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Eating Dairy Food
(Don't miss our cheesecake and quiche recipes!)
We found seven reasons for eating dairy. (If you know of any other we would be glad to hear from you!)
On Shavuot, the Jewish people received a new code of
law, including the dietary restrictions that became part
of their daily life. Since the new laws of separating meat
and milk were still unclear, only dairy products were
eaten on Shavuot to avoid transgressing the unfamiliar
laws.
The Torah is compared to milk, as it is written:
 "Sweetness drops
From your lips, O bride;
Honey and milk
Are under your tongue."(Song of Songs, 4:11)
The numerical value of chalav, the Hebrew word for milk, is 40. This matches the number of days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai studying the Torah (celebrated on Shavuot) which he then taught to the Israelites in the wilderness.
One of the five names for Mount Sinai mentioned in midrashic sources is gavnonim, which literally means "free from blemish", but whose Hebrew form indicates a dairy product. (The Hebrew for cheese is gevinah).
Twice in the Bible (Exodus 23:19; 34:26), a reference is made to bringing the first fruits "You shall bring the first-fruits of your land to the house of the Lord your God...", juxtaposed with a reference to what rabbis inferred as a command to separate milk from meat "You shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk". Eating dairy food on the Festival of the First Fruits was drawn from this association of ideas.
Moses was born on the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar, hidden for three months by his mother Jochebed, and found by Pharoah's daughter in the Nile bulrushes on 6th Sivan, the future date of Shavuot. According to  legend, the baby Moses refused milk from his new non-Jewish mother, and his sister Miriam arranged for his natural mother to nurse him. Eating dairy products reminds us of this past history.
Milk symbolizes the infancy of the Jewish people, and their birth as a nation at Mount Sinai.
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