Operation Inspiration
With the exception of perhaps Chanuka, no time of the year screams “Milchigs!” like Shavuos. Yes, we don’t eat meat during the Nine Days (unless you’re a Sefardi and Tisha B’Av is a Sunday so you’re eating meat the whole week, in which case you really deserve those thirty days of Selichos…) but that week doesn’t scream “Dairy!” It sort of offers up a muffled, anguished whimper of surrender… “:::dairy:::” as opposed to the triumphant clarion call of blintzes and cheesecake on the holiday which celebrates Kabolas HaTorah.
I don’t need to get into the various explanations for the custom of eating dairy on Shavuos. Whether it was a reminder of the Shtei HaLechem, the two loaves brought as a korban on Shavuos, or if it was because the Jews’ pots were effectively ‘treif’ and could not be used once they got the Torah, is not germane to the point I’ll try to make here today.
What I’d like to introduce to you, which may not be a foreign concept to many of my readers, is the idea of a fleishophobe. No, they’re not actually afraid of eating meat. They probably very much enjoy meat. What they’re afraid of, though, is what they might miss BECAUSE they’ve eaten meat. For example, you’re cooking Friday morning and you’re putting up what you hope will be a delicious chicken soup. After it’s been cooking a few hours, you taste it to see if it has enough salt. Yum! It’s perfect.
Five minutes later, your daughter comes home with a hot pie of pizza from your favorite pizza shop. It was the last one to come out of the oven before they closed – and you can’t eat it because you had a spoonful of soup. Oh man! You weren’t even eating a bowl of it. You just tasted it to make sure it was good for Shabbos, and now you’re being punished and you can’t eat the pizza!
You, my friend, have just experienced the kind of food FOMO that creates fleishophobes. Thinking about a nice chef salad for lunch? What if you want a cup of coffee in the afternoon? Want to eat a hot dog at an afternoon baseball game? Maybe opt for the potato knish just in case you stop for ice cream on the way home. When you’re not sure what the future will bring, and you don’t want to miss out, you may very well hold yourself back from something you want, even if the other thing never materializes.
I have a brother-in-law who is not a fleishophobe. He has no problem getting fleishig at ten in the morning. Not because he’s Dutch and would only wait one hour. He waits six. But he also knows what he likes and he will eat those chicken wings for breakfast if that’s what he’s in the mood of. Yes, it’s kind of weird, but rather brave in a way too.
When you go after what you want, and know that it’s worth missing other things, you’re exhibiting a sort of strength that is admirable. When you have the conviction to make your decisions and stand by them, that’s a fantastic trait to have because you can put it to good use.
When Hashem asked the nations of the world if they wanted the Torah, they asked, “What’s in it?” When they realized they wouldn’t be able to do the things they were accustomed to doing, they turned it down. Not so Klal Yisrael. We said Naaseh V’Nishma, we will follow the Torah and learn what You want from us. Let’s look at this in terms of the fleishophobe.
The other nations were afraid that once they accepted the Torah, they would lose out. True, if you’re blessed by Hashem with success you don’t need to resort to theft or murder as they did for their livelihoods, but they were unsure of what the future held. Maybe accepting the Torah would put them in a conflict with their desires later on so they didn’t indulge in accepting it.
However, the Jews understood that the meat and potatoes of being the people of Hashem; of having the Torah to guide our lives, outweighed any potential ice cream or treats that might come down the line. They recognized the wisdom and sure pleasure of accepting the Torah and were not concerned about what they might have to give up later.
On Shavuos, when we eat milchigs, we’re celebrating the fact that Torah is liberating. It liberates us from the worries of “what if?” because we know we’re having the best of all worlds. There is a custom to eat first dairy and then meat. It could be a reference to the two loaves of bread of the korban, but it could also be our way of commemorating our acceptance of Torah, knowing that we could have our (cheese)cake and eat it too.
The only thing we have to lose because we follow the Torah is the uncertainty and regret of always thinking we’re going to miss out on something better. We know we’ve got the greatest situation on earth and beyond, and maybe that’s one of the best reasons to eat milchigs on Shavuos.
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