Lila ~ May 14

 

There’s some places that I just don’t want to go in my writing, too vulnerable to painful to go right now.  Or that maybe I should have gotten over anyway. 

So for today’s daily write, I was inspired by Gary’s musings with offering meat and milk at the altar of a Buddhist Shrine.  

“Thou shalt not cook a lamb in its mother’s milk” says the Torah in Exodus, and again later in Deuteronomy. 

This is one of the core kosher dietary laws—the separation of meat and milk.  You shall not cook a lamb in the milk of its own mother.  It sounds like cruelty, to do such a thing.  

Back then, it would have been a common thing, to cook a lamb or a calf in the milk of its own mother.  Most likely, both lived on the same farm, in the same pen and grazed the same pastures.  In today’s world, of CAFO’s and industrial agriculture, it’s highly unlikely that the cheese on the cheeseburger was from the mother of the cow from whom the meat came.  

I’m not sure at exactly what point in Jewish history “thou shalt not cook a lamb in its mother’s milk became whole volumes of dietary laws prescribing the separation of meat and milk, how much time you must wait in between eating the two, and how to separate pots and pans and now, even ovens and dishwashers for meat and dairy.  However, a rabbi once told me that the verse was always, in some form, taken to mean the separation of meat and milk. 

In Genesis, long before the Law of Moses was ever given, Abraham was visited by 3 angels who foretold the birth of Isaac, the long awaiting promised son.  He asked Sarah to prepare a meal for the guests, a meal of meat and curds. After they ate, they told Sarah, at age 90, that she would conceive a son.  Sarah laughed at the thought of it.  

This has also been extended to include milk with poultry.  Even though chickens don’t give milk.  You can eat chicken with eggs but you can’t eat chicken with milk.  

And of course, pork and shellfish are prohibited, along with rodents, such as rabbits, and tertiary predators like hawks and herons, and a variety of other creatures that we’d never dream of eating today anyway.  

Some people think that God gave these commandments for health reasons, citing that pork was an unclean meat prone to trichomoniasis.  But in today’s world, we have better ways of producing pork.  However, this was not the core reason why God forbade pork.  God commanded it for separateness and purity.  Of setting a people apart for himself, to be a light to the nations from whom would come the Messiah.  

But are there any health benefits to keeping Kosher?  

Yes and no.  

I’ll start with no. 

The Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe ate a very beef-fatty, chicken-fatty diet that wasn’t very healthy.  It’s from them that we see delis with pastrami sandwiches big enough to feed a small village. Just go visit the Chasids of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and you’ll see this still today.  This was simply their adaptation of the dietary laws to the region in which they were living. 

However Sephardi Jews eat a much healthier diet, a Mediterranean diet, of chicken and fish, grains and vegetables and legumes.  

I’ve met a growing number of health-conscious Jews who combine keeping kosher with healthy eating and an environmental consciousness.  I know one Orthodox Rabbi who hasn’t eaten meat in 30 years, along with his wife.  And the WJC has a vegetarian kosher kitchen. 

 Growing up, we didn’t keep kosher.  My mom, a convert, wanted to keep kosher, but my dad wasn’t interested.  Still, it was kosher style.  There were certain things we just didn’t bring into the house and didn’t eat much of.  That combined with my mom being a picky eater with a lot of sensitivities.  I ate some bacon and sausage but was unaccustomed to eating ham or pork chops or frying things in pork fat.  I was also unaccustomed to the beefy, cheesy casseroles that are so common across the south and the Midwest.  Or pepperoni pizza.  Putting cheese on a burger still feels wrong, and from the time I was a child, I learned to say, "no cheese" at the drive through. 

Even my non-Jewish cousins, who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line, witnessed the southern fried diet.  A couple of my uncles grew up on it and had to make some changes in midlife at the behest of their doctors.  One cousin of mine no longer eats beef or pork, another is married to a secular Jewish vegetarian, and the others, too, have moved to the west coast and fry things in EVOO.  And yet another is gluten free.  

 These are health habits that have served me well.