A.
ראשית בכורי אדמתך תביא בית ד' אלוקיך לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו: טיאמר ד' אל משה כתב לך את הדברים האלה כי על פי הדברים האלה כרתי אתך ברית טאת ישראל(“The first fruits of your land shall you bring [to] the house of Ha-Shem your G-d; you will not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. And Ha-Shem said to Moshe, Write for yourself these words, for accord-ing to these words I have cut a covenant with you and with Israel;” XXXIV, 26-7).
The midrash evidently sees in their juxtaposition and the use of the conjunction “and” in the second verse justification of some connection between the two. The midrash begins by recounting that, when G-d made known His original intention to grant the Torah to Israel, the mal’achei ha-sharéth, the “ministering angels,” raised objections: Why should G-d grant so sublime a gift to mere physical flesh and blood? תנה הודך על השמים (”Bestow Your splendour upon the heavens!”). Now that Israel had sinned with the Golden Calf, one can only imagine how much more strongly they clamoured against the idea.אמר להם הקב"ה, אתם הם המקיימים את התורה?! תינוק מישראל מקיים יותר מכם! אברהם הניא לכם בשר בחלב ואכלתם! "(“Said to them the Holy One, Blessed is He: You are the ones who will be keeping the Torah?! A small child of Israel keeps more than you! Avraham brought you meat and milk, and you ate [it]!”’ פסיקתא דרב כהנא סוף פרשה כ"ו".)
The reference, of course, is to the three angelic visitors who came to Avraham whilst he was recovering from his circumcision, where we read: ויקח חמאה וחלב ובן הבקר אשר עשה ויתן לפניהם כו' ויאכלו' (“And [Avraham] took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared and put [them] before [the angels]... and they ate;” Genesis XVIII, 8).
What is striking to me, though, is G-d’s defense of Israel by citing the behavior of Israel’s children. Children, after all, are not obligated in any of the mitzvoth; their ability to understand is limited, and they are still being taught. Why did He not cite instead the conduct of Israel’s gdolim, our spiritual giants who are so painstaking and self-sacrificing in observing the mitzvoth?
The question seems especially stark in light of what G-d is recorded as having told these mal’achim in a different but similar context: וכי לא אשא פנים לישראל שכתבתי להם בתורה והם מדקדקים על עצמם על כזית ועד כביצה"ואכלת ושבעת וברכת את ד' אלוקיך' (“And shall I not lift up My countenance for Israel, for whom I wrote in the Torah ‘and you shall eat and be satisfied and bless Ha-Shem your G-d’ [Deuteronomy VIII, 10] and they are exacting on themselves [to say grace] over an olive’s volume or an egg’s;” :ברכות כ::).
B.
In discussing the parameters and ramifications of the Torah’s prohibition of eating meat together with milk (basar b’chalav), derived in part from the first of our two verses above, the Talmud notes: רבי יוסי הגלילי אומר, נאמר "לא תאכלו כל נבלה" ונאמר "לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו", את שאסור בנבלה אסור לבשל בחלב "(“Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili says, It is said ‘you will not eat any carrion [nevéla]’, and it is said [in the very same verse] ‘you will not cook a kid in its mother’s milk’ [both Deuteronomy XIV, 21]; whatever is prohibited [to eat] because of nevéla, it is forbidden to cook with milk;” .חולין קי"ג. במשנה, ע"ע בר"ן שם".)
So we see that Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili discerns an organic relationship between these two prohibitions from the fact that they are both clauses of the same verse.
Now, the halachic definition of a nevéla is any kosher animal or fowl which was slaughtered not in accordance with the laws of shchita, kosher slaughter (' עיי' רמב"ם הל' מאכלות אסורות פ"ד ה"א). With this in mind, we turn elsewhere in the Talmud, and find: "כי ירחק ממך המקום אשר יבחר ד' אלוקיך לשום שמו שם וזבחת נבקרך ומצאנך. אמר ר' עקיבא, לא בא הכתוב אלא לאסור להן בשר נחירה. בתחלה הותר להן בשר נחירה. משנכמסו לארץ נאסר להן' , (“’For the place where Ha-Shem your G-d will choose to place His name will be distant from you, and you will slaughter of your cattle and of your flock’ [Deuteronomy XII, 21]. Said Rabbi Aqiva, "The verse is only coming to forbid to [Israel] besar nechira, for at first besar nechira was permitted to them. From when they entered the [Holy] Land, it was forbidden them;” חולין י"ז. וע"ע רמב"ם הל' שחיטה פ"ד הי"ז שמובא שם להלכה ).
Besar nechira is literally meat produced by stabbing an animal. As Rabbi Aqiva understands the situation which existed in the desert, shchita was originally mandated in the desert to apply to animals offered in sacrifice in the Mishkan, and therefore to their meat (shlamim). The problem here, of course, is that people are not necessarily always metaphysically fit, often through no fault of their own, to partake of holy meat. Yet, they might still wish, or even have to, eat meat. This non-sacrificial meat is known by such technical terms as chullin (as opposed to qodashim, “holy” meat) or besar ta’ava (meat which one desires to eat).
As the Ha’âméq Davar notes in a comment on the verse cited by Rabbi Aqiva, “distant” does not necessarily refer to spatial distance; after all, if it did, the inhabitants of Yerushalayim would not have been permitted shchitath chullin, becdause they had the Temple on their doorstep, as it were. Rather, it refers to richuq ha-ma’ala, “distance in [metaphysical] status,” which could result from numerous circdumstances.
So, in the desert, when people were unable to partake of shlamim, the dispensation was that did not have to engage in shchita; any means of slaughtering the animal which would drain the blood away from the meat, such as stabbing it in a main artery, would suffice. Only after entering Eretz Yisra’él was the mitzva of shchita broadened to include not only shchitath qodashim but also shchitath chullin.
As Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili points out, however, this also has implications for the prohibition of basar b’chalav. Besar nechira, after all, is technically a nevéla, as we have established. If there is an issur d’Oraitha, a prophibition in the written Torah, of basar b’chalav only in connection with those things for which there is also an issur nevéla, and if in the desert there was no issur nevéla concerning besar nechira, then arguably the issur basar b’chalav in the desert was in effect only concerning the strictly literal meaning of the verse, that is, concerning a kid in its mother’s milk. This prohibition was broadened at the same time as the scope of shchita was broadened to include chullin as well as qodashim.
So it would appear that in the desert, eating a calf together with generic butter or milk, the violation of which G-d accused the mal’chim, would arguably have been permitted the average Israelite in the desert. To what, therefore, is G-d referring when He says that even a tinoq, a small child of Israel would be more observant than the mal’achim had been?
C.
The dispensation of besar nechira, and therefore of basar b’chalav outside the scope of a kid in its mother’s milk, obtained only for the forty years that Israel were in the desert. But why were they in the desert for forty years? Eretz Yisra’él is not that far away from Egypt.
In the Book of Numbers, we learn of the terrible incident of the m’ragglim, the spies whom Moshe had sent to make a reconnaissance of the Promised Land, and who returned much shaken by what they had found: a fortified country peopled by warlike giants. As a result, most of them issued a defamatory, despairing report on the country and their chances of success. Only two of the twelve dissented, Yehoshua bin Nun and Kalev ben Yefunneh.
Unfortunately, the defeatist attitude of the m’ragglim infected the bulk of the people, and the seeds of panic were swiftly sown and rapidly bore fruit. As a result, G-d decreed: “In this desert your carcasses will fall, and all of you were numbered, according to your whole number, from twenty years of age and older, [will die here].... And your children, whom you said would be for spoils, I shall bring them onward, and they will know the land....” Numbers XIV, 29-30).
Virtually all of those people who had known the dispensation of besar nechira and basar b’chalav would not see the Holy Land, and the full extension shchita and the concomitant issur. But their children, many of whom would be reaching majority only as they were about to cross into the Holy Land and embark on the Divinely ordained campaign of its conquest, would know it.
And they would be much more observant than those mal’achim had been, so many years before.
D.
Two things present themselves as lessons to be learnt from this. '
The first, and seemingly most esoteric, is the fact which it presents that in the world of ultimate truth, which surrounds and contains our world, and which is inhabited by the mal’achim, there are no temporal bounds. The mal’achim who visited Avraham were fully aware of what the Torah would ordain, perfectly sensitive to the metaphysical consequences of engaging in a physical violation of the Torah, and nevertheless allowed themselves to be negligent and fail. Only if all of this is so, could G-d have chided them eating basar b’chalav during their visit to Avraham.
The second goes to the heart of the matter of why the dispensation should have changed on Israel’s entry to the Holy Land. They were about to engage in several years of strenuous warfare against their Canaanite foes. Many times in the near future, Israelite soldiiers would be tmé’ei méth, metaphysically defiled because of unavoidable contact with the dead, and yet would now be most in need of the strength and nourishment to be derived from eating meat. Why should this new and apprently onerous extension of shchita come into effect now?
The answer is that in order to succeed when embarked on a holy cause, it is far better to proceed from a position of purity. An Israelite nation who eaters of nev’eloth, who, even theoretically, could engage in basar b’chalav as the issur was intended to be understood, would have been starting off with a deficit of merits derived from mitzva observance which was not, strictly speaking, necessary.
רצה הקב"ה לזכות את ישראל לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצות (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, wished to confer favor on Israel, therefore He multiplied for them Torah and mitzvoth;” מכות כ"ג: במשנה). An object example of which we find in shchitath chullin and the issur basar b’chalav.
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