Dear Friends:
I am happy to share with you my sermon from this summer’s kick-off Shabbat service, July 1.
Have a great week,
R Brian
The title of this week's Torah portion, Chukat, comes from its first verse: zot chukat ha-Torah asher tzivah Adonai..., "this is the law of Torah that God has commanded..." The passage proceeds to instruct the people in the intricacies of the baffling ritual known as the Law of the Red Heifer. The ceremony involves slaughtering an unblemished red cow that "has never borne a yoke," sacrificing it upon the altar, then taking the ashes and combining them with pure water, and sprinkling the mixture upon a person who has become contaminated in order to purify him or her. Rabbis have struggled for centuries to come up with a rational basis for this bizarre procedure.
The word chok literally means "law." When the Knesset enacts new legislation, it is called a chok. A near synonym, mishpat, can be translated: “rule” or “judgment.” The Mitzvot, the commandments, are traditionally divided into two categories: chok and mishpat, as in the Biblical verse: shma el ha-chukim ve'el h-amishpatim asher Anochi melameid etchem, "Hear, [O Israel,] all the laws and all the rules which Adonai is teaching you." (Deuteronomy 4:1) The Rabbis distinguish them as follows: a mishpat is a rule that has an evident basis in reason; you can understand the rationale; it's a rule that makes sense. For example, "Thou shalt not murder" is a mishpat. It's self-evident that society wouldn't work very well if people ran around killing one another. Similarly, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not steal," and so on. Another group of Mitzvot are called chukim. A chok is a law that seems to be random, lacking any logical basis, making no sense at all. There are four canonical examples of chukim: “the commandment of the levirate,” which is a man’s obligation to marry his brother's widow (Deuteronomy 25:5), “the law of shaatnez," which is the prohibition of mixing wool and linen in the same garment (Deuteronomy 22:11), the law of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:26), and the law of the Red Heifer. As the Midrash states: "King Solomon was wiser than all men, but when it came to the portion of the Red Cow, he said: I have attained great wisdom, but this, I cannot grasp."
Is there value for observing a commandment that we cannot comprehend? Is there benefit in continuing to perform an action, even though there is no rational basis for it? One common traditional response can be summed up by the medieval sage, who said: "These laws cannot be explained by human reason, but, being of divine origin, they demand implicit obedience. Know by performing them that it was the Creator of the world, the One and Only, who instituted them." You did it, simply because God commanded it, and that was enough.
However, the pious attitude of unquestioning devotion may alienate us in our modern day and age. After all, we live in America! We live in the Age of Science! We require rationale, we require proof, before we agree to do something. I would like to suggest that there is a touch of presumption in our attitude. I would like to suggest that we may not have all the answers to everything, and that perhaps, we should do certain things… just because.
Let me give you an example. One of the most cherished of Jewish rituals is to light candles on Friday night. I remember once when Joe and I were vacationing in Arizona, we happened to meet a friendly Jewish couple at a restaurant. The four of us hit it off immediately. On our final day in the Southwest, they invited us to their home for Friday evening. Tamara is a secular Israeli, who has lived in America for twenty years. Glenn grew up during the 1960s in a typical suburban family, much like myself. Early on, the sterile atmosphere of his synagogue turned him off to religion. They are both what I would call cultural Jews, non-practicing but strongly Jewish-identified. But there is one religious practice that they continue to observe without fail—they light candles every week.
If you think about it, what is the reason we light candles on Shabbat evening? The original basis—the need for light to facilitate our lives and to allow us to enjoy full rest—is long gone, no longer applicable when light now comes at the flick of a switch. So why should we continue to practice the candle lighting ritual?
Since I was their special guest (and a Rabbinical student!), Tamara asked me to do the honors. I chanted the blessing with more feeling than usual. I could perceive that they were moved. Neither of them believe in God, but something magical seemed to be happening, nevertheless. A week later, I received an E-mail back in Vermont. Glenn thanked me for transforming a dry, repetitive routine into a special moment. Tamara wrote: “you have the neshamah.”
I strike the match, I light the wick, I blow out the match, I close my eyes, I draw the flame towards me three times with the cups of my hands, and… not always, not even most of the time, but very occasionally, something happens, I can't explain, I can't quite put into words, but I reopen my eyes and see the candles, and I see my family and the people around me, and suddenly all the world appears in a new light. I don't know that science can explain the experience.
We all “have the neshamah.” It’s just that the neshamah cannot be reasoned intellectually, or proven by science. Sometimes the purpose for performing a certain action is not evident the first time. Sometimes the benefit becomes apparent only later, after myriad repetitions, like the benefit from working out daily at the gym. And sometimes the benefit never becomes apparent. In the Jewish mystical tradition, when we fulfill a Mitzvah, we may not change our own situation, but we influence the cosmic order in ways that we cannot even imagine.
Actually, in a way it's egocentric to assert that we will only perform an action if we can demonstrate a specific reason for it. I'm not saying that we should all run out and shop around for unblemished red cows to slaughter! But I am asking us not to restrict ourselves to the mishpatim in life, the rules whose purpose we can comprehend, but rather to open ourselves up to the chukim, to the magic and mystery of the world around us. My prayer for all of us: may we allow ourselves, occasionally, to do certain things…. just because. And may we emerge from the experience by reopening our eyes and seeing all the world in a new light.
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