Lately I’d been feeling as though I’ve been breaking too many Commandments, so I decided to bone up on the rules, so to speak.
Anyway, killing, stealing, coveting, intercourse with the beasts - all of that I can do without, and hey, we can all use a reminder every now and again.
Then I notice that I shall not cook a kid in its own mother’s milk (I’m guessing - hoping - this is referring to a young goat). There’s my Christmas dinner plans down the drain. I’d at least like to know: why Mosaic Law forbids me to saute so?
Well, in religious law there really is no “why,” it’s in the Noble Qu’ran (or whatever) and so that’s that.
The Judaic prohitation on “boiling the mother in the milk” Has some modern in Jewish life. For example a cheeseburger is in no way Kosher.
Those who observe this rule strictly maintina two friges and two sets of plates and pots. One for dairy and one for meat. In the same way, you cannot get dairy at the 7th Avenue Deli. It is a “meat” restuarant.
On the other hand, many Jews seem to ignore this rule nowadays.
On the other other hand, I have heard a wonderful story that may even be true. It seems that one of the lost groups of African Jews (who have no returned to Israel) was discovered to have unique rules.
They kept very elaborate records as to which animal was the mother of which kid. They never ever mixed the milk of that mother with the meat of that kid. Needless to say, they seem to have a good argument.
BTAIM, this OT prohibition foes not apply to either Christians nor to Musliums.
Well, this was a pagan ritual of the early Caananites, sacrificing a kid and cooking it in it’s mother’s milk. Loaded with symbolism, death, life, all that stuff. And of course, any pagan religious practices were looked upon with horror by the codifiers of the laws. There are all kinds of condemnations of the Israelites for getting friendly with the Philistines, or what have you.
There are lots of reasons that people have thought up to try to explain this seemingly bizarre rule (which is repeated three times in the Torah/Five Books of Moses.) However, they are all ex-post-facto attempts at explanations, neither supported nor rejected by the text itself. The text itself offers no reason whatsover. The ex-post-facto explanations range from the pagan ritual idea (as per Lemur866) to a “cleanliness” concept because of the difficulty of cleaning boiled milk out of wooded dishes and the chance of bacteria growing (unbeknownst to the early Israelites, of course.) As I say, none of these explanations are given in the text – the text says only to do these things “that you may be holy.”
Tradition holds that there were a lot of oral explanations that accompanied the written text. Around Talmudic times, these traditions were codified, so that the rule about not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was taken to have three levels of meaning (because it was repeated thrice):
Not to eat milk-foods and meat at the same meal (this is the ruling from which things like cheeseburgers are not kosher)
To keep separate dishes and pots for milk-foods and meats
Not to profit from or own any mixed meat/milk products.
I’m sure that someone more versed than I can give a lengthier explanation, but that’s my in-a-nutshell version.
In general, you are correct. Most of the commandments are grouped into two general categories mishpatim (laws) and chukim (decrees, for lack of a better word). Mishpatim are laws for which the reason can be deduced through logic. Do not murder, do not steal, etc. are among these. Chukim are laws for which a reason is not obvious. Eating kosher is among these laws. While many commentators have tried to deduce reasons for some of the chukim over the last 3000 years, in the end, we do the commandments because God told us to.
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Close, CK, but not quite. The three prohibitions derived from the thrice-repeated message include prohibitions on eating, cooking and deriving any benefit from it. These laws continue to apply today. For example, we picked up a package of hamster food about a year ago. We ended up having to throw it out when, after reading the ingredients, it contained both milk and meat, which were probably cooked together. We now check the ingredients of our hamster food when we buy it.
No disrespect at all. My hamster is not Jewish. As a result, I can feed my hamster almost any kind of non-kosher food that I want to feed her.
However, cooked meat/milk mixtures have an additional restriction. Besides not eating it, I am not allowed to cook it (even if I will not eat it), nor can I derive any benefit from it. I, therefore, cannot sell it, give it to my animals to eat, burn it for heat, etc.
That’s the first time I’ve heard about two refrigerators in a kosher kitchen. Okay, next silly gentile question: where do you sore your perishable pareve items? A third fridge?
You do not need to have two refrigerators. You can store both dairy and meat items in the same refrigerator/freezer, as long as there is no danger that the two items will get mixed.