Lait et viande dans la Loi juive

The mixture of meat and dairy (basar bechalav) is forbidden according to Jewish law. This dietary law, basic to kashrut, is based on two verses in the Book of Exodus, which forbid "boiling a (goat) kid in its mother's milk" and a third repetition of this prohibition in Deuteronomy. The rabbis of the Talmud gave no reason for the prohibition, but later authorities, such as Maimonides, opined that the law was connected to a prohibition of idolatry in Judaism. Obadiah Sforno and Solomon Luntschitz, rabbinic commentators living in the late Middle Ages, both suggested that the law referred to a specific Canaanite religious practice, in which young goats were cooked in their own mothers' milk, aiming to obtain supernatural assistance to increase the yield of their flocks. More recently, a theogonous text named the birth of the gracious gods, found during the rediscovery of Ugarit, has been interpreted as saying that a Levantine ritual to ensure agricultural fertility involved the cooking of a young goat in its mother's milk, followed by the mixture being sprinkled upon the fields, though still more recent sources argue that this translation is incorrect. Some rabbinic commentators saw the law as having an ethical aspect. Rashbam argued that using the milk of an animal to cook its offspring was inhumane, based on a principle similar to that of Shiluach haken. Chaim ibn Attar compared the practice of cooking animals in their mother's milk to the slaying of nursing infants. In 2008, it was theorized that the proscription against combining milk and meat had its origins in the practice of using clay vessels for food storage and preparation. The porous walls of clay jars retained bacteria that functioned as a starter culture to produce yogurt. However, using such a jar to store or prepare meat would turn it sour, thereby ruining it.