Chukim: Particularly Meaningful

Twenty years ago, I was sitting in a college history lecture when my mother called me on my cell phone. I didn’t pick up, but she rang again and again. I eventually left the classroom to take the call. My father had a stroke while eating lunch - likely at Diamond Dairy - and Hatzolah took him to the Roosevelt Hospital Emergency room. I was the only member of the family in Manhattan, so I hopped on the train and went right to be with him. At that time I was not a regular tefillin-wrapper or minyan-goer, but that night I decided I wanted to daven for his health, and the next morning went to the campus Shacharit minyan with my tefillin. I don’t understand how God operates or whether my prayers contributed to my father’s recovery. But I do know that this act of wrapping leather straps around my arm - something that by any account is a chok, a statute that we don’t understand, somehow this act was deeply meaningful to me.

 

The beginning of our parsha talks about the laws of the parah aduma, the red heifer used for ritual purification in the temple. Parah Aduma is often cited as the quintessential chok, a mitzvah whose reason we do not know.

 

Some sages attempt to find a rationale even for these commandments. Others say: don’t even try to understand these mitzvot; they are deliberately enigmatic. Some took this philosophy further: Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev taught that the Torah introduces para aduma as “chukat haTorah”—the statute of the Torah—to teach that all mitzvot, in some sense, are chukim. We should simply follow God’s law without the need for any reasoning.

 

But I’d like to suggest a different understanding of what a chok is, and a different framework through which we can view two kinds of commandments in the Torah. There are many mitzvot whose reasons are rational or intuitive to any onlooker—honoring your parents, giving to the poor, returning lost objects. Some called them mitzvot sichliot; others called them mishpatim. They are commanded by God, but they are logical. And significantly, they are universal.

 

Chukim, by contrast, are particular. They might seem confounding or even arbitrary to the uninitiated. But their meaning is in their practice. They are what we and only we do by virtue of the fact that we’re Jewish. Like every mitzvah, we do them because God commanded us. But their meaning lies not in logic and reason, but in practice, in identity, in experience; in what they mean to us. Rav Soloveitchik alluded to this in Halakhic Mind (admittedly, he was referring to all mitzvot), “Halakha does not pursue the objective causation of the commandment, but attempts to reconstruct its subjective correlative.” Here’s another way to see it: If mishpatim are commanded because they have meaning, chukim are commanded because they make meaning.

 

Sociologist Émile Durkheim found that rituals, even those with no apparent utility, play a critical role in preserving the health and cohesion of a family. According to Durkheim, rituals enhance group solidarity, build loyalty to shared values, communicate those values to new members, and create a euphoric sense of belonging and well-being.

 

In other words, these are the things that bind us together. God, in His infinite wisdom, understood that the Jewish people could not endure, succeed, and thrive as a nation merely on “don’t steal,” “don’t murder,” and “do good.” We needed chukim—practices that are exclusively ours, that would shape our identity, connect us across generations and ultimately connect us to the Almighty.

 

Take Kashrut, for one example. It is certainly a chok. No one really knows why one animal is forbidden and another permitted. But to those who keep kosher, it is deeply meaningful. The institution of Kashrut contributes so much to the Jewish home and the cohesion of the Jewish community. The biblical scholar Jacob Milgrom argued that, on a personal level, through governing everything we consume, the laws of Kashrut remind us daily that life is sacred and that we are meant to be holy, always living up to God’s will. And on a national level, they serve to preserve our distinctiveness as Jews. That is why one of the first things Christianity eliminated from Judaism was the laws of Kashrut, thus eliminating any distinction between Jew and non-Jew.

 

Consider this timely example: On the fourth of July in 1788, clergy from all the Christian denominations in Philadelphia marched together in a parade to celebrate the ratification of the constitution, and they included the city’s Rabbi. This was the first ever recorded ecumenical parade. When the ceremony concluded, the Jews who participated ate separately at a special kosher table prepared on their behalf. They celebrated America together, and then they retained the distinct identity of being Jewish through what they ate. 

 

We can make similar observations about other chukim that govern what we say, what we do, what we wear. I have no doubt that the practices surrounding the Parah Aduma, though foreign to us, were deeply meaningful to those serving in the Temple. it’s an enigmatic concept to us, but for them it was part of daily life.

 

I believe that’s why, that night in college, I reached for my tefillin. I wasn’t trying to perform a mystical healing act. But I needed to do something - and tefillin and davening felt like the right thing. Somehow it connected me to my people and to God.

 

That same instinct has been playing out across the Jewish world. For the last (almost) two years, we’ve seen an extraordinary interest and resurgence in Jewish practice in Israel and elsewhere. In addition to universal good deeds like chessed and tzedakah, more people are putting on tefillin, keeping kosher, observing shabbat, and davening. They want to do something, to express their grief, their solidarity, their hope. Time and again we find that the most meaningful thing for Jews to do as Jews are these distinctly Jewish acts. They don’t need to be convinced of the “why.” The meaning is embedded.

 

It’s true both in grief and in joy. Following Israel’s unprecedented and heroic attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, a mission that stunned the world in its precision and success, how did Jews respond? A news anchor on a major Israeli network began his evening broadcast by placing a kippah on his head and reciting Mizmor L’Todah, the psalm of thanksgiving. And religious communities all over wanted to say Hallel—meaningless incantation to the uninitiated, but a natural expression of joy to those who practice it. Once again, in a moment of awe and national pride, Jews turned to chukim as their most natural response.

 

The chok may defy explanation, but it’s rich with meaning.  Far from arbitrary commandments we can’t make sense of and just do because “God said so,” they are precisely the elements of our faith that make our lives particularly Jewish. They are the framework that gives us a meaningful way to express both our grief and our joy. In these extraordinary times for our people, may we continue to turn to our particular practices; may they bring strength and unity to Am Yisrael, and through doing so, bring us closer to God.