Question:
How long must a child wait between eating meat and milk?
Answer:
He does not have to wait at all because he is a child. We obviously have to educate him, but if
there is a need, he does not have to wait.
Sometimes we serve a child meat and he eats with difficulty, and soon
thereafter he is hungry. Or, we want him
to eat more and we give him something else, like Milchigs. Some Rabbis have established guidelines that
at a certain age a child should wait one hour, then two hours, then three, etc…
(See, for example, Shut Be'er Moshe 8:36), but this is not definitively set
from a halachic perspective. It is
certainly logical that a child should slowly be educated so that he will be
able to wait the required amount of time by his Bar Mitzvah. In Shut Yabia Omer (Volume 1 Yoreh Deah #4),
Ha-Rav Ovadiah Yosef discusses this issue and writes that it is a case of a
double doubt: The first doubt is that perhaps the Halachah follows the opinion
of the Rishonim, such as the Rashba (Yevamot 114 and Shut Ha-Rashba vol. 1
#92), that it is permissible to give a child something to eat which is
forbidden by the Rabbis (although in practice we do not hold this way – see
Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 343:1) and waiting between meat and milk is a
Rabbinic prohibition. The second doubt
is that perhaps the Halachah follows the Tosafot (Chullin 105a) that there is
no obligation to wait between eating meat and milk. It is forbidden to mix them, but if I eat
meat, clean the table, wash my hands and brush my teeth, it is permissible to
eat milk (although we do not hold this way in practice either – see Shulchan
Aruch Yoreh Deah 89:1). Therefore, there
is no problem with giving a child under Bar Mitzvah milk after meat when there
is a pressing need.
