Not Cooking Kid in Mother’s Milk

Question

In Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21 States: ” Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

What is the explicit reason for this instruction of not cooking a goat this way and given as a command when G-d gives it THREE times?

Thank you for the research…I hit a dead end in mine.

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Answers

  1. The Just Ask! - AskTheRabbi.org Team

    In Exodus 23:19, 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21 it is written: “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.”

    The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Chullin 115a states: Why did the Torah repeat the prohibition of meat and milk three times? To teach us that it is forbidden to cook meat and milk together, to eat meat and milk mixtures and to derive benefit from such mixtures. And why did the Torah express all three prohibitions using the expression “cook”? In order to teach us that it is only forbidden if they are cooked together.

    Although it is really one of the Chukim, the statutes that are beyond human comprehension, the commentaries offer some reasons for it. It is related to the prohibition against eating blood, “Do not eat the life with the flesh.” The mixture contributes to negative character traits. Pagans specifically mixed meat and milk in their rites. Therefore, we are ordered to distance ourselves from pagan practices. The pagans used it as a method of improving their crops. Kids were cooked in their mothers’ milk as a “magical” formula. This reasoning is similar for the prohibitions against mixing seeds, wool and linen etc.

    Another reason that is mentioned is that it gives us a sensitivity to the fact that meat comes from a dead animal, and a life cycle had to be interrupted to provide the food.

    Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team