Anonymous asked Staff ago I know that the kashrut laws which deal with mixing meat and milk stem from the command not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk, and that this presents the vast humanity in the approach of kashrut, an approach which is indeed nice and correct.
I wonder: what does a chicken have to do with milk? No chicken’s mother ever produced milk, so why does the prohibition extend to there?
And if we’re on this topic, when I was making my family schnitzel in the traditional manner I started to wonder if I were committing as grave a sin as mixing meat and milk, the sin of cooking a mother and child together. Logically, it would seem clear that there is some connection between the chicken and the egg, and to make the bread crumbs stick to the breasts, I dip them in egg. Why was this not prohibited?
Could it be that the whole issue of mixing meat and milk is nonsense?
Gila
jsadmin Staff answered 20 years ago
Dear Gila,
Your question is an appropriate one and yes, the prohibition against cooking poultry in milk is of rabbinic origin, to prevent people from becoming confused and eventually cooking mammal meat with milk.
But your quest for the “logic” behind the commandments has a fundamental flaw which is common: the observance of commandments is meant to educate the religious public simply to obey G-d’s command! Therefore the majority of commandments cannot be analyzed “logically” or using any other instrument of human reason; they are to accustom the religious to obey commands with no reason or explanation. This is what the Sages said of the command about the red heifer: “It is a decree by G-d, and we have no permission to consider it.” Maimonides went on at greater length: “Meat and milk, the wearing of shatnez and laws of forbidden sexual contact — these laws and others like them are ones which G-d called ‘My decrees,’ saying ‘These are My decrees which I have made for you, and you have no permission to consider them'” (Eight Chapters by Maimonides, chapter 6).
Sincerely,
Daat Emet