The other day we had chicken in an egg sauce, and got to wondering… 
As I understand it, the spirit of the meat/dairy law is interpreted to be against mixing symbols of life and of death. Meat is dead, but milk is symbolic of life, and therefore the two should not be mixed. This spirit applies just as well to chicken as it does to beef, and so the prohibition extending to chicken makes sense.
I remember an issue in Quebec where non-Jewish neighbours were taking down the strings put up for “enclosure” when they crossed public streets because they were eyesores/in the way/something like that. I always wondered why they didn’t set up a little closed fence in some remote place and declare, "this fence may look like it just encloses some small area in some remote region, but really, it encloses the entire world *except for that area". Then they could do away with the rule entirely.
*There is a “physicist, engineer, and mathematician” joke that covers this in detail.
But fish doesn’t apply, so go figure. 
Very briefly, my understanding.
- Very very brief: law is as law does. Our secular law books are two zillion Talmuds. BTW, the Talmud is not only case-law and discussions of it (Halacha); a good part is stories, digressions on the Bible or on people or on daily activity and thinking (Agadah).
Anyone have a big problem with the fact that we have law and lawyers? Without our law, we’d all be armed animals. Somebody’s gotta do it.
- My epiphany, on loopholes, legalisms, laws, and spirit.
I went to a funeral of an uncle. At the cemetery, the wife (my aunt) was distraught, inconsolable, etc. Many clustered around her as we walked to the grave.
In the back, a second or third cousin and her husband held back, weeping, and some people were trying to stay with them, but felt awkward and torn. That cousin and her husband had driven hundreds of miles to be with my aunt. The cousin’s brother had died in his twenties from AIDS and was buried nearby in that same cemetery. They were broken up and wanted to go to his grave.
Orthodox Jewish law has it that you cannot visit a cemetery to honor the dead (or grieve–I don’t know the intention, but it’s not important here) for different groups of people (again, I’m not aware of the details; consult your local rabbi :)). The reason given has nothing to do with the dead per se, but it shows lack of respect for the main event, so to speak, the grieving relatives.
This was absolutely the case, terribly unfortunate, when some of the family with my aunt looked back and saw that pair and their cluster totally unconcerned about what they were about. It was real and rasping. The Law, in all its majesty, made sense. And it showed a sensitivity to spirit.
The cousins, observant, were mortified themselves. Something like spiritual agony.
But the pair had driven for hours and hours and did not know when they would return. The Rabbi spoke to them. They decided that the couple would step outside the cemetery gate, and then re-enter. Two separate visits.
To many, I’m sure this is a laughable self-evident example of the folly of pious legalism and the absurdity of ad-hoc loopholes. To me it is the glory of law at its finest, reconciling “how-should-we-act” situations–which is most of what law does to make social existence tolerable to as many as possible in that society–with spirit, intelligence, and finesse.
No mention of Sabbath mode on appliances. Ovens that turn on a random amount of time after the button is pressed, thus somehow divorcing the button pressing (work) from the effect of the oven being turned on. Or refrigerators that don’t turn on the compressor or light when the door is opened.
Or the Sabbath elevator that stops on every floor so buttons don’t have to be pressed. As an aside, I lived in an apartment building with many Orthodox Jews. There was no Sabbath elevator, but often a family would be waiting in the lobby for one of the non-Jews in the building to come along and we would be asked to push the buttons. I just learned from wikipedia that apparently I was acting as a Sabbath goy!
I just add this to the laundry list of things that I won’t be able to understand about religion, and no degree of trying to explain how these aren’t loopholes are going to convince me. In the general world of the silliness that many religions exist, this all seems odd, yet harmless.
People talk about the “spirit” of the law. In Judaism, there is no “spirit” behind the laws - except the Golden Rule, which is the spirit behind all of the laws.
This was expressed most clearly by Rabbi Hillel, who was challenged to teach the enirety of the law during the time he could stand on one foot. His reply:
This is why the law is famously flexible and subject to exceptions: rabbis (at least, good rabbis) are always trying to mould the law into something that accords with the “spirit”, the only “spirit”, which is the Golden Rule. That’s why whenever the law creates an outcome that isn’t in accord with the spirit, they try and find an outcome that keeps the law, but also keeps to the spirit.
Really, to my mind this is far preferable to inflexibly sticking to the letter of the law which reaches an outcome that is inhumane.
A Rabbi told my Ex that chicken and dairy is ok, “For no hen ever nursed her chicks.”
The point is that the law was taken from a line in the Torah that says “do not seethe a kids in its mother’s milk”. The laws constructed around that quote are designed to ensure that an animal’s flesh does not get consumed along with the substance it produces in order to sustain life. If you take it more philosophically (rather than the thuddingly literal interpretaion of a particular kid’s flesh with its actual mother’s milk), then you might see it as a reminder to treat animals humanely. And in the larger sense, it is a prohibition against mixing the two worlds of life and death.
The way it was explained to me by a Lubavicher rabbi is that God gave us both a set of rules and a inquisitive, problem-solving brain, and he expects us to use both of them in joyfulness.
There’s another story about how Jews interact with the Law that goes something like this:
There are three rabbis arguing about the meaning of a point in the Torah–two for one interpretation, and one for the other.
God himself overhears the argument, and comes down to the three rabbis and says “Actually, the one man here has the correct interpretation.”
At which point all three sigh and say, “Well, now it’s tied. Let’s go find Rabbi Osterman to get a fifth vote.”
Nice post. To add, as I implied above, society (eg, say, Jewish people body-politic society – we have to remember what we’re dealing with here in OP – or United States society or NFL society or international law society or tiddlywinks society or fill-in-the-box election ballots or where-to-cancel-your-check societies) has quite a few legalisms about “one-foot-over”-type situations.
“Spirit over law” maxims from easy Christian aphoristics can be quite counter-spiritual about lived spiritually habitable life. That is to say, more correctly, that for a Jew optimally the dichotomy is false.
I think it’s because it’s harder to confuse fish with meat than it is to confuse chicken with meat. Also, fish are considered “lower” animals and do not even require strict slaughter laws the way land animals and fowl do.
Hate to be a spoilsport, but the received interpretation of all facets of the many mitzvahs of Kashrut (the Kosher laws) is that, unlike with some other mitzvot, there is no reason, nor, needless to say, does there have to be one. They do it because God said so, and all the other interpretations commonly proposed since the Rabbis such as those in this thread, are nice but not dispositive in the slightest.
IANARabbi, but nonetheless to give cites would be quite humorously meta-ish here. In English I’ve found Abraham Chill’s The Mitzvot: The Commandments and their Rationale to be the best manageable digest of Rabbinic sources with extensive citations.
Was this a joke?
::Hijack::
I tend to agree with your post.
But I have to say – and God knows, this is a hijack that if followed would lead to (friendly, I hope) havoc – that Rabbi Hillel’s “suggestion” and Jesus’s Golden Rule are not the same, no matter how often they are claimed to be. Interpretations should follow accordingly. (He said ex cathedra.)
Jesus: I love The Grateful Dead. I will give everyone Greatful Dead albums.
Hillel: I hate The Grateful Dead. I will strike Grateful Dead albums from gift lists.
::Hijack::
I think this is an important point. For people living a highly regulated life, clear lines are important. These are people whose religion courses through their veins. If the lines weren’t clearly delineated, even to the point of hairsplitting, then there would be the endless creep of individual concepts of morality into the domain that was supposed to be defined by God.
Now these laws aren’t universal. There’s no Jewish Pope or governming body to decide exactly what’s right. Jews may look to their Rabbi’s for the answer, or look within themselves if they choose. So the result is that some of these fine lines may simply distinquish communities or philosophies more than they address matters of great import. I’d say it was fair to call it hairsplitting in those cases.
You’re not a spoilsport. I know that the kosher laws are observed just cuz the boss said so. On the other hand, it is completely natural in our endless search for meaning to try to find a rationale for them. Sometimes finding meaning is more difficult (like - why, of all bugs, are flying insects with legs jointed above their feet kosher?). But something like the prohibition of mixing milk and meat just begs for a justification.
::too late for edit window::
Please excuse Jesus’s spelling. Although He, like Hillel, was into puns.
In other words, Christians say “do unto others”, whereas the Jews say “do NOT do unto others” ?
No, not at all.