MILCHIG MYSTERY

Shira Smiles Pre Shavuot shiur 2013/5773

Summary by Channie Koplowitz Stein

            The tradition of eating milchig/chalavi, dairy, on Shavuot is firmly established along all segments of the Jewish community, although the manner of its fulfillment varies from group to group. Nevertheless, the question remains, why on Shavuot specifically, rather than on other holidays, do we eat dairy in addition to eating a meat seudah during the yom tov. (Customs vary as to when and how the different kinds of meals are eaten.)

            During the time of the Beit Hamikdosh, a special korban was offered on Shavuot that could not be offered at any other time. This offering uniquely consisted of two loaves of leavened bread, chametz, unlike the matzo that was offered at all other times. While this may explain having two meals, it does not necessarily explain why one meal should be dairy. We will discuss that question a little later. Let us begin by discussing the uniqueness of this offering. Rav Reiss in Paamei Moed explains that as this offering of two loaves of bread is the only offering specific to this holiday, unlike the Pesach offering, for example, we eat two separate meals using one  loaf of bread for each meal (whether or not you “bentch” between them) as one way of commemorating this special offering.

            This raises a further question: How does an offering of two loaves of bread in contradistinction to matzo convey the essence of Shavuot? Rav Reiss continues with reference to the Sefas Emes. Bread, as well as milk, represents nourishment. For forty years in the desert, after our miraculous redemption from the enslavement in Egypt, our nourishment came directly as a gift from heaven through the manna. We were passive through the entire process. Matzo that we took with us as we miraculously left Egypt, like the manna, is the bread of pure faith. But bread is different; it does not spring already processed and baked from the earth but requires our work to separate the wheat from the chaff, to grind the wheat into flour, to mix it with other ingredients, and finally to bake it. Bread therefore represents our human limitation and the necessity of working on our faith in the natural world. Therefore, the day that Hashem gave the completely spiritual Torah to mankind on the physical earth must be represented by an offering that symbolizes both the spiritual world itself and the work we do to elevate the physical world to a spiritual level.

            Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen cites the Medrash to make a wonderful point on this idea. The Medrash relates that when Moshe went up to the heavens to bring the Torah down to Bnei Yisroel, the angels objected. They wanted to retain the Torah for themselves, saying that it should not be given to impure and fallible mankind. Hashem instructed Moshe to respond to the angels. In the debate that followed, Moshe clearly showed that the laws in the Torah could only be observed by mankind who existed in a physical world of parents, desires, and other manifestations of physicality. Only human beings could fulfill the laws and statutes of the Torah precisely because they were physical, fallible entities. The angels relented, and Moshe brought the Torah down to Bnei Yisroel. Because our receiving the Torah on Shavuot was directly dependent on our being physical entities, the offering for this day had to symbolically comprise the concept of human involvement in the spiritual process of bringing the offering, hence chametz, leavened bread and not matzo.

            In this context, Rabbi Reiss cites the Binat Yisroel in explaining why there are no specific rituals connected to the holiday of Shavuot as there are for Pesach and Succoth, other than eating the festive meals. That is because our whole being, the body itself, must be immersed in the symbol of the day, Torah. We must eat, say brachot, enjoy the day, always elevating our physical activities and pleasures to a spiritual level. Shavuot is the day when the spiritual meets the physical as the Divine Torah came down to the earthly world.

            From this perspective, we can understand the explanation Halekach Vehalebuv give for the destruction of the Beit Hamikdosh.  The Prophet Yirmiyahu gives the reason for the exile as Bnei Yisroel not walking in the ways of Torah. The Gemarrah specifies that this means that Bnei Yisroel did not make the blessing over Torah study. How could this be possible? Did they not say this blessing as we do every morning? However, we do not repeat the blessing if we go about our business during the day and resume some Torah study in the evening even as we repeat blessings if we eat a fruit in the morning and another later in the day. The reasoning behind this halachic ruling is that although we may not be involved in Torah study from a holy text, our day to day life must be imbued with thoughts of Torah. We say blessings, we weigh our actions and choices to see if they conform to Torah values and laws. As such, we are always involved in some form of Torah study and need not recite a new bracha when we return to textual study. However, if the people did not reflect on Torah as they went about their daily activities, they should indeed have made another blessing at night. The problem was not omitting the blessing; the problem was that Bnei Yisroel did not go through their day with the parameters of Torah in their minds. It is within this framework that two loaves of bread were offered on the altar, symbolizing the synthesis of the mundane and spiritual worlds.

            Now let us tackle the issue of dedicating one of those loaves to dairy. Among the better known reasons for dairy on Shavuot is that immediately after the Torah was given, Bnei Yisroel were obliged to keep kosher, yet they had no special pots for meat or dairy. While they could eat dairy without cooking, they could not do so with meat, so they ate only dairy on that first Shavuot, and we commemorate this by eating some dairy today. Another interesting reason is to honor Moshe who brought us the Torah from God Himself and spent the rest of his life teaching it to Bnei Yisroel. How does eating dairy celebrate Moshe? Moshe was born on the seventh of Adar. His mother hid him for three months, which coincides with the sixth of Sivan, the date of Shavuot. On that day, Moshe was put into the basket on the Nile and retrieved by Pharaoh’s daughter. However, according to the Medrash, the infant refused to nurse from any of the Egyptian women. At the suggestion of Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter hired a Jewish woman to nurse him, his mother Yocheved, from whom he drank chalav Yisroel, kosher milk.

            Let us explore more fully some other reasons for eating dairy on Shavuot. In Tehillim the Torah is compared to honey and milk under your tongue. Indeed, many people incorporate honey, as well as milk, into their Shavuot menu. Rabbi Aryeh Leib Hacohen Shapira writes in Chazon Lamoed that when we come before God at our final judgment we will be asked two questions: Did you exert yourself in Torah study, and did you handle your business transactions with honesty and sincerity. These two questions seem to be contradictory by implying that you can either spend your time studying Torah or be involved in business. However, Rabbi Shapira reconciles the two questions by showing that working on Torah means immersing yourself in Torah so much you become a walking Torah, handling every life transaction according to Torah dictates. In this way, the two questions actually complement each other.

             Torah is also compared to honey – milk and honey under your tongue. Honey is also food and can provide physical nourishment, but a mother gives of herself, her very being, in addition to physical nourishment when she gives milk to her child. One can absorb Torah intellectually and become a student and scholar of information, or one can live and breathe those doctrines. A professor will impart information intellectually, but a Rebbe’s purpose is to create a ben Torah, a son of Torah who is tied emotionally to Torah and its way of life. When we teach Torah, we must provide more than honey; we must provide emotionally life giving milk.

            Along these lines, Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro, the Bnei Yissaschar, writes that milk represents chessed, loving kindness. The verse in Tehillim says, “lehagid baboker chasdecha – (It is good to praise Hashem) and to relate His loving kindness in the morning.” The initials of the three words of that phrase, in reverse order spell out chalav(b) milk. And Rabbi Bachya explains in Chovot Halevavot that the greatest kindness Hashem did for us was to give us the Torah as a path to interacting and communicating with Him, or we would need to embark on a spiritual journey like that of our forefather Avraham. The Torah is the user’s manual for mankind as he tries to navigate his world.

            Therein lies the recipe for transmitting Torah. There was a secret ingredient that made food delicious for Antoninus Caesar at the home of Judah HaNassi. It was the Shabbos. (There are many variations to this story.) But it was not the day itself, but the love and anticipation of the spiritual connection with which the woman prepares the Shabbos food that imparts the special flavor to the soup or the cholent. If we want to impart our Torah values to our children and to others, we must include the ingredient of love in our preparations.

            The whole essence of Torah is love says Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz in Daas Torah. Hashem gave us the Torah in a tremendous act of love. As we say in the Yom Tov liturgy, “Blessed is He … Who has chosen His people with love.”

            Rabbi Nevenzahl explains a variation of this synthesis that the idea of chalav should generate. In blessing Zevulun, Yaakov Avinu says, “ulven shiniyim mechalav – and the white of your teeth from milk.” Rabbi Nevenzahl points out that mechalav is a compound word, comprised of moach, mind, and lev, heart. Our Torah learning and observance requires the involvement of both the mind and the heart. It is not enough to learn Torah intellectually, says Rabbi Pincus; one must also feel Torah emotionally. As Moshe exhorts Bnei Yisroel before his death, “You are to know this day and take it to your heart …,” we must make an emotional connection to our intellectual knowledge of Hashem and His Torah. How do we do this? It must start with us, with the desire to want this connection, says Rabbi Gedalia Schorr, and if we do not yet feel that desire, we must at least recognize that we are lacking something, and we must want to want that connection.

            Hashem created the world through the attribute of judgment. That world was a purely intellectual world, continues Rabbi Schorr. It is a world that is completely controlled. But the real world does not exist in full control of human beings. So Hashem added the element of rachamim, mercy, the emotional component. Hashem wants us to desire this connection, to feel His love through the precious gift He gave us, and to reciprocate that love. We can take isolated spiritual moments and cherish them deep in our hearts and make them rungs in our ladder to heaven while our feet are still planted on the physical earth.

            On Shavuot Hashem judges us in how much spirituality we will achieve for the year, says Rabbi Solomon in Matnas Chaim. We have counted 49 days to elevate ourselves. With the only mitzvah of the day being to eat a festive meal, we try to show Hashem that we want to elevate the pleasures of this world with our Creator so that the entire physical world becomes spiritual.

            May Hashem soon grant us that we merit partaking of the milk and honey of Torah in the land that flows with milk and honey.