Did Rabi Yose haGlili eat chicken with milk? (No)

There is a certain piece of trivia that has become one of those things that everyone knows, or at least everyone Jewish above a certain level of education.¹ You hear it everywhere, for example, I was recently listening to a shiur and someone asked the following question:

Like אלו ואלו or the תנורו של עכנאי, it’s not hard to understand why this titbit has become part of the library of common knowledge: it’s titillating without being salacious, it seems to indicate a remarkable pluralism in ancient Judaism, and it touches obliquely on an issue that lies just beyond the bounds of polite orthodox Jewish conversation, namely that Jews have not taken their place among the nations famed for their culinary culture and that this is not entirely unrelated to our dietary restrictions.

The knowledge that Rabi Yose haGlili cooked poultry with milk is not, however, without its psychic stresses. If you found out that your neighbour had eaten a chicken cheeseburger that would be a close to certain indicator that he was OTD and yet Rabi Yose haGlili did it, not once, but habitually and, apparently, so did everyone in his neighborhood. The unavoidable implication of this factoid is that halacha is radically arbitrary and unstable to the extent that even the most basic and obvious prohibitions were routinely violated by the highest halachic authorities.

There are two ways that orthodox Jews typically deal with this knowledge. One is to to make out of necessity a virtue and conclude that where there’s a halachic will there’s a halachic way. Sure, two dudes under a huppa may be a novelty, but Rabi Yose haGlili literally ate treif. The other is to recoil in the face of the chaotic abyss and seek refuge in mesorah or something called the ‘halachic process’, or simply to embrace obstinate do-nothing hyper-conservatism. Sure, you might have a list of cogent reasons as long as your arm to do this or to stop doing that, but if you go down that route, you’ll be eating chicken kievs before the decade is out.

Obviously, for a reactionary Jew, neither approach is desirable, so what does one do with the knowledge that Rabi Yose haGlili ate poultry and milk together? The answer is that you do nothing, because he didn’t. It can be stated with almost complete certainty that Rabi Yose haGlili never once ate בשר עוף בחלב or permitted anyone else to do so. In the rest of this post I’ll turn off the the slightly annoying, jocular tone hitherto adopted and explain why.

Rule no. 1: Always arrange the sources chronologically

First, we should emphasize that the common belief about Rabi Yose haGlili’s culinary eccentricities is incorrect, but is certainly not baseless. In fact, the Talmud Bavli reports it quite explicitly:

במקומו של רבי יוסי הגלילי היו אוכלין בשר עוף בחלב
Hullin 116a

However, when we look at the relevant sources in chronological order, a picture emerges that forbids us to take this a straightforward rendering of the truth. Obviously, following this method is a necessary preliminary to understanding almost any historical question, but it often requires a prohibitive investment of time and effort. Fortunately, milk and meat is not an especially big topic in Hazalic literature, allowing us to review the sources comprehensively, which we will now do starting with the first halacha in the eighth chapter of M Hullin:

כָּל הַבָּשָׂר אָסוּר לְבַשֵּׁל בְּחָלָב, חוּץ מִבְּשַׂר דָּגִים וַחֲגָבִים. וְאָסוּר לְהַעֲלוֹתוֹ עִם הַגְּבִינָה עַל הַשֻּׁלְחָן, חוּץ מִבְּשַׂר דָּגִים וַחֲגָבִים. הַנּוֹדֵר מִן הַבָּשָׂר, מֻתָּר בִּבְשַׂר דָּגִים וַחֲגָבִים. הָעוֹף עוֹלֶה עִם הַגְּבִינָה עַל הַשֻּׁלְחָן וְאֵינוֹ נֶאֱכָל, דִּבְרֵי בֵית שַׁמַּאי. וּבֵית הִלֵּל אוֹמְרִים, לֹא עוֹלֶה וְלֹא נֶאֱכָל. אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי, זוֹ מִקֻּלֵּי בֵית שַׁמַּאי וּמֵחֻמְרֵי בֵית הִלֵּל. בְּאֵיזֶה שֻׁלְחָן אָמְרוּ, בַּשֻּׁלְחָן שֶׁאוֹכֵל עָלָיו. אֲבָל בַּשֻּׁלְחָן שֶׁסּוֹדֵר עָלָיו אֶת הַתַּבְשִׁיל, נוֹתֵן זֶה בְצַד זֶה וְאֵינוֹ חוֹשֵׁשׁ:

We see that the there was a dispute around the turn of the millennium (למנינם) between the schools of Shammai and Hillel regarding having poultry and cheese on the table at the same time. Unusually, the school of Hillel had the more stringent opinion and forbade it. The second introductory statement makes clear that the stringent opinion is the halacha. What there is absolutely no dispute about – nor even a hint of a dispute about – is that it is forbidden to actually eat chicken and cheese at the same time or to cook them together.

The next halacha describes two leniencies:

צוֹרֵר אָדָם בָּשָׂר וּגְבִינָה בְּמִטְפַּחַת אַחַת, וּבִלְבַד שֶׁלֹּא יְהוּ נוֹגְעִין זֶה בָזֶה. רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל אוֹמֵר, שְׁנֵי אַכְסְנָאִין אוֹכְלִין עַל שֻׁלְחָן אֶחָד, זֶה בָּשָׂר וָזֶה גְּבִינָה, וְאֵין חוֹשְׁשִׁין:

The first statement teaches us that it is permitted to wrap up any form of meat and cheese in the same package as long as they do not touch each other. The second statement, in the name of Raban Shimon ben Gamliel, adds that the prohibition on having cheese and meat on the same table, which was limited in the first halacha to the table upon which one eats, can be further limited to the kind of environment where it is likely that one will come to eat them together. Two strangers can sit next to each other, one with beef and one with cheese without worry.

In the Tosefta we find yet another lenient opinion, in this case specifically referring to poultry:

ר”א ברבי צדוק אומר העוף עולה עם הגבינה על השולחן אפיקולוס

Exactly what Rabi Eliezer Bar Tzadok was permitting is not clear, since the meaning of the term aphikolos is uncertain. At any rate, however, we can see that he intends some further leniency regarding the circumstances under which cheese and poultry can be placed on a given table at the same time. Finally, the Mishnah (halacha 3) brings up this issue one more time:

הַמַּעֲלֶה אֶת הָעוֹף עִם הַגְּבִינָה עַל הַשֻּׁלְחָן, אֵינוֹ עוֹבֵר בְּלֹא תַעֲשֶׂה:

Again, it is not entirely clear exactly what the Mishnah wishes to convey here since one would not violate a biblical prohibition by bringing any form of meat onto the table with cheese, even if you were to eat it, because the biblical prohibition only applies to meat and dairy that were cooked together. What is clear, however, is that amongst the tanaim there was, first, a substantial degree of debate on the specifics of meat and milk being placed together on different kinds of table and, secondly, a separate discussion of special leniencies that applied to poultry in such a situation, the basis of which was a general understanding that eating poultry and milk is not an offence of the same degree of severity as eating animal-meat and milk. What is conspicuous by its absence is any discussion of whether actually eating poultry and milk together is forbidden in the first place. Every statement on the topic takes this as a given.

Turning to the Talmud Bavli (Hullin 104b), we find another relevant statement:

תנא אגרא חמוה דרבי אבא עוף וגבינה נאכלין באפיקורן הוא תני לה והוא אמר לה בלא נטילת ידים ובלא קינוח הפה

Rabi Aba was a third generation Babylonian amora, so his father-in-law was presumably of the second generation. He taught a statement of apparently tanaitic origin regarding a further leniency that applied to poultry and milk. The term aphikoren could mean many things, but Agra himself specified that it referred to two leniencies: one who has eaten poultry does not need to wash his hands or clean his mouth before eating dairy products or vice versa. (This will, of course, surprise many readers, but it is the plain meaning of his statement and was interpreted as such by Rashi; it remains to be adequately explained how a mandatory waiting period came to be applied to poultry, see here).

Based on the Mishnah and Tosefta alone, one would not necessarily recognize this to be an extra leniency at all, since no such practices are prescribed after eating any kind of meat. The gemara goes on, however, to quote tanaitic sources for these stringencies before moving on to discussing waiting periods between milk and meat, which appears to be an innovation of the amoraic period, though it is not impossible that it had tanaitic precedents.

At any rate, it is clear that, so far, no-one has so much as hinted that it might be permitted to eat chicken and milk together. The record clearly shows an ongoing debate about how strictly to apply the various rules of בשר בחלב to poultry, but there is absolutely no indication that this debate came anywhere close to actually permitting its consumption. It would be quite shocking to learn, therefore, that Rabi Yose haGlili held such an opinion. It should not be very surprising, then, that when we find Rabi Yose haGlili quoted in the Mishnah (halacha 4), he does not, in fact, say anything of the sort:

בְּשַׂר בְּהֵמָה טְהוֹרָה בַּחֲלֵב בְּהֵמָה טְהוֹרָה, אָסוּר לְבַשֵּׁל וְאָסוּר בַּהֲנָאָה. בְּשַׂר בְּהֵמָה טְהוֹרָה בַּחֲלֵב בְּהֵמָה טְמֵאָה, בְּשַׂר בְּהֵמָה טְמֵאָה בַּחֲלֵב בְּהֵמָה טְהוֹרָה, מֻתָּר לְבַשֵּׁל וּמֻתָּר בַּהֲנָאָה. רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אוֹמֵר, חַיָּה וָעוֹף אֵינָם מִן הַתּוֹרָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר, לֹא תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ, שָׁלשׁ פְּעָמִים, פְּרָט לְחַיָּה וּלְעוֹף וְלִבְהֵמָה טְמֵאָה. רַבִּי יוֹסֵי הַגְּלִילִי אוֹמֵר, נֶאֱמַר (דברים יד), לֹא תֹאכְלוּ כָל נְבֵלָה, וְנֶאֱמַר (שם), לֹא תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ. אֶת שֶׁאָסוּר מִשּׁוּם נְבֵלָה, אָסוּר לְבַשֵּׁל בְּחָלָב. עוֹף, שֶׁאָסוּר מִשּׁוּם נְבֵלָה, יָכוֹל יְהֵא אָסוּר לְבַשֵּׁל בְּחָלָב, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ, יָצָא עוֹף, שֶׁאֵין לוֹ חֲלֵב אֵם:

This a rare example of the Mishnah not only providing textual exegesis in support of a rule, but actually recording a dispute about which text a particular rule derives from. The Mishnah starts by stating a general rule that the prohibition on cooking and benefiting from בשר בחלב only applies to meat and milk from kosher animals. The explanation for this is as follows. The biblical law לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו forbids a Jew (i) to cook meat and milk together as well as (ii) to eat the resulting mixture or (iii) to benefit from the mixture in some other way (all of which, clearly, is known only by exegesis or tradition). The law, however, only applies to kosher animals. One who cooks a baby pig, even in its very own mother’s milk, then proceeds to eat half and sell the rest to his neighbour does not violate the biblical law, though he does, of course, violate the prohibition on eating pork. Rabbinically, the law is extended also to non-kosher animals, but not entirely. It is forbidden to eat pork fried in butter, but not to cook it or benefit from it.

In justification of the above, the Mishnah quotes a d’rasha of Rabi Aqiva, expressed in his characteristic terminology of כלל ופרט. The Torah repeats the law לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו three times. According to Rabi Aqiva, one of the reasons it does so is to exclude certain categories of animals from the prohibition, namely (i) non-kosher animals (ii) non-domestic animals (חיה) and (iii) birds. Finally, we meet Rabi Yose haGlili who provides an alternative source-text. The last verse on the section dealing with forbidden animals in Devarim (parshat re’eh) opens with the prohibition of eating נבלה (literally carrion, but taken to mean any animal improperly slaughtered) and closes with לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו. Rabi Yose haGlili reasons that we can learn the categories of animal to which the latter law applies from the first. Since the prohibition of נבלה only applies to kosher animals, so does the law לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו. However, this would imply that it does apply to birds who are included in the prohibition of נבלה. Rabi Yose haGlili rules out this possibility with some straightforward exegesis. The law refers to an animal that can be cooked in the milk of its mother, which means it can’t apply to birds, given that they do not lactate.

There are many things one might be tempted to ask about this passage, but perhaps the most obvious is whether there is any difference between Rabi Aqiva’s opinion and that of his contemporary, Rabi Yose haGlili. One straightforward and almost certainly correct explanation is that the latter simply found Rabi Aqiva’s d’rasha to be unconvincing and provided an alternative based on close reading of a particular verse rather than hypothesizing about unstated intentions. However, assuming that the precise wording of the Mishnah gives us a comprehensive account of the debate, we can also identify a substantive halachic difference between the two. Rabi Yose haGlili first extends the law of לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו to any category of animal included in the prohibition of נבלה then finds a reason to exclude birds. This would imply – without indication to the contrary – that he does include non-domestic animals, which Rabi Aqiva’s d’rasha explicitly excluded.

It is now time to turn back to Bavli Hullin 116a, in which the sugya opens by asking this very question and – taking it as a given that there must be a specifically halachic dimension to the dispute – responds with our second answer.

מאי איכא בין רבי יוסי הגלילי לרבי עקיבא איכא בינייהו חיה רבי יוסי הגלילי סבר חיה דאורייתא ור’ עקיבא סבר חיה דרבנן

So far, the Bavli has done nothing more than provide a highly plausible reading of the Mishnah, but then everything solid melts into air:

איבעית אימא עוף איכא בינייהו ר’ עקיבא סבר חיה ועוף אינן מן התורה הא מדרבנן אסירי ור’ יוסי הגלילי סבר עוף אפילו מדרבנן נמי לא אסיר

According to this second interpretation of the Mishnah, the real dispute between Rabi Aqiva and Rabi Yose haGlili is not actually contained in the words of the Mishnah; it is perhaps, at most, vaguely alluded to. Both tanaim give their reasons why eating poultry cooked with milk does not violate a biblical prohibition, but we are supposed to understand from this that Rabi Aqiva believes it to be prohibited rabbinically whereas Rabi Yose haGlili considers it entirely permitted.

Given what we have seen from the other tanaitic sources, this is quite outstanding. All of these sources either assume or assert that it is forbidden to eat milk and chicken together and there has not been any indication whatsoever that anyone disagreed. Now, based on apparently nothing, the Bavli attributes this opinion to Rabi Yose haGlili in order to answer a question about a Mishnah that it has just answered perfectly adequately. The gemara, however, continues:

תניא נמי הכי במקומו של רבי אליעזר היו כורתין עצים לעשות פחמין לעשות ברזל במקומו של רבי יוסי הגלילי היו אוכלין בשר עוף בחלב

On the face of it, we have all the proof we need. Despite the a priori implausibility of it being so, we have a tanaitic source that tells us that in the place of Rabi Yose haGlili (which one assumes means the Galilee) they would eat poultry with milk.

However, if we retain our initial scepticism and look back with a critical eye, we notice a number of very odd things about this baraita. First, as we have said, there is no other source in which an even remotely similar claim is found. Secondly, the language ‘in the place of … they would…’ is totally unlike any known tanaitic source. Thirdly, the stammaitic editors bring the baraita in order to resolve a dispute about the meaning of the Mishnah in favour of the obviously farfetched interpretation. However, if this source is reliable, there would be no need to first try and force the Mishnah into this interpretation. Simply quoting the baraita as providing additional information to that contained in the Mishnah would prove the point.

These considerations alone might not do too much to unsettle the pious reader, but they are only preliminaries to a close reading of the baraita, which shows quite conclusively that this cannot be relied upon as a description of historical fact.

The second claim made by the baraita, namely that Galileans would eat poultry and milk, is certainly odd enough to make one stand up and take notice, but it actually pales in comparison to the first claim, namely that the residents of the place of Rabi Eliezer (which would probably refer to Lod) would cut down trees to make charcoal to make iron. Another nearly identical version of the baraita quoted in B Shabbat 130a adds, correctly, the words ‘on Shabbat’. If eating chicken and milk places you beyond the pale of orthodox Judaism, then surely cutting down trees and running an iron furnace would be regarded as pretty iffy even by Reform! What could this outlandish claim possibly mean?

The first point to understand is that this baraita is based on the Mishnah Shabbat (19:1), after which the other version of the baraita is quoted by the gemara.

רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר אוֹמֵר, אִם לֹא הֵבִיא כְלִי מֵעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת, מְבִיאוֹ בְשַׁבָּת מְגֻלֶּה. וּבַסַּכָּנָה, מְכַסֵּהוּ עַל פִּי עֵדִים. וְעוֹד אָמַר רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר, כּוֹרְתִין עֵצִים לַעֲשׂוֹת פֶּחָמִין וְלַעֲשׂוֹת כְּלִי בַרְזֶל. כְּלָל אָמַר רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא, כָּל מְלָאכָה שֶׁאֶפְשָׁר לַעֲשׂוֹתָהּ מֵעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת אֵינָהּ דּוֹחָה אֶת הַשַּׁבָּת, וְשֶׁאִי אֶפְשָׁר לַעֲשׂוֹתָהּ מֵעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת דּוֹחָה אֶת הַשַּׁבָּת:

This is one of two places (the other being M Pesahim 6:1), where we learn about a dispute between Rabi Aqiva and Rabi Eliezer regarding mitzvot that may be performed on Shabbat even though doing so entails performing forbidden work. Rabi Eliezer’s opinion is that if the mitzvah itself may be performed, so may any necessary preparations. Not only may you perform the forbidden labour involved cutting the foreskin, you may also carry the knife to the place where it will be done. Rabi Aqiva, by contrast, held that the suspension of the prohibition of forbidden labours on Shabbat applies only to work that could not be done beforehand. Since one can carry the knife to the desired location on Friday, one may not bring it on Shabbat, even if refraining from doing so will make it impossible to perform the mitzvah.

Rabi Eliezer wished to make clear that his opinion did not apply only to the melacha of carrying, but to any conceivable preparation for a b’rit milah no matter how many degrees of remove it is from the final act. The example he gives is of cutting down trees to make charcoal to smelt ore to make a knife. Now, it goes without saying that any place which has the facilities to smelt iron ore will also have a knife somewhere in the vicinity, or, failing that, some pre-smelted iron, or, failing that, some ready-made charcoal. At the very least there would have to be a knife close enough that bringing it will take less time than making a new knife completely from scratch. When necessary, one can perform b’rit milah with a sufficiently sharp rock or shard of glass, so the frequency with which it would actually be necessary to cut down a tree would be once every never. Rabi Eliezer is clearly engaged in rhetorical hyperbole, making the point that, in principle, any melacha is permitted in order to facilitate a mitzvah that is דוחה שבת.

So, while it may well be the case that in Lod it was a reasonably common occurrence for people to carry a circumcision knife on Shabbat (though one assumes Rabi Eliezer instructed people to take it before Shabbat whenever possible) the claim that ‘in the place of Rabi Eliezer they would cut trees to make charcoal to make iron on Shabbat’ is certainly not reflective of any historical reality. What it appears to be, in fact, is a sort of urban legend based on a misunderstanding, or at the very least a drastic over-reading, of an unusual passage in the Mishnah.

This claim might seem disturbing, but as Shammai Friedman has shown at painstaking (one might say, grueling) length, there are many cases of material presented as tanaitic in the Bavli that is unambiguously the product of the ‘creativity’, to borrow his term, of later Babylonian authors. Given all we have seen so far, it is reasonable to say that exactly the same thing is true of the baraita’s second statement about the culinary habits of the Galileans. However, in this case, the claims of the baraita seem to be even more removed from their source material. The people of Lod didn’t actually cut down trees on Shabbat, but under some impossibly unlikely set of circumstances they would have had halachic license to do so. The jump from Rabi Yose haGlili providing an alternative way of proving that poultry and milk are not prohibited by the Torah to claiming that the people of his area actually consumed it is much greater. What could have prompted the author to take this flight of fancy?

In fact, the gemara itself gives us the answer to this question on the very next line:

לוי איקלע לבי יוסף רישבא אייתו לקמיה רישא דטיוסא בחלבא ולא אמר להו ולא מידי כי אתא לקמיה דרבי אמר ליה אמאי לא תשמתינהו אמר ליה אתריה דרבי יהודה בן בתירא הוא ואמינא דרש להו כרבי יוסי הגלילי דאמר יצא עוף שאין לו חלב אם:

Levi, one of the last of the tanaim, went to the house of a certain Yosef who worked as a bird-catcher and was presented with the head of a bird cooked in milk. Upon returning to Eretz Yisrael, he was asked by Yehuda haNasi why he did not excommunicate the man on the spot. He responded by observing that this was the place of Rabi Yehuda ben Batyra (who lived in Nusaybin which lies near the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria) and suggested that he had permitted it to them based on Rabi Yose haGlili’s d’rasha.

What we have here is clear evidence not of any opinion of Rabi Yose haGlili or the eating habits of 1st or 2nd century Galileans , but of the practices of certain Jews in north-eastern Bavel at the close of the tanaitic period. We do not need to inquire very deeply into the origins of the practice. The low opinion held by Palestinian tanaim of the knowledge and religious observance of Babylonian Jews is well-known. Given that the entire concept of בשר בחלב is not explicit in the Torah, it would not be surprising to find that some Jews disregarded at least some of the rules associated with it. The significance of the fact that this occurred in the locale associated with the famous Rabi Yehuda ben Batyra is not entirely clear, but it is close to certain that any association with Rabi Yose haGlili’s d’rasha was a limmud zechut created only in retrospect. At any rate, there is no reason to think it reflects Rabi Yose haGlili’s actual opinion. From this attempted vindication of an aberrant practice, a legend grew according to which this had once been not only Rabi Yose haGlili’s opinion, but the actual practised halacha of his region. This legend was then incorporated as a pseudo-baraita by the editors of the Bavli. The rest is history.

At this stage, I am tempted to make some programmatic statements about the relationship between academic talmud criticism and a reactionary programme for reconstituting Jewish life in the land of Israel, but hopefully you get the gist and, even if not, I hope I have convinced you not to repeat this particular meme again.

1. The Wikipedia article on ‘Jose the Galilean’ follows the Jewish Encyclopedia in baldly reporting that ‘He taught that poultry may be cooked in milk and eaten as was done in his own native town’