Do Not Cook a Calf In Its Mother's Milk

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

1040-1105 Northern France

לא תבשל גדי THOU SHALT NOT COOK A KID — A calf and a lamb also are comprehended under the term גדי, for גדי means nothing more than a young tender animal, as you may gather from the fact that you will find in several passages in the Torah that the term גדי is used and that the writer felt it necessary specially to explain it by adding after it the word עזים, as, e. g., (Genesis 38:17) “I will send forth a גדי of the goats”; (Genesis 38: 20) “the גדי of the goats”; (Genesis 27:9) “two kids of the goats (גדיי עזים)”. This fact serves to show you that wherever גדי is mentioned without further description the term implies also a calf and a lamb. — In three different passages the law לא תבשל גדי is written: once for the purpose of prohibiting the eating of meat-food with milk-food, once to prohibit us from deriving any other benefit (besides eating) from such mixture, and once to prohibit the boiling of meat with milk (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 23.19.2; Chullin 115b).

c. 1085 – c. 1174, Northern France

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.

1255-1340 Spain

לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו, “do not boil a kid in the milk of its mother.” This verse, identically worded, appears three times in the Torah (compare Exodus 34,26 and Deut. 14,21). Our sages (Chulin 115) interpret this to mean that the prohibition is threefold: 1) not to boil it together. 2) not to consume such a mixture. 3) not to use it in any other form, sell, it, etc.

Maimonides, in his Moreh Nevuchim third part chapter 48, writes concerning this prohibition that seeing it was a custom of the pagans to eat milk and meat in their temples on their festivals, the Torah forbade this practice and wrote it twice in connection with the three pilgrimage festivals in order to remind us not to behave on these festivals as did these pagans. The Torah is at pains to implant in us the awareness of how radically different the observance of festivals for our God is from the way the pagans worship their deities. This is what Maimonides writes as the reason for this commandment. Although I have not quoted his words verbatim I have presented his meaning faithfully.

It is fairly clear that these various reasons are not an adequate explanation for such a basic legislation. Maimonides did not mean to advance this as the deeper meaning of the legislation. He only wanted to show the questioner that this commandment could be understood in terms of weaning the Jewish people from pagan practices.
The fact is that the entire legislation belongs to the category of חקים, the statutes for which no logical reason can be found, just as we cannot fathom a reason for the legislation of the red cow. The true meaning of these statutes will not be revealed to us until after the arrival of the messiah.

mid-13th century France

לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” The reason this verse has been inserted here is that generally speaking during the pilgrimage festivals a great amount of meat is consumed, the Torah reminds us that this law is not to be ignored.