Avodah Zarah 029

10:
Rabbi Yehoshu'a told Rabbi Yishma'el that the reason why the sages had ordered a blanket prohibition on non-Jewish cheeses was because the non-Jews used sour milk taken from the carcass of a freshly slaughtered animal to act as a starter for the solidification process.

11:
Rabbi Yishma'el does not dispute this presumably well-know fact, but rather questions why such milk should be considered to be not kosher. To clarify: his position is that the milk that is inside a mother's body is a separate entity and is not to be equated with the animal herself. The carcass of an animal slaughtered by a non-Jew is forbidden to Jews; but why should not milk taken from that carcass be permitted if the animal itself was intrinsically kosher (and only disqualified by the manner of its slaughter)? If the milk is kosher regardless of the status of the animal it came from why should these cheeses not be considered to be kosher?

12:
Rabbi Yishma'el now seeks to prove his claim by quoting an ancient ruling. This explanation is not for the squeamish! The ruling says that a priest who has just slaughtered an animal in the Bet Mikdash, if he can bring himself to do so, may remove any milk from the mother's body and drink it! Now that animal, having been slaughtered as a sacrifice, belongs to God; so appropriating any part of the animal for profane purposes is considered sacrilege. The fact that the ancient ruling permits the drinking of the milk of such an animal proves, according to Rabbi Yishma'el, that the milk and the carcass are two distinct entities.

13:
Having established his point Rabbi Yishma'el now continues. Sacrilege is a much more serious offence than eating from a non-kosher animal. So, if the milk of an animal dedicated to God is permitted how much more should it be obvious that milk taken from the carcass of a non-kosher animal should be permitted, since in any case it is kosher as demonstrated.

14:
Rabbi Yehoshu'a does not dispute this reasoning; not does he accept it. Instead, he offers a second reason why non-Jewish cheeses have been prohibited. "It is because they solidify it with the stomach of calves given to idolatry."

15:
However, Rabbi Yishma'el questions this argument too. We learned in the previous mishnah as follows:

If the cheeses were solidified in the stomach of an animal that had been slaughtered by a non-Jew then they are utterly forbidden, as Rabbi Me'ir says in the mishnah. How could the rest of the sages have permitted deriving material benefit from such a situation?

16:
Rabbi Yehoshu'a does not answer this challenge either, but seeks to draw the younger sage's attention away from the topic, as we shall see.

To be continued.

In AZ 026 I quoted the investigations of Gloria London in Cyprus concerning porous ceramics. Ed Spitz writes:

Is it possible that the prohibition of mixing milk and meat in clay containers was the origin of our present prohibition of mixing meat and milk in laws of kashrut?

I respond:

From the purely halakhic point of view this cannot be. The prohibition against mixing dairy and meat is derived from the triple requirement of the Torah [Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21]:

However, many of the commentators have been at a loss to explain why the Torah prohibits this. Rambam, for example, suggests that the reason might have been because boiling a kid in its own mother's milk was a heathen practice. We have no way of knowing whether Gloria London's discovery can afford a better reason. One thing, however, is clear: the separation of dairy and meat (in certain circumstances) is not unique to the Jewish people.

In AZ 027 we learned that Grape-pips and the husks of non-Jews are forbidden. Amnon Ron'el asks, succinctly:

Why?

I respond, succinctly:

Because of Yeyn Nesekh (see AZ 024).