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).

THE LAWS OF kashering are many and confusing, and learned from this week’s parsha. Thanks to Midian, we’re still in exile.