On today’s daf, we read a beraita in which Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda says in the name of Rabbi Shimon:
It is prohibited to eat meat cooked in milk, but it is permitted to derive benefit from such a mixture.
In other words, it is forbidden to eat a cheeseburger, but not forbidden to sell it for a profit. Rabbi Shimon derives the prohibition from Deuteronomy 14:21, which says “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” The prohibition to eat such a mixture is included in the prohibition to cook it. But how does he figure that it is acceptable to sell the mixture? By juxtaposing it to Exodus 22:30: “And you shall be holy people to Me; therefore you shall not eat any flesh that is torn by animals in the field, you shall cast it to the dogs” (Exodus 22:30):
Just as there, with regard to an animal torn by animals, eating it is prohibited but deriving benefit from it is permitted, so too here, with regard to meat cooked in milk, eating it is forbidden but deriving benefit from it is permitted.
This is gezerah shavah, a frequently used interpretive technique which allows for the application of the details found in one verse to a matter found in another based on a common element shared by both verses — in this case, the assertion that the Israelites are a holy people.
This tractate is not primarily about kashrut. Hang in there — in the Daf Yomi cycle, Chullin is next, and we will learn a lot about kashrut there. So the Gemara does not launch into a discussion about Rabbi Shimon’s teaching. As a result, we might assume it is normative. However, as we will learn on Chullin 115b, the school of Rabbi Yishmael teaches otherwise:
The Torah states three times: “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” One verse serves to teach the prohibition against eating meat cooked in milk, one serves to teach the prohibition against deriving benefit from it, and one serves to teach the prohibition against cooking meat in milk.
The school of Rabbi Yishmael derives three prohibitions — cooking, eating and benefiting — from the three appearances of the law in Torah. It is this interpretation, and not Rabbi Shimon’s view, that becomes Jewish law. This is not fully apparent from the discussion on today’s daf. That’s because the Talmud, while interested in exploring Jewish law, is not always focused on determining Jewish law.
There is a fundamental principle of Jewish law that you cannot paskin (decide the law) from the Talmud. This is because the Talmud is more interested in the process through which we explore the law than it is in determining the normative positions. In our day, this means that poskim (legal decision makers) draw from the centuries of legal literature that sifted through the talmudic material, debated how it should be applied, and determined what the law should be. These deciders don’t always agree with one another either, but some of them are considered to have normative views by the majority of Jews.
As we continue to comb our way through the Talmud, we’ll encounter just as many opinions that did not become normative practice as we do ones that did. And while the Gemara sometimes makes clear which is which, more often than not it doesn’t.
If you are interested in what the law is and looking for something to replace Daf Yomi when this cycle is completed in June 2027. There are calendars for some of the major legal codes as well.
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