Like me, some of you may have pondered the significance of dairy on the festival of Shavuot. I have mixed feelings about the various explanations I have heard for this association:

• Since the rules about not mixing milk and meat had just been revealed at Sinai, there was no time for the Israelites to buy a second set of dishes so they had to have a dairy meal to celebrate the giving of the Law.
• Using gematria, the letters in the Hebrew word chalav (milk) add up to 40 - the amount of days the people waited at Sinai (or the number of years they wandered in the desert)
• As long as the Israelites followed the words of Torah, they would inherit the land flowing with milk (and honey)
• Just as Torah has been compared to water, so it has been compared to milk (i.e. “Milk and honey are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4:11).

It’s this last idea on which I’d like to focus the remainder of this essay. When it comes to Torah as milk, the following Talmudic passages some up the values behind this metaphor nicely:

“More than the calf wants to nurse, the cow wants to give milk.” (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 112a).

“Why are words of Torah likened to water, wine and milk? …Because just as these three liquids may become unfit for consumption only through inattention [when they are left out to spoil], so words of Torah are forgotten only through inattention.” (B. Talmud, Ta’anit 7a-b)

What I love about these two quotes is that they envision the revelation of Torah to be active partnership between God and the Jewish people. If you’ve ever witnessed (or participated in) the act of nursing, you know that the infant gets nourishment while the mother gets joy, and that it takes considerable effort on both their parts to achieve the desired end result. Revelation in this context is an ongoing relationship that cannot be neglected by either party. We avoid “spoilage” by seeking to constantly renew our engagement with sacred text. As we grow and our perspectives change, our understanding of Torah is enriched, and we experience the new sweetness of fresh milk under our tongues.

Bonus links:

-There has been a lot of buzz lately about the health benefits of raw milk. Even the Talmud has gotten in on it:

Our rabbis taught: There was once a certain pious person who suffered from heart trouble, and the physicians said the only hope for his recovery was for him to drink fresh milk every morning. A goat was therefore brought to him and fastened to the leg of the bed, and he sucked from it every morning. (B. Talmud Baba Kama 80b)

In more recent coverage, The Brooklyn Paper has an article about a raw milk “crime wave” in Bay Ridge.

-The New York Times also had a milk article recently, on the reasons, logistics, and politics of the current surge in organic milk production in the U.S.