The Custom of Eating Dairy Foods on Shavuot

Indulgent cheesecakes, assorted cheese boards and gorgeous milky desserts compose  a significant portion of our Shavuot preparations and celebrations – and the question is, why? In this article, we will explore the meaning behind the milk and its multifaceted links to Shavuot.

The word for milk in Hebrew, chalav, has the gematria of 40, corresponding to the number of days Moshe went up to learn Torah on Har Sinai. One of the names (brought in Tehillim) for Har Sinai is Gavnunim, which is linguistically related to the word gevina, cheese. Moshe was fed his mother’s milk on Shavuot, the day he was rescued from the Nile, after he rejected the milk of the non-Jewish women. Moshe, Mount Sinai and Shavuot all seem to point towards some kind of spiritual connection to dairy. 

The basic explanation for the custom to eat milky foods was formed by the halachic context of the time. Following the laws taught at Sinai, the Jewish people were obligated to observe kashrut. This entailed obtaining and checking shechita knives as well as kashering pots and other utensils used to prepare meat. All this had to be postponed as Matan Torah took place on Shabbat when melacha is forbidden. On that first Shavuot in history, the Jewish people could not cook meaty foods as their pots were treif so the minhag of milky foods became established. 

The Torah has 613 mitzvot; 248 positive and 365 negative. We are taught that each day of the year corresponds to one of the 365 negative mitzvot. The mitzva which corresponds to the day of Shavuot is the prohibition to cook a kid in its mother’s milk. To highlight our connection with this mitzva, we specifically refrain from meat. In fact, in the Torah, the pasuk which commands us to bring bikurim (the first fruits, brought on Shavuot) is juxtaposed with the prohibition to cook a kid in its mother’s milk. The two are interwoven. 

The difference between milk and honey is that milk is a necessity and honey is a luxury. Milk represents basic nutrition and honey symbolizes the sweet extras. Before moving into the land of Israel, we needed the encouragement of the Torah that there is “milk,” that our basic needs will be provided for. After establishing this, we are told there is honey too. In contrast, with Torah we are first told of the honey and then the milk.

Sephardim have the minhag to eat both sweet and milky foods on Shavuot. This is based on the pasuk in Shir Hashirim (4:11) which describes Torah as “honey and milk underneath your tongue.” Our indulgence in sweet meats and Malawa is a solidifying of our view that Torah is the sweetest entity in the world; it is tasty and pure like honey and milk.

Interestingly, Rav Mendel Weinbach compared the description of the land of Israel (flowing with milk and honey) with that of the Torah (honey and milk.) The difference between milk and honey is that milk is a necessity and honey is a luxury. Milk represents basic nutrition and honey symbolizes the sweet extras. Before moving into the land of Israel, we needed the encouragement of the Torah that there is “milk,” that our basic needs will be provided for. After establishing this, we are told there is honey too. In contrast, with Torah we are first told of the honey and then the milk. More important than knowing that Torah will fulfil our needs is knowing its sweetness. It is for this reason that we daven each morning v’haarev na, that Hashem should make Torah sweet. 

The Iglei Tal debunks a widely spread misconception that learning Torah lishma, the purest and highest form of learning, means learning for learning’s sake and not deriving enjoyment. The Iglei Tal explains that in fact learning for the love of Torah itself, because it is enjoyable, is the higher level of Torah lishma. While the Torah is “milk,” full of practical benefit, the Torah is best learnt first as “honey”, as an enjoyable pleasure. It does not lessen the level of the learning if a person enjoys learning, conversely, it elevates it.

Rebbetzin Tarshish explains that the idea of Eretz Yisrael being compared to milk and honey comes from the comment of a Tanna who visited Eretz Yisrael and saw the dripping of goat’s milk and the oozing of fig honey and exclaimed “now I know what the pasuk means!” The oozing of the fig honey is a symbol of abundant, natural sweetness. This applies both to the land of Israel as well as to Torah. 

Rebbetzin Tarshish unpacks the meaning of goat’s milk in the following way. She explains that goat’s milk is produced from blood inside the goat, which is then converted to milk by processes in the animal’s body. In fact, goat’s blood, the ingredient to produce goat milk, is in fact the most similar blood to human blood. This is why Yosef’s brothers slaughtered a goat when they told Yaakov that Yosef had been killed; blood of a goat most closely resembles blood of a human. If this is the case, then the goat milk is in fact a reference to a mother’s milk. Just as goat’s blood produces goat milk, human blood produces mother’s milk. What is unique about a mother’s milk is that it contains all the nutrients that the baby needs. There is no other natural substance in the world which has this property. 

Mother’s milk, therefore, is the most fitting mashal for Torah, because Torah contains every spiritual nutrient we need. The mitzvot are exactly what our neshama needs, each pasuk sustains us like a mother’s milk sustains a baby. For this reason, we have milky foods on Shavuot. To acknowledge and celebrate that Torah is the only reality in the world which fills all of our needs so perfectly. 

A final thought is brought by the Ol’lot Efraim. He notes that both honey and milk emerge from sources of spiritual impurity. Honey is created by bees. While milk, as discussed, is produced by blood. Both bees and blood are forbidden to be consumed. Yet, when the bee makes its honey and the blood transforms into milk, the results are tahor, completely pure and fit to eat. This is the sweet power of Torah. We come to learn Torah in our imperfect state, mirroring the state of the bees and blood. Through immersing ourselves in Torah, we merit to completely transform our tamei status into spiritual perfection. Hashivenu avinu l’toratecha. This Shavuot, may we not only eat milk and honey, but become milk and honey.