blogs/rabbi-huberman

Recently, during a conversation regarding the laws of keeping kosher, a congregant shook her head at me disbelief.

“You mean in all your life, you've never had a cheeseburger?” she asked. “You don't know what you're missing.”

She may be right.

A recent survey of eating habits in America concluded that each year, fifty billion hamburgers are consumed in this country �" enough to circle the planet thirty-two times. About half of those are cheeseburgers.

Indeed, as Jewish Americans become more integrated into the national culture, fewer among us pay attention to these laws which so many regard as archaic, outdated and sorely in need of modernization.

Talk to most Jews, and they will tell you that they follow standards which are specific to their families or their practices. Bacon �" yes or no? Shellfish? Sometimes, maybe. Mixing milk and meat �" perhaps, but why care?

But in this week's Torah portion, Mishpatim (“rules”) we get an idea of why the mixing of milk and meat was, and continues to be problematic within Judaic ethical practice.

We are told that it is forbidden to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. This is the launching point for some of the laws of kashrut. When you think of it, this law is beautiful in its basis.

A mother goat spends an average of one hundred and fifty days in pregnancy. Often, she will give birth to two kids.

According to the ancient commentator Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (1085-1158), one was often designated for milk, and the other for meat. Which one will live and which will die?

Besides, notes Rabbi ben Meir, it is “obscenely gluttonous” to consume a mother's milk with her loved ones.