Milk and meat in Jewish law

Mixtures of milk and meat (Hebrew: בשר בחלב‎, basar bechalav, literally "meat in milk") are prohibited according to Jewish law. This dietary law, basic to kashrut, is based on two verses in the Book of Exodus, which forbid "boiling a (kid) goat in its mother's milk" and a third repetition of this prohibition in Deuteronomy.

According to the Talmud, these three almost identical references are the basis for three distinct dietary laws:

Background

There are three categories of Kosher food – Meat, Dairy and Parve/Pareve.

Explanation of biblical law

The rabbis of the Talmud gave no reason for the prohibition, but later authorities, such as Maimonides, opined that the law was connected to a prohibition of Idolatry in Judaism.Obadiah Sforno and Solomon Luntschitz, rabbinic commentators living in the late middle ages, both suggested that the law referred to a specific foreign [Canaanite] religious practice, in which young goats were cooked in their own mothers' milk, aiming to obtain supernatural assistance to increase the yield of their flocks. More recently, a theogonous text named the birth of the gracious gods, found during the rediscovery of Ugarit, has been interpreted as saying that a Levantine ritual to ensure agricultural fertility involved the cooking of a young goat in its mother's milk, followed by the mixture being sprinkled upon the fields, though still more recent sources argue that this translation is incorrect. Another explanation is the separation accommodates significantly the large percentage of the population, particularly those who are aging, who are lactose-intolerant.