A Reason for the Prohibition against Basar b'Cholov - Mixing Milk and Meat

Rabbinic tradition sees mitzvot as falling into one of three categories in regard to how rational they are. Mishpatim are rational and obvious – the mitzvot to not murder and to not steal fall into this category. Chukim, on the other hand, are mitzvot for which there is no rational explanation. Kashrut (dietary laws) are an example of this. Eidot are an intermediary category – they are commemorative mitzvot that are not immediately rational but commemorate an event in a way that does make easy rational sense. Eating matzah on Pesach is an example of this, since it commemorates the matzah the Jews leaving Egypt had to eat because they did not have time for the dough to leaven.

However, just because there seems to be no rational explanation does not mean that many in the rabbinic tradition did not seek to find them for the chukim. The Rambam (Maimonides) taught that all of the mitzvos, even the chukim, have a rational basis – although for the chukim, this is not readily discernible. He attempts to find such explanations for many of them and encourages others to do likewise and even holds that when human reason fails, it merely means that the rational basis eludes our limited reason, not that the chok in question lacks a rational basis. (I am indebted to Rabbi Isadore Twersky, zt”l, the Talner Rebbe of Boston, who taught about this in classes I took in divinity school as we explored Moreh Nevuchim, the Guide to the Perplexed.)

Basar b’cholov, the prohibition of mixing meat and milk, is a chok and several explanations have been advanced for why this is commanded. The Rambam said that it was prohibited because cooking a kid in its mother’s milk was used in idol worship. Others proposed that it was prohibited because of health concerns or because it was considered cruel – and the cruelty is the reason I had always assumed. The seventh Lubavitcher rebbe compared it to kilayim, planting different species of plants together – we are taught not to mix different types of food together.

In learning the halachot of basar b’cholov, another reason presents itself to me. It is perhaps a particular lesson about cruelty. Abusive parents, rather than nurturing their children, in the process of raising them, pervert the parental duty to raise their children to be their own person. Instead of giving them the tools (including ethical and religious values) to become healthy adults, they use the children to meet their own narcissistic needs, not seeing them as persons created b’tzelem Elokim (in the image of G!d) in their own right. This process of abuse is very destructive and harms the abused children in ways that last long into their adulthood and usually their entire lives. Sexual abusers turn their children into sexual objects, parents who rage turn their children into emotional and/or physical punching bags, narcissists attempt to destroy their children’s innate personalities in order to make them images of themselves. In all of these cases (and other cases of parental abuse), the nurture, symbolized by milk, becomes instead an instrument of destruction, symbolized by cooking the child and ending its independent existence by making it food.

By observing the halachot of basar b’cholov, may parents be more mindful to embrace their holy opportunity for nurture and reject abuse of their children.