18 Mishpatim

The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of your God ה'. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו, it is usual for goats to give birth to two kids at the same time, and it was customary for people to slaughter one of them right away. Seeing that mother goats have an abundance of milk (expecting to nurse at least two young kids) they used the excess milk to boil the young kid in after it had been slaughtered. (Proverbs 27,27 “the goat’s milk will suffice for your food, the food of your household and the maintenance of your maids.”) It is something distasteful, revolting, something akin to gluttony, to consume the mother’s milk together with the young animal that this milk was intended to nourish. We find a parallel in the legislation not to slaughter mother animal and her young on the same day, as well as the prohibition not to take the young chicks while the mother bird is present. (Leviticus 22,25 and Deuteronomy 22,6-7) The Torah teaches you these matters as a matter of elementary culture, i.e. respecting life. Seeing that on the festivals many animals are consumed, the Torah included this legislation in the paragraph dealing with other aspects of these festivals. If the consuming of these animals is prohibited under such circumstances, how much more so are mixture of milk and meat prohibited as discussed in Chulin 113.