Rules

“You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk” (Exodus 23:19). Over the centuries, this very specific rule about goats is elaborated into the Jewish dietary law that forbids the mixing of all kinds of meat and any dairy product, largely through the Talmudic procedure of building a “fence around the law”—essentially, adding some extra rules for padding so that the treasured command from the Torah will not be inadvertently transgressed. Some commentators have argued that the laws of Kashrut are based on health considerations—for example that pork was taboo because in the days before refrigeration, it was so often the source of food-borne illness. More traditionally, these laws are regarded as chukim; that is, laws that cannot be explained rationally.

This verse comes to teach us
that the kid may be a calf;
and the liquid, mixed by the dairy
contains the milk of many mothers
so cannot be combined
with the kid or the calf;
that boiling is beside the point;
and that the rule is broken
before we ever eat, by the act
of boiling; that the prohibition
is key to staying our hand,
to knowing the creatures as kin;
and that the law is given
without a reason, practice
for living in the unruly world.