes the agricultural revolution where there's this burst of innovation, and humanity begins to domesticate plants. The relationship to the plants changes.

What humanity begins to do is, they process grain, where this grass, wheat, the seeds from this grass is ground into flour, and that flour is mixed with water and baked into bread. When you have a loaf of bread, it looks nothing like the grass. An apple looks like an apple. It grew from the tree. Apples grow on trees. Bread does not grow on grass. It has to be processed and turned into a new creation.

I think, in that sense, bread really is this huge, innovative technology. And by the way, the idea that bread is something innovative and this supercreative step for humanity, I think it's more than just a nice theory. I think there's actually corroborating evidence for this in, of all places, the Garden of Eden, at the very beginning of Torah. Think about the Garden of Eden, where God tells humanity to eat from all the fruits of the tree. That may be describing humanity in its infancy – humanity, pre-agricultural revolution. We are connected to God, we're in God's garden. We're eating from all the fruits. We have a direct connection to Source, but then, the strangest of things happens. We eat from this Tree of Knowledge. And one of the opinions in the Gemara about what that tree was, was that it was wheat.

Beth: Wheat, yeah.

Imu: And how do they know that? Because God says to Adam, after he eats from the tree, בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ תֹּאכַל לֶחֶם, “By the sweat of your brow, you shall eat bread.” (Genesis 3:19)

Bread? There's been no bread up until this time in the Torah. They were in a garden, they were eating fruits. So, possibly, what's happening is this is the description of a humanity that is turning their backs on the direct, one-to-one connection with the land, with God, with Source, and saying, “You know what, God, I think I can do better than fruit. I'm going to take this stuff, I'm going to process it, and I'm going to turn it to bread.” That baking of bread may have been an original sin, a way of actually distancing ourselves from Creator.

Beth: That's just a crazy thought. I'm not used to thinking of bread as being spiritually evil. I mean, we have challah. What could be more religious than challah on your Shabbat table? Right. But you're saying that bread – it results unintentionally in your being more distanced from your Creator. You're being less aware of God as the Source of everything, the Source of our food. Or maybe even something really insidious, which is, maybe it's even our attempt to distance ourselves. We don't want to just have the fruit that God readied for us. We want to take it into our own hands and make something better, or make something that we were the sole makers of it. It's a really provocative thought.

Imu: Yeah, and I think that Judaism, ultimately, isn't a Luddite religion. It's not anti-technology or progress. There's no command to return to the garden and to only eat fruits. Instead, what I think happens is that Judaism sort of incorporates humanity's creative impulses, but it always directs you to use your creativity in the context of the ultimate Creator. You actually are supposed to recognize Source in your creativity. So we have this idea of Shabbat where you work, you're allowed to work, you're allowed to create, but you take one day to recognize the Creator.

We say “Ha’motzi lechem min ha’aretz,” the bracha (blessing) we make on bread, is an absurd bracha. It basically says, “Bless you, God, for bringing forth bread from the earth,” which is crazy. Bread doesn't grow in the earth, as we said. It's a grass. We process it, and we turn it into bread, but I love the wording of that bracha because it is a reminder to us to do that intentionality, to do that thought-work, to say, “Hey, this bread, which distances me from Source, I'm going to meditate on it, so to speak, when I make this blessing, to remember where this bread actually comes from, even though there are many steps of processing between the growth to my actual having bread on the table.”

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So when the Torah says תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ, take a Shabbat from breadmaking, it’s starting to make sense. Bread is a huge deal, creatively speaking. But the truth is, the Torah doesn’t tell us to take a Shabbat from breadmaking. It tells us to take a Shabbat from chametz, which is an aspect of more modern breadmaking. Up until now, Adam in the garden, humanity for thousands of years – if we try to picture them making their bread and turning their backs on God, what are we picturing? These fluffy, white challah loaves. But that would be totally anachronistic. For thousands of years, all bread was matzah. The technology for making chametz hadn’t yet been invented. 

Imu: What happened, in human history, was there was a second technology introduced thousands of years after bread making was invented, where they discovered the means to create these starters, these sourdough starters, which would leaven the bread.

All bread for thousands of years was, essentially, matzah. Nobody had the technology to gather sourdough or yeast, and to breathe new life into the bread. And many historians believe that the inventors of sourdough, the inventors of chametz, was Egypt. What the Egyptians invented was this technique of really breathing life. What happens when you leave your dough to rest when it's mixed with sourdough or some leavening agent? You walk away from it for a while, and it becomes bigger. In the ancient world, that was unheard of. You don’t leave your apple on the counter and then it becomes “massive apple.” After processing this grain, you'd come back and it would grow in size.

Beth: What I also hear you saying, which is very cool, is that there's a way in which bread making is kind of Creator-like. You're like Dr. Frankenstein, you're bringing something to life. Just the idea of bread growing –  taking something organic and being able to make it grow to be bigger than it is. Like you said, we can't do that with an apple. So that, in and of itself, feels like a kind of thing that only a Creator can do.

Taking a Break to Recognize Our Source

Imu: So what I'm arguing is that chametz needs a Shabbat. It's the height of human creativity, and the Torah doesn't say you can't do it, but for one week out of the year, we actually take a break, and we eat a more simple bread, and we return back to a more clear recognition of Source. We leave our chametz behind, and we recognize where our food comes from. We recognize that God is the Creator. I think what God does is, He builds in mitzvot that allow us to take a break from creative acts, almost to recalibrate and recognize: We are creators that derive our powers from The Creator. That's what these Shabbatot do, they take a break so that you can kind of refresh that perspective.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So, digging deeper into the nature of chametz led us to this profound idea about Shabbat and technology. Originally, humanity was directly connected to the source of its food, but with technologies like bread making and chametz later on, we created distance through our own creativity and ingenuity. And mitzvot like Shabbat and the holidays, they let us bridge that distance by helping us to recognize our true Source and taking a step back from dominating nature with our own creativity.

But now we have to figure out what's going on with the four laws we started off talking about; these laws that seemed connected to the holidays, but actually apply all year round. If we're not a Luddite religion, we just take little breaks from creativity for a few days a year, why is chametz not ever allowed in the Temple? Beth had some thoughts about that.

Beth: It's not that chametz in general is bad, so it's okay for me to eat a sandwich on just a stam (plain) Tuesday, but there's something – if I, Little Creator, am coming before God, Big Creator, and I'm offering a korban, there's something audacious, or there's something offensive, about bringing chametz as that korban. It's like rubbing my creativity, my ability, in my Creator's face. So it makes sense to me that that would be a domain in which we're told not to do it.

Imu: Exactly. When you're otherwise engaged in a ritual where you're recognizing Source, are you going to bring chametz, which is this highly processed bread which sort of opaque, it's not transparent about its source? It is highly processed, and therefore offensive, to bring that before your Source.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): What Beth is suggesting is that, even though there are built-in Shabbatot that have us take a break from creativity and overdominance of the natural world and reconnect with Source, maybe there are other laws that aren’t bound to a particular time period that have us do the same. And maybe that’s what our four laws, including milk and meat, are there to help us with. Not bringing chametz in the Mikdash  – maybe that’s about being respectful to God by not touting our own ability to create in a place devoted to recognizing Him as our Source.

And now that we’ve seen how this principle explains the first law, Beth and I started thinking about how it might do the same for the rest. 

Law 2: Don’t Leave the Holiday Offering Until the Morning

Imu: So let's take this value of the holiday into לֹא־יָלִין חֵלֶב־חַגִּי עַד־בֹּקֶר, “You should not leave over the holiday offering till the next morning.” How might you see that as an expression of this idea?

Beth: The way that it first landed for me was – I don't know, I'm imagining that people come to your house for Shabbat, you open up a bottle of wine, and then at the end of the meal, you take the half-drunk bottle and pour it into another bottle so that you can squirrel it away and use it for your guests next week. It just feels like it wasn’t given in the spirit of giving in the first place.

Imu: And I would say it wasn't given in the spirit of recognizing who you are vis-a-vis God. Think about the kind of person who considers taking the leftovers of a korban back home. Let’s assume he’s not a bad guy. What’s his motivation? So I think the obvious idea is that meat, animals, they’re expensive. If I can be yotzei in my korban, if I can discharge my obligation here by eating two pounds of London broil and saving the other 100 pounds of cow for later, isn’t that just smart? I’m avoiding being wasteful of my hard-earned property. So I think the Torah, by grouping this law where it does, is signaling to us that, if that’s our perspective, that’s off. Because that all rides on the assumption that the cow is mine, that I have real ownership and dominion over it. But that doesn’t work in the context where we’re standing in front of Source, the Source of this cow. We’re returning it to Him, as it were. It’s not just that it’s crass to take back a gift, it’s that your whole perspective is out of whack. You can’t bring over-processed bread into the Temple, a place dedicated to recognizing God as Source, and you can’t express objectification of property, of animals, in a korban, an activity dedicated to recognizing Source. And then, for you not to even recognize what you're doing to the point where you want to eat the whole thing or bring home the leftovers, that's crazy. It's out of whack. You're not recognizing the Source in front of you.

Law 3: First Fruits Recognize God As Our Source

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So that explains the first two laws and how they're extensions of this principle of recognizing Source. Let's keep going and extend the idea, now, into the last two laws.

Beth: Okay, so bikkurim makes perfect sense. You could take the first and choicest of your crops and hoard them in your storehouse, but as a nod to where they come from, as a nod to the fact that God sent the rains and every other means necessary for you to be able to grow them, then it's appropriate for you to offer them up and not be so concerned with your balance sheet.

Imu: Yeah, exactly. Bikkurim – as we don't live in the wake of the agricultural revolution anymore, it’s many thousands of years behind us – but this is the height of human creativity. These are my capital gains. This is my first paycheck, or my stock has appreciated in value. And you are actually – at the height of your own creativity, you think of yourself as master, as powerful. It's actually kind of interesting – I was just talking to our editor, Daniel, before this session – there are no Biblical holidays in the winter. Because in the winter, it's so easy to recognize God. You need Him. Your storehouses are dwindling, there is no new profit coming in. So I'm not deluded into thinking that I'm the master. It's very clear that I am dependent.

But bikkurim is that moment, that first fruit moment, of, “Wow, I'm awesome. My paycheck's coming in.” At that moment, we actually choose to recognize Master Creator first. We recognize God first, and then we're able to eat the rest of the fruits. Another way of saying this is that, if you didn’t bring bikkurim, you could fall prey to being overdominant, of objectifying your property and your fruits and thinking, “Mine! Mine! It’s all mine!” So we bring bikkurim, and that helps us recognize the source of our fruits is God.

Beth: That's very cool.

Law 4: Milk, Meat, and the Source of Our Food

Imu (Narrative Insertion): And now that we've seen everything we've seen, we're finally ready to come back and try to understand לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ. 

Imu: So when we have this idea of recognition of Source in mind, here's what's kind of obvious. We think about not mixing milk and meat together. We think of it as, “Oh, I'm not going to have meat. I'm not going to have dairy.” Where does dairy come from?

Beth: This was a revelation for me when I started nursing. Milk is created by a mother for the purpose of feeding their young. It's true for cows, it’s true for humans, too. I mean, not all human mothers are able to breastfeed their babies, but if you're asking what milk is and where it comes from, it’s a product of this special relationship between mother and child.

Imu: One hundred percent. When I say dairy, you think cheese. But when I say milk, you must think mother. All milk comes from mother. How does a mother get milk? It's not like all women have milk all the time. When do you have milk?

Beth: When you have a new baby. Your body makes milk so you can feed the baby, and your body only keeps producing because the baby keeps nursing.

Imu: Exactly. So you're in a position to have milk only when you're dealing with a new mother. It's not just like a mom who had a ten-year-old kid. This is a new mother who has a baby.

Beth: It's a crazy idea. And the fact that milk is an ingredient that we then use in our culinary world, and not just that you can pour yourself a glass of milk to drink, but also that, like you said, we have cheese and yogurt and ice cream and all these things. It's just because we as humans, interrupted, intercepted this biological reality. Like, “Oh look. There's some cows out there who just had babies and the mothers are making the milk for the calves. But if I can get in there and actually express the milk from the cows, not into the calves’ mouths but into a bucket, then now I have this ingredient that I can bring into my kitchen.” It's wild. It feels very invasive.

Imu: It's invasive and it's objectifying. You're taking a relationship between a mother and a child and treating the milk that comes out of the mother as if it's an ingredient. And you're able to use milk together with flesh.

Imu (Narrative Insertion):  And that's a crazy concept when you're actually aware of where milk comes from. So now that we're seeing milk through the lens of recognition of Source, thinking about where it actually comes from, I think we're in a position to answer one of our first questions, about how the Rabbis read this verse and said it's not just about kids and their mother's milk, but about all meat and all milk. I think they read this verse and they saw it as hyperbole, presenting the law in its most extreme form to drive home the point. 

Imu: The Sages were reading this verse and understanding that the Torah is sensitizing you to the fact that all milk is mother's milk and all animals are kids. All animals come from a mother. You can't take this thing that a mother uses to nurture a child and cook that same animal in it. That would be A. offensive. All the previous laws were offensive. You don't bring bikkurim? That's offensive. You're going to take Tupperware, you're going to take leftovers from the korban that was for us? That's offensive. You're going to take chametz, this over-processed food to God and contribute it to Him? That's offensive.

To take milk that is meant for a child and cook it with that animal? It's deeply offensive. But I'm not just focused on the offense, which is obvious and clear. The other thing that I want to focus on is the opportunity to recognize Source, the opportunity — bikkurim is a wonderful thing. Bikkurim is like a great bracha. Before you eat, before I get to enjoy my fruits, I actually just give to God.

And in doing that, I recognize that all my fruits really come from God. What's strange about לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ – it's the only one of the set that has nothing to do with God. And yet, you have an animal that you're supposed to recognize the animal source and the animal source's mother. You're not going to take mother's milk and mix it together with the animal itself.

Bringing the Four Laws Together

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So the common denominator is really being mindful of all sources and letting that awareness impact on our dominion over nature.

Beth: The way that you're inviting me to think about this law, I'm also thinking about the fact that I might not have had a relationship with that goat, and I might not really be aware of the gravity of – that a life was extinguished so that I could enjoy it. But do you know who cares? 

Imu: Mom.

Beth: Who cares is their mom, yeah. And it's a reminder that everyone is someone's kid, no pun intended. 

Imu: We're seeing this again and again. That was the punchline of the last kashrus piece we did. Where we looked at the laws of slaughtering animals and covering the blood, and we kind of had two ways of looking at it. But the bottom line was, no matter how you take the kashrus laws, whether it's l’chatchila or b’dieved, whether it’s proper or a concession, the kashrus laws slow us down and they make us take something like the taking of a life of an animal very seriously. And in fact, what we said is that, when you do take the life of the animal, you do need to recognize Source. You actually return blood to earth, our common source. Earth is where we come from, adamah, and the animal comes from – its dam comes from the adamah, as well, and we return it to source.

You do need to, when you eat the animal, recognize Source, and there is a way to do that properly when you do shechita (ritual slaughter). There isn't a way to do that properly when you mix milk and meat together. It's just not possible. There's no – you can't thank the mom and thank the baby and then eat the two together. Just doesn't work. So those have to be kept separate.

Shavuot and the Dairy Connection

We're almost done, but there's still one more loose end that we need to tie up. We had said before that all four of the laws here also had a holiday dimension, but what's the holiday dimension of לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ? What's the holiday? We do have – the first two laws are Pesach laws. That would suggest that the second two laws are Shavuot laws. 

And the truth is, this is a little bit speculative. I can’t know that this is one hundred percent right, but the algebra does suggest that this is a Shavuos idea. Look, maybe here’s a reason how. While I was researching this piece, I happened to be at a Shabbat table where someone was talking about why it is that we eat dairy on Shavuos. What they said is that, even though we're used to babies being born all year round – people have their birthdays in February, in November – it's likely that, back in the day, domesticated animals actually gave birth seasonally. There was one season where the babies were born, there was something called calving season, and that season was probably the spring.

Beth: Slow down with me for a second. That means the idea is that animals go into heat – they're triggered somehow by the calendar?

Imu: I don't know all the specifics. but I do believe that, in the winter, it's not advantageous to have children. There is no readily available food. But as the whole world is sort of reborn and there's this spring, and new food bursts into life, that's when babies are born as well so that their mothers will have plenty to eat to keep up their supply of milk. And then, if that's happening in the spring, fast forward to the beginning of the summer, which is Shavuot. And what's happening? The kids, they're all weaning. They've all been fattened up, and they don't need the milk of their mother anymore, which means that the mothers all have milk that no one's using.

So there's this abundance of baby livestock and this abundance of milk right around Shavuos. And what the Torah is telling you, that when you have all of this wealth of all the milk and all the new babies, you still have to recognize that relationship between mother and child. Enjoy the milk. You can even eat the animals. But keep those two things separate.

So yeah, I’ll say again, this is speculative and if it doesn’t land for someone, that totally makes sense. But just looking at the algebra, I think it’s really elegant. It fits really well.

Beth: That's really cool, Imu. What I am especially appreciating about it is that – how do I put this? It reminds me of the chametz thing, too. You can do it, but I'm going to put parameters around it, but I'm going to regulate it. And that's going to get you to think. And that's what we're seeing here too, which is – it's not God coming and saying, “You have to be vegan. You're not allowed to eat meat, and you're not allowed to drink milk. You can, but you have to do it in this way.”

Learning Not to Objectify God’s World

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So with this understanding of separating milk and meat as a way of recognizing where it all comes from, what milk and meat really are, and the insensitivity of using them together like they were just any ingredients, Beth and I take a step back and wonder how this changes the way we relate to this law and the way we observe it.

Beth: I think up until this point, separating milk and meat has just been a technical thing. It's been a technical thing, and now it stands for a value. So, I'm energized. It's like, bring on the questions the next time that a friend asks me what's that about, or when I have the opportunity to explain it to my kids. I want to go there. It's meaningful for me as a mother.

Imu: The value in and of itself, knowing the value, means something. It's almost like you don't have to change anything. You've always been separating milk and meat, but now, it kind of means something to you. It kind of makes you stop and think or feel. Like you said, it means something to me as a mother.

Beth: Yeah. I mean, milk is filled with so much love. It's such a beautiful thing. And aren’t our lives so much richer in appreciating that? When you open up the fridge and you take out a gallon of milk, it's an ingredient or it's a reminder that God has set up the world in this gorgeous way, which is that every new creature that's born into the world is born from the body of a mother who loves them and is there to teach them that I'm going to meet all your needs. That's their infancy, and that's just stunning. And milk can be a reminder of all of that.

Imu: Yeah. I think that's like the first layer of kashrus, is just to stun us into non-objectification. We are used to treating all food as ingredients. And I think the basic thing we keep seeing in kashrus is “Comes from somewhere.” You come from somewhere. Relate to where you come from, relate to the earth, relate to the animals. It's not like you can't eat them. You just eat them in a way that's supposed to remind you of where it comes from.

Imu (Narrative Insertion): So maybe, on the surface, nothing will really be changing for us. But on the inside, the laws of separating milk and meat couldn't be more transformed. They're going from a bunch of complicated and inconvenient rules to an opportunity to slow down, to take a break from objectifying our food, to reflect on the source of our food, and to be aware of what milk is, the maternal love that it embodies. Waiting periods between meat and milk, separate dishes – we're now seeing them as these opportunities to respect the love a mother has for her child. You know, hot dogs and ice cream may not look anything like calves and the milk that nurtures them, but when you see past the form into the essence, that really is what they are.

That's how these laws are encouraging us to see our food. And I, for one, I'm grateful for the opportunity that these laws create to transcend the natural impulse that we humans have to be consumers, to dominate, to please ourselves at the expense of others, and instead to enjoy our food as part of a relationship. We are in relationship with the animals that we eat. We are in relationship with the mothers that contribute milk, and we're in relationship with the Source of all, with God. I don't know about you, but to me, that feels like a really meaningful way to observe the laws of kashrus.

Credits: 

This episode was recorded by Imu Shalev and Beth Lesch.

The scholars for this episode were Imu Shalev and Ari Levisohn. 

The senior editor was Daniel Loewenstein, with additional editing by Sarah Penso and Evan Weiner. 

Our audio editor is me, Hillary Guttman. 

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Meaningful Judaism’s editorial director is Imu Shalev.

Thanks for listening!