The ability to digest dairy products beyond infancy results from a genetic mutation uncommon among Jews.

Teaneck, May 28 – Staff at the Butterflake Bakery in this Bergen County, New Jersey township are noting the usual uptick in cheesecake purchases in advance of this week’s Feast of Weeks, when a longstanding Jewish tradition calls for the consumption of dairy products, among a population in which as many as three out of four people suffer some sort of digestive problem with dairy.

The Biblical festival of Shavuot, often translated as Pentecost, celebrates the culmination of the barley and wheat harvest seasons, and is also marked as the anniversary of the Revelation at Sinai. As part of the celebration, Jews have for many generations eaten at least one festive meal during the holiday with an emphasis on dairy cuisine, a departure from the usual practice on the Sabbath and festivals of marking the occasion with meat meals. The ability to digest dairy products beyond infancy results from a genetic mutation uncommon among Jews, who for some reason continue to subject themselves to it for the sake of Shavuot.

Many of the reasons commonly given for the custom involve references to the Torah given at Mt. Sinai during and after the Revelation, explained Rabbi Kent Drinkmilch of the Fon-du-Lac-Tase-de-Ficient Synagogue. “In the Book of Psalms the Torah is compared, metaphorically, to milk, in the sense of the nourishment a baby gets when nursing,” he noted. “Jews accepted the Torah on Shavuot, including the difficulties inherent in both keeping the commandments and thriving under the challenges of oppression under powers opposed to the special relationship the Torah represents – by voluntarily eating things that seventy-five percent of Ashkenazi Jews can’t digest, resulting in bloating, gas, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and just plain feeling yucky, we demonstrate our embrace of the sorrows as well as the joys that come from upholding the Torah.”

“There’s also the explanation we give to schoolchildren, which is about pots and pans,” he continued. “The law given at Sinai of course included the prohibition not to cook meat and dairy together. That meant the various utensils previously used indiscriminately had to be either discarded or purged – ‘koshered’ in modern parlance – of the flavors of the now-forbidden combination. So we eat at least one dairy meal in acknowledgement of our new observance. Of course there are mystical and more homiletic interpretations of that connection, as well, but many folks have a hard time digesting those kinds of teachings. Which I guess is appropriate.”

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