Word Prompt – PAREVE – Maayan Zik

Pareve is generally used to mean a neutral food, neutral being a food that doesn’t contain meat or milk, so fruit, fish, nuts, eggs, etc. Pareve food can be eaten alongside either food categories of meat or milk.

Pareve is a bridge, as it allows continued eating in between the two categories of meat and milk. Let’s say you finished eating meat and then need to wait six hours to have something of milky content, if there was no pareve category, you’d have to fast for six hours until you were released from the bounds of meat. No starving here on this bridge to the other side.

Pareve could reference keeping the peace. Neutral conversations maintain the peace, but never really get anywhere significant.

Diplomacy only works if you don’t maintain pareve and know when to be milky or meaty. There is a time for pareve and a time for meat and a time for milk. Sometimes we need to step off the pareve fruit platter of it all and delve into some deep, rich conversation. Are you milky? Meaty? Pareve? What’s your stance?