THE DIFFICULT THING about reading Sefer Hoshea and others like it, is trying to understand how the people of that time could believe in God, know that Torah came from Him, and still completely turn their backs on Him. Were they that suicidal?

THE TORAH MENTIONS in three locations, including in this week’s parsha, that we are not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

THE QUESTION WAS, why are the “small” mitzvos that people tend to “walk all over” the ones that prove a person’s commitment? The answer is embedded in this story in the Gemora.

THERE IS A difference between being frum, and living frum. It’s like being a soldier. Most soldiers are not soldiers. They are citizens forced to be soldiers because that is what the situation demands. But first chance they have to get out of the army and back to civilian life, they will take it.

THE GEMORA SAYS that any generation in which the Temple has not been rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed in that generation (Yerushalmi, Yoma 5a).