July 10, 2022|י"א תמוז ה' אלפים תשפ"ב The Value of a Chok to Modern Jews
Print ArticleImagine a world in which our community truly appreciated the value of a “chok.” What exactly is a chok? Parshat Chukat seems to describe the classic chok by stating (19:2):
זֹ֚את חֻקַּ֣ת הַתּוֹרָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֥ה יְקֹוָ֖ק לֵאמֹ֑ר דַּבֵּ֣ר׀ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְיִקְח֣וּ אֵלֶיךָ֩ פָרָ֨ה אֲדֻמָּ֜ה
“This is the chok of the Torah that God has command: Instruct the Bnei Yisrael to bring you a Parah Adumah – a red heifer, a red cow.” In his book, “Tales out of Shul,” Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, who nurtured the growth of the Orthodox community in Atlanta for nearly 40 years, wrote that he once gave a drasha contrasting two famous cows: the Red Heifer and the Golden Calf. He wrote that after his drasha was over, “in the social hall of the shul during kiddush, an out-of-town guest, trying to be pleasant, gushed about how he really loved and was uplifted by the sermon. “There’s only one thing that puzzles me,” he said. “What exactly is the ritual of the Red Pepper?”"
The ritual of Parah Adumah, the red heifer, is the classic chok according to the Torah. What, then, is a chok, and in what way is Parah Adumah the classic chok? Chukim are laws whose rationale is not apparent to us and we would not perform them absent a commandment to do so. Rashi explains (Ibid):
לפי שהשטן ואומות העולם מונין את ישראל לומר מה המצוה הזאת ומה טעם יש בה, לפיכך כתב בה חקה, גזירה היא מלפני ואין לך רשות להרהר אחריה
“Because Satan and the nations of the world taunt Israel, saying, “What is this command and what reason is there for it”, on this account, the Torah writes the term חקה about it, implying: It is an enactment from before Me; you have no right to criticize it.”
Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer, is the classic chok because its rationale is a mystery. A chok requires us to suspend our reason and judgment, the very attributes that differentiate us from the rest of creation, and to simply do. However, Rashi records the commentary of Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan (19:22) who interprets all aspects of the Parah Adumah, including the symbolic significance of all the ingredients of this ritual. If Parah Adumah is a chok, and a chok is shrouded in mystery, then why do we try to understand the symbolic meaning of the chok? Why not simply say that it’s mysterious and we don’t delve into its significance?
Rav Soloveitchik wrote an essay on this topic, entitled “May We Interpret Hukim?” In this essay, he explained that we must distinguish between motivations, explanations and interpretations. We cannot ask “why” when it comes to chukim or what motivated God to command us to perform a mitzvah. Asking this question implies that in order to achieve a certain objective, God needed to command us to perform a mitzvah. Of course, this approach is nonsensical when it comes to God. God does not need to do anything to achieve any objective.
Additionally, asking “how” or the explanation for chukim is also nonsensical. How does Parah Adumah actually purify someone? What are the cause and effect between the sprinkling of the ashes and attaining purity? We don’t know. That’s why the Parah Adumah is a chok.
However, it is legitimate to ask “what” when it comes to chukim, meaning what is my personal interpretation of this mitzvah. It is legitimate to ask how does this mitzvah make me better connect with God. It is legitimate to ask what is the spiritual message of the Parah Adumah. This is what Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan wanted to accomplish through interpreting the symbolic aspects of the Parah Adumah.
But why? Why is it legitimate to try to understand the symbolism of the various ingredients of the Parah Adumah when it’s a chok? Is that really the purpose of the chok? Isn’t the purpose of the chok to simply suspend our judgment and reason and serve God without any questions? What benefit is there to try to uncover some subjective meaningfulness of a chok which might or might not be correct?
Maybe the answer is that our goal is to try to uncover the truth. It is true that a chok is a mitzvah whose rationale is not apparent to us and we would not perform it absent a commandment to do so, but maybe once we are commanded to observe a chok, then we are obligated to try to understand as much as we can about the mitzvah. In other words, according to this approach, there still is room for reason when it comes to chukim. We may never arrive at the ultimate truth or reason for a particular chok, but we can uncover some of the truth, and that is the task that Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan undertook in finding symbolism of the ingredients of the Parah Adumah.
That being said, I do not believe that this is the approach of Rav Soloveitchik. Rav Soloveitchik believed that asking the types of questions that Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan did “reflect[s] the need to intellectually and emotionally be engaged in the performance of a mitzvah, even of hukim.” What does this exactly mean?
Recently, I read an essay by Rabbi Jeremy Kagan, entitled, “The Nature and Pursuit of Truth.” Rabbi Kagan was raised in Hawaii and he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Yale University. He has written a number of books on Jewish thought. In this essay, based on the thought of Rabbi Moshe Shapira, he argues that every civilization has its own assumptions on how to perceive truth. Modern Jews generally follow the intellectual approach which was established by the Greek civilization, that emunah, or faith, is achieved intellectually. We believe something because it can logically be proven to us in the abstract. This is based on the Aristotelian idea that views man primarily as a thinker. Rabbi Kagan argues that the Torah emerged not during the Greek civilization but much earlier, during the Near Eastern civilization. The Near Eastern cultures emphasized the experience of being rather than the experience of thought. In this context, the Torah views man primarily not as a thinker but as a worshiper. It is the experience which is crucial and not the intellect.
Of course, the Torah values both the intellect and the experience. I am reminded of a comment by Rav Soloveitchik on the Torah referring to the years of Sarah’s life. The Torah does not describe them as being 127 years, but as being 100 years and 20 years and seven years. Rav Soloveitchik explained that usually in our lives we transition from being a child to a young man or woman and then to an elderly individual. However, for Sarah, the stages of being a child or a seven-year-old, a young adult or a 20-year-old, and an elderly person or a 100-year-old, were not successive stages, but they were simultaneous stages. He explained that a truly committed Jew has different responsibilities which require him to act like a child, a young adult and an elderly person simultaneously. For our purposes, he explained that for Torah study, we want to be an elderly individual, a person who is rich in knowledge, wisdom and experience. Prayer, however, requires self-negation and surrender. When we hold a siddur, we must become a seven-year-old who feels a sense of complete and utter dependence on God.
How should we feel when we observe chukim? Like a Greek intellect or like a Near-Eastern worshiper? When we perform a mitzvah that is mysterious to us, we do not uncover the truth, but according to Rabbi Kagan, we participate in the truth. When we try to uncover the symbolism of a particular chok, we develop our own personal perspective of that mitzvah, and we become, as Rav Soloveitchik explains, emotionally and intellectually engaged in the mitzvah. That subjective experience of the mitzvah creates a connection with God that is not merely psychological, but it is 100% authentic.
This is an area of potential growth for modern Jews. Modern Jews, myself included, are inclined towards to Greek intellectual model and away from the Near Eastern worshiper model. We are motivated by the logical and the rational, and we tend to reject that which is mysterious. We feel less connected to worship and the chok tells us to personalize worship and try to understand it subjectively as a way to connect with God.
This past week, Yael and I stayed at a kosher hotel in Italy and the Biale Rebbe happened to be staying at the hotel for a number of days. Now I don’t know if you know this about Yael and me, but we are a mixed marriage. Yael likes to get brachot from Rebbes and visits the "ohel," but I tend to shy away from these things. Shivim panim la’Torah – there are different legitimate paths to connect with God and, baruch Hashem, our marriage has lasted despite these different religious perspectives. I asked the Biale Rebbe’s shamash if the Rebbe would give brachot to women and the shamash responded affirmatively, so Yael asked him for a bracha regarding a particular situation. While I was watching the conversation between Yael and the Biale Rebbe, I couldn’t help but realize that Yael not only asked the Rebbe for a bracha, but this particular issue was something that was foremost on her mind whenever she davened. For me, not so much, and that's something that I need to work on.
That is the challenge of the modern Jew – it’s the challenge of worship, that Near Eastern feeling of being with God. Why is it so difficult for our community to daven? I have heard arguments that the words are hard to understand and prayer seems so repetitive and forced. That may be true, but I think that the real challenge of tefillah for modern Jews is that we fundamentally approach the Torah solely through the Greek culture of intellectualism.
But the Torah giants of modern Jewry did not approach Judaism solely through this approach. Rav Soloveitchik, the towering intellect, wrote that he learned from his mother “that Judaism expresses itself not only in formal compliance with the law but also in a living experience.” He wrote that “[s]he taught me that there is a flavor, a scent and warmth to mitzvot. I learned from her the most important thing in life—to feel the presence of the Almighty and the gentle pressure of His hand resting upon my frail shoulders.” Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, the towering intellect, wrote that “[t]he greatest source of faith… has been the Ribbono Shel Olam Himself… Existentially… nothing has been more authentic than the encounter with Avinu Malkeinu, the source and ground of all being.” Rav Lichtenstein wrote that encounter with God is achieved not just through Torah study, but also through tefillah and performance of mitzvot and even “moments of illumination while getting on a crowded bus or watching children play in a park at twilight.” There is no contradiction between being a towering Torah scholar and experiencing God in a real, authentic way primarily through the heart and not through the mind. This is the value of chukim.
Imagine a world in which our community truly appreciated the value of a “chok.” When we simultaneously suspend judgment and reason in deciding to observe chukim and we embrace them with our subjective judgment and reason, then we tap into the culture of worship which is so critical for the spiritual growth of the modern Jew.