
Cross-posted from www.peelapom.com
It’s traditional to eat dairy on Shavuot, which begins the first week of Sivan. Because of this, we’re going to explore dairy for the month of Sivan.
Let’s start with the separation of milk and meat in the Torah. What it actually says is “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (לֹא-תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי, בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ). This prohibition is found tthree times in the Torah: Ex 23:19, Ex 34: 26 and Deut 14:21, which means — seriously, don’t freaking do this we’re not kidding around!!! Most likely this was a prohibition on mixing life and death; milk being the source of life and death being meat, very literally in this case the meat of the kid goat. It was also, according to the Encyclopeida of Jewish Symbols, a common ancient pagan practice to give an offering of [Read more…]