How not to Cook a Baby Goat

Laws and More Laws

Perhaps my favorite minefield, if you can call it a minefield, is located in the back yard of churches and synagogues. What? You ask. What is buried there? What–besides corpses in old church graveyards or worn out holy books in a Jewish genizah? Believe me you can find beliefs and systems of belief there too!

There are many accepted traditions and man-made laws in the religious world, some which have been passed down by tradition and some which have morphed into creeds that have very little likeness to what was originally taught.

In a way these things are like grenades. They may have been buried for centuries and nobody really knows why they are accepted and even feared. Why have they turned into something for which they were never purposed? And how do we get back to basics in order to put them back in the genizah or cemetery as fully discarded trash or on the other hand, resurrect them, polish them up, remodel and set them up, if you would, on their own foundation for all to behold?

And what is the tool that qualifies for discovering and clarifing in this search in the minefield of claimed truth? If we have nothing else, we have the Sacred Scriptures, which in their original language is of much more value than any other modern tool. And basically, the Torah is the Capstone by which all must be measured. It is sort of like what the prophets Zechariah and Isaiah call a plumet or plumb line.

Zec 4:10 For who hath despised the day of small things? Yea, they shall rejoice even those seven — and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel: these are the eyes of YHVH, which run to and fro in the whole earth.”

Isa 28:17 Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

And King David in the book of Psalms calls them a lamp.

Psa 119:105 your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

The book of Proverbs uses the same symbolism:

Pro 6:23 For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light…

So how dare anyone use the Bible to disprove the teachings of the Sages? Who are we anyway? Can someone who has never been to Yeshiva understand anything about truth?

Perhaps we should see what the Bible says about truth. Does it need the ancient Sages and accredited Yeshivas to teach its truths? And is it possible to serve God by following the simple basic Torah?

Deut 30:11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it? 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it? 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

If we look at Jewish law and scrutinize it, we can often find that a closer look reveals something that the Torah either does not state specifically or does not state at all. Lets take our lamp and plumb line to one of the strictest observances in Judaism– the teaching and practice of not mixing milk and meat. Where does it come from and could it possibly be taken out of context or exaggerated?

Exodus 23:19 The first of the firstfruits of your land you shalt bring into the house of YHVH your God. You shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.

רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לֹֽא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּֽוֹ

The same law appears in Exodus 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21.

Exo 34:26 “The first of the firstfruits of your land your shalt bring unto the house of YHVH your God. You shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.”

Deu 14:21 “Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in your gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto YHVH your God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.”

Seems pretty simple, just don’t cook a baby goat in it’s own mother’s milk. This is the conclusion I come to by looking at the simple text in the Torah. But later we will take a look at something deeper regarding this command. I wonder if it is about a literal boiling, or cooking or something deeper?

Notice that the first two references regarding this law come right after the command to bring the firstfruits. The third reference comes after “for thou art a holy people unto YHVH your God.

But from this simple injunction there have been added many layers of fences—precautions, ways to keep from breaking the law…But do any of them actually fit? Are they actually necessary? What are they? These are general rules I have come across in my friendship with Orthodox Jews. Where did they come from and how have they developed?

• …do not cook a calf in milk of any animal, nor a goat, nor a chicken, nor a turkey…
• …do not eat a cold cut with cheese even though it was not cooked together
• …do not use a pan that has been used for milk to cook any meat of any kind, other than fish
• …do not eat meat on a plate that has had milk products at times
• …do not eat meat products with milk products at the same meal nor even up to the next meal
• …a space of 6 hours must be placed between milk and meat
• …do not wash dairy and meat dishes in the same water nor keep them in the same cupboard, nor use the same silverware to eat both. Separate dishes must be used for meat and milk meals.
• …do not set a milk dish on a counter where meat has been prepared.

What the commandment does not say: (pretty much all of the above).

A chicken or turkey does not come from an animal that gives milk, that is perhaps the most far fetched and even the well known Jewish Sage and commentator Rashi “expressed the opinion that the reference to mother’s milk must exclude fowl from the regulation, since only mammals produce milk.” Wikipedia

The Torah says nothing of eating milk and meat items at the same meal. Nor does it say anything about mixing the milk of one animal with a with the meat of another species. It doesn’t even say that milk from one cow cannot be used with the meat from another cow’s calf, or goat meat of one with milk of another goat.

If we look even closer, we see that it says only to not cook a kid in his own mother’s milk. So a bottle of goat’s milk from a different farm would not be a problem to use in cooking.

It says nothing of using cheese or yogurt or sour cream at the same meal, or even on the same sandwich with a piece of meat. There is nothing about a glass of milk drunk at the same meal.

And since it states specifically “a kid” then cooking an adult animal in milk would not break the commandment even if it was the milk from it’s own mother, but then how would anyone know where the milk came from?

So, yes, here we see many fences have been added to a simple command apparently just to keep us safe from disobedience to the law, which in this case seems to be very obscure, especially when interpreted the way it has been in the rabbinic sense. Are we indeed serious at all about not adding to the commandment or changing what God says?

Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the YHVH your God which I command you.” (Deut. 4:2.)

What if this whole commandment has been misinterpreted, no, I do not mean from Hebrew to English, I mean the underlying meaning of the verse. What is the concept? Here I give credit to my Jewish friend Batya Shemesh (a pseudonym) who told me she learned this from her father who was an Orthodox rabbi.

According to this explanation, the law is talking about a very young kid that is still nursing, that is still not weaned. You don’t take that nursing kid in the sight of it’s mother and kill it and cook it. After all, it is in it’s mother’s milk if it has not been weaned! Could this make more sense from the stand point of compassion, to not take the baby in the milk stage, (still not weaned)—not to take it away from it’s mother who has an emotional caring for her young? And that could be applied to not taking baby birds from the nest in the sight of the mother bird. By the way that is an actual law of the Torah…see Deut. 22:6-7:

“If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.”

Is this not the same principle? The principle of not causing unnecessary pain even to animals?

How it morphed and what it may have originally meant:

As we saw above, even the famous Rashi did not go for the idea that meat from fowl was included, yet it has become the norm. A lot of history and voting by the majority has gone to create the law as it exists today, even though it has nothing to do with what was originally meant.

“Obadiah Sforno and Solomon Luntschitz, rabbinic commentators living in the late Middle Ages, both suggested that the law referred to a specific foreign [Canaanite] religious practice, in which young goats were cooked in their own mothers’ milk, aiming to obtain supernatural assistance to increase the yield of their flocks.” Wikipedia

And according to a Blue Letter Bible commentator:

“The true sense of this passage seems to be that assigned by Dr. Cudworth, from a manuscript comment of a Karaïte Jew. ‘It was a custom with the ancient heathens, when they had gathered in all their fruits, to take a kid, and boil it in the dam’s milk; and then in a magical way, to go about and sprinkle all their trees, and fields, and gardens, and orchards with it, thinking by these means, that they should make them fruitful, and bring forth more abundantly in the following year. Wherefore, God forbad his people, the Jews, at the time of their in-gathering, to use any such superstitious or idolatrous rite.’” Exo 34:26; Deu 14:21; Pro 12:10; Jer 10:3 BLB

So I would conclude that whether this was an ancient pagan practice used as magic to convince that people’s god or gods to bless their crops, or whether it was actually a law of kindness given to keep Israel humble and kind and to show mercy even to such as a baby goat–the principles shown, even from simply refraining to boil a kid in it’s own mother’s milk, are a far cry from what today has morphed into an insane separation of that which is good from that which is good and requires a household to own at least two sets of dishes (I forgot, three sets, one for Pesach) and two sinks and separate cupboards in which to keep it separate.

Hashem must be shaking his head when he sees the extent people go to re-explaining what was meant to be simple and straight forward!