We Don’t Do That

…and the Why Doesn’t Matter

Can I have a cheeseburger? Chicken parmesan? Asked no religious Jew, ever.

Everyone worth a grain of kosher salt knows you don’t mix meat and milk products.

But, why not?

Folks generally don’t analyze the why, or how it got to the no. There’s basic stuff everyone knows. Everyone religious keeps — and kept — the kosher diet rules. It’s the law. It’s forbidden. You risk anything conceivably bad if you don’t abide. Things are more predictable and you’re safer, healthier, and cared for if you do. You’re following the see-it-all, know-it-all, king-of-the-universe’s rules, as conveyed by royal messengers.

OK, but, assuming you believe in god, and that IT issued commands, did IT actually forbid this? Where? When? To whom? And why? How did it become law? What does the forbidden cheeseburger have to do with the bible and its god?

Those questions don’t really get asked. They’re irrelevant to everyday life – and might be disruptive.

Maybe you’ll cover it one day in your studies. Maybe not.

For the religious Jew, there’s genuine fear of life-and-death consequence and real quality-of-life ramifications — and a direct link between what they do and a god who commands, cares, judges, rewards and punishes. The technical anchors that might support all this, however, are often assumed, rather than examined.

But hey. Let’s excavate. Let’s pick up one rock and see what we find. As entertainment. Let’s tour a rabbit hole.

“Do not boil a kid goat in the milk of its mother.” So reads the biblical text. Three times. (Twice in Exodus. Once in Deuteronomy).

We’ll ignore how the bible became the bible and assume, for this exercise, that god dictated it. Whenever that happened, about a thousand years later, bible studiers and discussers — aka rabbis — explained that sentence to mean not only do not boil, but don’t heat together in any way. And not only a kid goat, but any goat. And not only a goat, but any mammal. And not only in its mother’s milk, but in any mammalian milk.

Moving creatively right along, they jumped from their extrapolation of not being allowed to cook or heat together, to not mix in any way together, to not eat the combined product. Then they added that one may not eat the two together at all, regardless of whether they were ever heated together. And any product or byproduct of milk, not just milk. So, all cheeses, whey, butter, yogurt… all included in the prohibition. These evolutions created a kitchen-changing reality for the chosen people: separate dishes and cutlery for meat and milk products, to avoid inadvertently combining or eating even an iota of the two together.

Things jumped the rails again — from mammalian meat to birds. Chicken or turkey may not meet dairy. From there, it jumped further. Not only can you not eat meat or poultry together with dairy substance, you can’t even have the two in your digestive system at the same time. So, wait six hours after eating meat or chicken before eating any dairy.

You still with me?

It went from a biblical prohibition against perhaps copying some pagan fertility or agricultural ritual of boiling kid goat in its mother’s milk, and nothing to do with diet at all, to a prohibition against eating a slice of cheese within six hours of a cold slice of turkey roll.

It’s a good thing no one peels off the label that says DO NOT to see who actually said what, when, based on what.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that knowledge, understanding and source were beside the point. What feeds religious community and adherence isn’t information — it’s belonging. It’s herd mentality, and not necessarily mindless. Just simple human preference: the desire to connect and stay connected.

Thinking is lonely work. Obedience is communal. The brain sighs with relief at not having to decide what’s important - especially when everyone around you is making the same non-decision.

Someone hands you a valued family heirloom — a time-tested how-to-live manual, sandwiched between traditional tales of timeless, magical, miraculous guardian angels. It’s got heft, and curled worn edges. It smells like your grandparents’ house. Everyone you love is already holding one - comfortably.

It’s got plenty of prescribed good things to do.

We do this. We don’t do that. Who needs to know why? Knowing has already been done — by people you trust, people you miss, people who loved you before you could think.

Following the rules doesn’t feel like obedience. It makes you safe. It makes things predictable. You eat what we eat. You wait when we wait. You belong.

Just don’t ask how a goat turned into a cheeseburger.

Curiosity is not kosher.