Health - From The Sources
“Land of Milk and Honey”
We all know that this is part of what defines us eternally as a nation. When you recite it there isn’t a person around not familiar with it. But was it always this way? Or did something precede it?
The First Taste
When the nation of Israel received the Torah at Mt. Sinai, it included special instructions about how to slaughter meat, make it kosher and eat it. Until then, the people of Israel did not use these traditions, and that is why their meat, along with the cooking pots, became unkosher from the moment they received the Torah. The only option left was to eat dairy that did not require special Kashrut processes. Why didn’t the people of Israel slaughter new animals? Or make the pots kosher by pouring boiling water on them and cook meat? The answer is because the revelation of Sinai took place on the Sabbath, a day when there is no slaughtering or cooking.
So it is quite incredible to discover, that the revelation of Sinai was the first time the people of Israel ate dairy. There is also a general prohibition about eating “a part cut from a living creature” (part of an animal that is not dead), which seemingly includes dairy, a product of the live animal. However the prohibition to eat “a part cut from a living creature” was from the seven Noah Commandments that the people of Israel abided by before the revelation of Sinai (that apply to all people since the days of Noah). So upon receiving the Torah that described the land of Israel as the “land of milk and honey” (Exodus), the people of Israel were allowed to eat dairy products. In other words, the same day that meat became forbidden, dairy was allowed. They consumed dairy foods during that first Feast of Weeks, and we also eat them today during the Shavuot holiday.
The Second Taste
There is a Torah proverb that says “honey and milk under your tongue” (Song of Songs). Just as we can dine on milk and it can nourish the human body (in breastfeeding), the Torah provides the spiritual nutrition required for a person’s soul.
The Third Taste
The numerology for the word milk is 40. We eat dairy products during the Feast of Weeks to commemorate the 40 days Moses remained on Mt. Sinai and learned the entire Torah (Moses spent an additional 40 days on Mt. Sinai to pray for forgiveness for the Golden Calf sin, and then 40 days for a third time until he returned with the Tables of the Covenant).
The numeric value of milk, 40, has additional meaning since 40 generations passed until Moses put the Torah into writing, until the generation of Ravina and Rav Ashi who wrote the verbal Torah’s final edition, the Talmud.
The Fourth Taste
According to the Zohar, each of the 365 days in the year corresponds with one of the 365 precepts in the Torah. Which precept corresponds with the Feast of Weeks? The Torah states: “The first of the firstfruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk”. This is because the first day to bring firstfruits is the Feast of Weeks (which the Torah calls Feast of Firsts), the other half of the passage that refers to not eating milk with meat – is a negative commandment corresponding to the Feast of Weeks. So as a result in the Feast of Weeks we eat two meals, one dairy and the second meat, and are careful not to mix the two, and in that way carry out this commandment.
Another point is that we are commanded not to use the same loaf of bread in the meat meal and then again in the dairy meal, in case some meat stuck to it. That is why we eat two complete meals, meat and dairy – because we have to use two loafs of bread. This corresponds to the special two-loaf sacrifice that is sacrificed at the temple on the Feast of Weeks.
The Fifth Taste:
Mt. Sinai is also called the hunchback (from the word givnot in Hebrew) mountain because of the summits. A mountain of disappearing peaks. That is why the word cheese in Hebrew, gvina, reminds us of Mt. Sinai. Apart from that in numerology cheese is 70 and reminds us of the 70 faces of the Torah.
The Sixth Taste:
Moses was born on the seventh day of the month of Adar, and remained at home for three months with his family before being placed in the casket on the Nile River on the sixth day of Sivan.
Moses was saved by Pharaoh, who adopted him and took him into his home. But a problem arose: what to feed the baby? In those days there were no milk substitutes for babies so when the birth mother was not found or could not breastfeed a wet nurse was hired. In Moses’ case, he refused to suckle from Egyptian women. The Talmud explains that his mouth had to remain pure, because he was to converse with the Divine Presence in the future. Finally Pharaoh’s daughter found a woman he agreed to suckle from – Jochevet, his biological mother!
Look at the irony of fate: Pharaoh’s murderous decree against Hebrew babies was specially intended to prevent a new generation of Israeli leadership. And what happens in the end? Moses, the Hebrew leader and great savior of Israel, was raised and educated right under Pharaoh’s nose, in Pharaoh’s home, and at Pharaoh’s expense! With his mother Jochevet even getting paid a salary ….
Eating dairy during the Feast of Weeks commemorates this amazing phenomenon in Moses’ life, which began on the sixth day of Sivan, the day that the Feast of Weeks begins.
