Basar v'Cholov v'Pesach

The laws of kashrut for Pesach are very strict. It intrigues me that, both yesterday and today, the Torah reading ended with the admonition (the verses from Exodus being identical and coming after similar instructions about the festivals) against boiling a kid in its mother's milk, which appears once more in a verse in Deuteronomy where the first half is different but the second half the identical admonition. Rabbinic Judaism sees these three mentions as prohibiting not only cooking but also eating and deriving benefit from any mixture of meat and dairy (Karaite Jews interpret the prohibition more narrowly). The rabbis even extend the prohibition against eating (not the other two) to mixing poultry and dairy.

The laws of which animals are treyf are fairly easy - don't eat pork, shrimp, lobster, etc. The laws of kosher slaughter and kashering the meat through salting are complex, but if you're not doing it yourself, you just look for a hechsher on the package or in the store. But the complex laws of mixtures of meat and dairy are such that, to get basic smicha, rabbinic ordination, I spent most of the year, in two classes a week, learning specifically about these laws, which also gets into separate sets of dishes, etc. But this complexity very much falls on the household keeping kosher, not just rabbis, etc., in a way the laws of kosher slaughter and, these days, salting to kasher meat do not.

 I’ve already written about my views of basar v’cholov, meat and dairy, a link to which I will post in the comments. But I think that, because of the complexity of these laws and the way that complexity is similar to the complexities of the laws of chametz (leaven) for Pesach (and kitniyot if you were chosen to be Ashkenazi and zocheh to follow those minhagim – perhaps not the way most look at it, lol!), that there is a connection. I don’t yet have it figured out – but at the very least, I think that when we think about the laws of basar v’cholov, we should remember Pesach and the redemption from the narrow places of Egypt/Mitzrayim and see ourselves as if we ourselves were there.

One of first sections of the storytelling in the Haggadah for the Passover Seder is the story of five rabbis who stayed up all night at the Seder talking about the Exodus, until their disciples came to tell them it was time to recite the morning Shema, three paragraphs from the Torah that are recited twice a day as one of the two most essential parts of the liturgy. The second half of the third paragraph of the Shema also recounts the redemption from Egypt. Indeed, one is obligated to recall the Exodus every day. I think that, similarly, this story comes to teach us that while Pesach is the time we think about our redemption in a special way – but we must think about it every day. We observe certain dietary restrictions during Pesach, but the prohibition against mixing meat and dairy is meant to remind us of the prohibition against chametz and all it teaches.