With Shavuot soon upon us, mention the word “milchig” at this time of year and what pops up in my mind is visions of French onion soup brimming with melted cheese, blintzes with cheese, caprese salad, cauliflower au gratin and of course cheesecake. (You now are privy to some of my yomtov menu items!)
I am often asked what the connection of dairy is to Z’man Matan Torateinu, the time of the giving of the Torah, and it gives me a chance to point people to a number of midrashim. A familiar one teaches us that after receiving the Torah, B’nei Yisrael could not eat meat, as all their utensils and pots were treif and could not be used to slaughter or cook the meat. Hence they ate dairy until they could learn the rules regarding kosher meat utensils.
Another teaching that stands out rests on the analogy not of water to Torah but with a twist: Torah is like milk! The same way milk nourishes us, so too Torah does. We learn this from the valuation of the Hebrew word for milk, chalav. When we add up the numerical value of the letters, the gematria is 40 – the amount of time Moshe spent on Har Sinai awaiting the Torah!
For us, as we count down the days to Shavuot and the plethora of dairy we will be indulging in, let’s use our milchig food as a symbol to reconnect ourselves to Torah – and of course to Eretz HaKodesh, a land filled with milk and honey.
