Shavuot, Chag Matan Torateinu, is the holiday of King David and cheesecake. We celebrate the giving of the Torah on Sinai and the Malchut of King David by eating dairy dishes (milchiks or chalavi). I'm not capable of giving you a prize recipe for chocolate or blueberry cheesecake (for that, email my wife), but the convergence of Torah, David HaMelech and cheesecake is no mere happenstance.


On Sinai, the Almighty gave Moshe Rabbeinu the written Torah and oral explanations. This began the period in the

The convergence of Torah, David HaMelech and cheesecake is no mere happenstance.

 desert of the unique prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu. If Moses had a sha'aila (Halachic question), he would turn to G-d, ask his question and receive his Divine answer. This was a Torah symbolized by Manna (given to the Jews of the desert in the merit of Moshe) and milk, both of which share a common attribute: Manna tasted like any food, and mother's milk incorporates all the foods from which the milk was produced (Talmud Yoma 75a-b). Thus, the Milchike-Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu was (Rabbi Matis Weinberg, Frameworks, pg. 96-98) "a predigested, complete, formulated" product, available to the Jews anytime, with no effort on their part. But with the passing of Moses, after forty years, this type of Torah came to an end. Forevermore, Israel would have to toil in the learning of Torah and reach Halachic conclusions through the process of human reasoning from the Oral Torah's principles. This "meat-Torah" allowed the Torah system to move from static dogma to adaptability to all times and conditions.


On the holiday of Shavuot, we celebrate God's giving to Moses both types of Torah, written and oral. And it's symbolized by a unique food, cheese, which incorporates both meat and milk and thus has a Halachic and historic connection to Malchut David. Rabbi Matis Weinberg explains Malchut (Kingship) as the Kabbalistic answer to the existential problem of how all of Creation can be possible if G-d is all-encompassing. If He is everywhere, and unchanging, how can we exist and how can things change? The answer is found in the Kabbalistic Omer-attributes (Midot) that we are to contemplate during the seven-week Omer period.


This begins with Chesed, G-d's merciful desire to share existence with others and thus create Existence; and His Gevura, which operates through din, the principle which says dai (enough) to each created individual, setting defined limits and boundaries to each individual (prat). But for all these individuals to be more than mere chaotic single organisms requires Malchut, Kingship. Malchut is the self-organizing factor that allows all the details (pratim) of any organism or structure to function cooperatively at its most efficient, and thus fully, creatively express itself. An example: a benevolent king, chosen unanimously by his people, who brings out the best in all elements of society, allowing the nation to "be all it can be" and progress into the future.


Rabbi Weinberg explains that Malchut is an "emergent phenomenon," emerging from the harmonious (Tiferet, Yesod) interaction of the parts (pratim) of the system. (An emergent phenomenon always emerges from the pratim, but it itself is not found within those parts. Thus a Melech, king, is not a prat, an individual, and thus has "nothing of his own" (Zohar, Parshat Vayishlach, 168, in reference to King David.) To illustrate this, Rabbi Weinberg mentions the famous Midrash which says that David HaMelech did not even have a lifespan of his own, and Adam HaRishon gave David seventy years of his own lifetime, in an act of Chesed, kindness (Chesed always being the Kabbalistic attribute motivating creation of existence).


That emergent phenomena are different than the pratim from which they emerge is illustrated by two examples: in a human being, character, identity and self-hood are emergent phenomena, coming from the brain. But if you cut up a brain and examine its neurons, you will not find consciousness and identity. This is similar to the paradox of modern physics: focus an intellectual microscope on Newtonian physics and you won't be able to explain what happens at the subatomic level. And build up from quantum mechanics, and you won't be able to explain what

Cheese is the closest analogy that we have in the realm of food to an emergent phenomenon.

happens in the big, macro world that our eyes can see. That's because the world that we are familiar with is an emergent phenomenon, emerging from a nanophysical-chemical world in which things don't behave the same as they do on the macroscopic level.


What does all this have to do with cheesecake? Well, cheese is the closest analogy that we have in the realm of food to an emergent phenomenon, and specifically to Malchut. Chop up a solid cheese down to the finest microscopic pieces, and you won't find the milk from which the cheese was created (unless the milk had an admixture of milk from a non-kosher animal; in that case, the Halacha says that since non-kosher milk won't congeal into cheese, droplets of non-kosher milk can be found in holes in the cheese). Cheese emerges from the milk because of the "interaction and cooperative inter-relationship of the details" of the milk with the enzyme pepsin, which coagulates the milk into the new, emergent entity of solid cheese. Also, another common aspect is shared by King David and the King of Foods, cheese: both kings have a "blemish" which can only be explained away by Torah Sheba'al Peh (the Oral Torah), the Torah of meat.


We all know that David HaMelech was descended from Ruth the Moabitess. The people in David's time were well aware of the written Torah's injunction: "An Amonite and a Moabite may not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Devarim 23:4) It required the teachings of the Oral Torah to show that King David really had no Halachic blemish, for the rabbis had a tradition that a "Moabite, but not a Moabitess" is excluded from Israel, "for they did not greet you with bread and water" (Devarim 23:5) when Israel wandered in the desert. Thus, the harmonious (Tiferet in Omer-Kabbalah terms) interaction (Yesod) of the Oral Torah of Meat with the Written Torah of Milk allows the emergence of Malchut, b'heiter (with Halachic permissibility).


And our King of Foods, cheese, also has a skeleton in its closet: a seeming Halachic forbidden comingling of meat and milk, basar v'chalav. But again, the rabbis of the Oral Torah come to the rescue and explain that cheese too has no blemish. The Rama (Yoreh Deah 87,10) says that in making cheese, the meat component, the rennet/pepsin (the coagulating enzyme from animal stomachs) is present in the milk in a less-than-sixtieth, and hence allowable, proportion. Halachically, the meat as meat (a prat) is simply not there anymore in the cheese. This factor coupled with the fact that cheese is not cooked, but rather pickled or salted (Shach, Yoreh Deah 87,30) allows us to eat the emergent cheese, which has no blemish of issur (prohibition). Again, the harmonious inter-relationship of factors (pratim), some of which seem contradictory, allows the emergence of the King (of Foods).


This may all sound contrived, but the proof "emerges" from the life of King David himself. Shmuel HaNavi anointed David as king in the presence of David's father and brothers (Samuel, chapter 16). In the next chapter, David

This may all sound contrived, but the proof "emerges" from the life of King David himself.

performs his first kingly act: in the presence of the entire army of Israel, kingly David "comes in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the G-d of the battalions of Israel" (Samuel 17:44) and slays the giant Goliath. When they went out to the war, David's brothers had pointedly left him behind at home, but father Yishai had sent David to the front with a gift of food for the commander. In a total reversal of the Moabite blemish, David greeted the army of Israel with the gift of food. What food? Charitzei chalav (charitzim of milk; Samuel 17:17). And what is charitzei, which is a rather uncommon Hebrew word?


Say the rabbis, the elders of the "Torah of Meat": charitzei is cheese.


Thus, Yishai announced the "emergence" of King David with gifts of cheese. May we merit the coming of David's descendant, the Melech HaMoshiach, speedily in our time. Y'Chi HaMelech David!