AS with many of my blogs, I've inserted a title and a few words to hold a space until I can complete this topic.
Basically, to me, the Torah is musar, i.e. teachings for living life. It contains direct guidelines (the mitzvot, or commandments), and also teaches in many subtle ways, through its words and narratives.
The story of the first sin has, to me, a very clear lesson to be applied to living life.
It is that we must never confuse the guidelines of man with directives from
G-d. One way of saying this is, never confuse a "miderabonim" with a "midoraisa."
"Miderabonim" means "from the rabbis," i.e., the religious obligations we take upon ourselves which were ordained by ruling bodies of rabbis, like the Men of the Great Assembly, and other Sanhedrins. These rules have -- under normal circumstances -- the force of the mitzvot, commandments from the Torah.
But, wait a minute. Doesn't the Torah tell us we can neither add nor subtract from the commandments it gives us, in written and oral form? How can bodies of rabbis add to the Torah's commandments by obliging us to do things which the Torah does not prescribe?
The answer appears in the beginning of The Ethics of the Fathers ("Pirkei Avot"), a compilation of great teachings and sayings. The line of Torah knowledge is traced from Moses to Joshua to the Elders to the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly, and one of the things brought down by this illustrious line of teachers is "Asu syag la Torah," make a fence around the Torah.
What this means is that if the Torah proscribes certain acts, like eating meat and milk together, it is permissible to make a fence around this law by adding restrictions which will prevent someone from falling into sin inadvertently.
The well known "syag" or fence around the rule of not eating meat and milk together is that chicken is designated as meat by the rabbis when, according to the Torah ("midoraisa"), it is not, and, strictly speaking, can be eaten with a glass of milk.
According to the Torah, chicken is like fish, the flesh of a living creature which can be eaten with dairy meals. I don't know why this is so, but it is. My question would be, what about the quail that Hashem force-fed the Children of Israel when they wanted meat? That was meat; why not chicken?
That there is an answer to my question, I have no doubt, and, anyway, that's not the point. The point is that chicken is definitely not classified as meat.
Does this mean, then, that you can go to a kosher dairy restaurant and have a nice chicken dish smothered with melted cheese?
No.
Why not? Because the rabbis felt that some people inevitably would see people eating chicken with dairy products, and mistakenly assume that as a living land creature, chicken is a form of meat, and that this, therefore, authorizes the eating of dairy products with all meat -- which would be a sin against the Torah.
So, in order to avoid people falling into serious error, the rabbis made a fence, keeping people away from the danger of eating meat and milk together by outlawing the eating of chicken and milk.
A fence, thus, is a protective barrier which keeps one from coming too close to danger. It is not an additional mitzvah -- commandment -- but is a regulation enacted to prevent the transgression of a Torah precept, i.e. eating milk and meat together by adding a restriction to the existing mitzvah.
