Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.
Why are Jews allowed to drink milk? It never occurred to me that the question needed to be asked until last week, when it arose in the first chapter of Tractate Bekhorot, which Daf Yomi readers began during Passover. “Bekhorot” means “firstborn”: Coincidentally, the word appears prominently in the Haggadah in the list of the 10 plagues, which culminates in makat bekhorot, the plague that killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. In the Book of Numbers, that plague is given as the reason why the firstborn sons of Jewish mothers, as well as the firstborn male offspring of kosher animals owned by Jews, are consecrated to God: “On the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified for Me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast.”
Continue reading "Daf Yomi: Blood, Milk, Honey, and the Right Way to Sacrifice a Donkey" at...
