The Yiddish word milchig means milk or dairy. Of course we use it every day in Jewish life. Are you milchig or fleishig? Do you want to have dairy or meat? And we might hear someone answer – I don’t want to be fleishig. If you are fleishig you have to wait up to six hours in order to eat milchig, depending on your custom. So, it’s off to the pizza place for milchig!
Now the pro of being milchig is that you don’t have to wait any time at all to eat fleishig. You just wash your mouth out with water and then have fleishig. Some actually wait thirty minutes.
But where being milchig is a great thing is on the holiday of Shavuot. On Shavuot we eat milchig. The cheesecake and the blintzes come out.
Not to fear – some people still insist that to have a seudat mitzvah you must have meat so they will start with milchig and then wait thirty minutes and wash their mouth out with water and then have a full fleishig meal. So, I guess the moral of the story is – you can have your milchig and eat fleishig too. Just don’t do them together!