It’s all about separation
By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF
Contrary to current political correctness, in all matters especially regarding species – our maker is not an integrationist. Like it or not, the Torah preaches separation. My point is not to condemn or promote integration, but to point out that the rulebook of the world is largely reflective of nature. The Creator is consistent.
Man is man, woman is woman, Israelites must remain Israelites, surrounded by fences that keep out the pagan Canaanites and their competing gods. Separation is the golden rule. And out of this comes seemingly insignificant legislation like the ban on milk and meat, shirts of mixed textiles, plowing your field with two breeds. And interestingly enough, He strikes the same note in nature. Mixed species are as infertile as stone. And the Torah, to us, underlines His concept used to frame His Creation. Separation, distinction.
For many years, scholars have examined the separation Halacha in the Chumash and replied with puzzled faces and a one-word comment: Why? Milk and meat rules, mingling of wool and linen in your shirt, plowing your field with an ox and a donkey. And then there’s, you shall not sow your vineyards with different kids of seed. These are forbidden. Seemingly, they make no sense. Why the ban? Many scholars say it symbolized the wider ban imposed by the Creator on our isolation from the Canaanites in our new found land. The Book emphasizes this over and over. Don’t join the Canaanite Club. Stay away from their food, their customs, their women.
Well, there is the embarrassment of Judah, our namesake, marrying a Canaanite. Bet they didn’t use a chupah. But the field was limited and maybe she claimed to be a Benjamite and a local Hadassah member.
And if your anticipated meal didn’t chew cud and have split hooves (like separate hooves – get it? Always separation!) it is forbidden unto you. You can’t even plant two species of plants in the same field.
Where is the rationale for this divine legislation? One school of Rabbis says, “Simple”. Who needs logic? If HE, the Creator of all, says, “Don’t”, that’s enough. Another bunch of Jewish scholars looks for rationality and says it’s analogous to the moral partition mandated between G-d’s chosen people and the pagan societies of the Jebusites, Moabites, Philistines, and all those unenlightened heathens that inhabited the Land of Canaan. All those restrictions kept us apart – sometimes physically, sometimes culturally. It’s clear that we shouldn’t belong to the same club or drop over to Joe Philistine’s house for a roast beef and cheese sandwich, especially if Joe wears a skirt and his wife wears pants. Again, a violation founded upon separation.
The above makes good sense to this scribbler and to many rabbis. Commonsensically, we can understand these strictures if the goal is to dramatize separation.
Israel must remain a nation apart. But their meaning becomes transcendental, even more meaningful when we reflect that in G-d’s natural world the same logic applies. The hybrid is rarely fertile; mules born of a horse and donkey can’t reproduce. And lions and tigers, if they can mate at all, produce a barren animal. The same is true in the plant kingdom.
Don’t wait for your hybrid watermelon seed to burst into green. May as well wait for apple seeds to yield magnolia blossoms. It seems as though G-d, himself, in His Creation, honors those 3000-year-old rules He levied upon our ancestors. G-d’s will; paralleled in Torah and on earth.
