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PARSHAT CHUKAT
Life is certainly nothing but mystery. The unknown and the uncertain far outweigh what we believe we understand and base our life’s activities and plans upon. Events that are unforeseen and sometimes less than fortuitous occur to us all of the time, jarring our sense of security and serenity. Though this week’s parsha dwells upon one of the laws of the Torah called a chok – a law without understanding or rational explanation – it really informs us about human life.
The Torah states explicitly zot chukat haTorah – this is the law of the Torah regarding all matters of life. Really what we think we understand is still not fully understood by humans. Every layer of scientific discovery and advance unpeels for us the specter of untold new mysteries of which we were previously completely unaware. The nature of all life is therefore chok. So the Torah, though concentrating on the commandment and mystery of the parah adumah in all of its particularities really addresses itself to life generally.
In the Torah viewpoint, humans have limitations in their abilities to understand and rationalize our existence and purpose. “No living creature can see Me” is interpreted in Jewish tradition to mean “No living creature can ever understand fully the world, nature and logic of the Creator of us all. Man is doomed to be a wanderer in a desert of doubt and uncertainty, without ever being able to find one’s way clearly on his own. All of the frustrations and disappointments of human life stem from this hard fact of life.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto in his immortal work, Mesilat Yesharim, compares life to a gigantic maze in which without directions or guidance one can never emerge. I remember that once when I visited one of the royal palaces and its grounds in Europe, I tried my luck at entering the maze of tall hedges that existed there. There were many other people with me in the maze. Suffice it to say that after forty minutes none of us had found our way out of the maze. There were people who were bemused by the situation. Others were visibly frustrated and almost angry in their inability to escape. And then there were those who were visibly panicked by being lost in the maze. After a while a guard entered the maze and guided all of us safely out.
Rabbi Luzatto had made the point that if one stands on a high platform that overlooks the maze and maps it out in one’s mind then negotiating the maze becomes possible, even simple. The Torah is that high platform that allows to deal with the maze of life. That is the ultimate lesson of this week’s parsha. Life is a chok – a confusing maze of events, personalities and forces. Why the maze is constructed as it is, or even to appreciate why the necessity for a maze itself is chok – beyond our level of comprehension. But how to negotiate the maze, how to stand on the high platform overlooking and informing the maze, that is within our grasp and abilities. And that is really the chukat haTorah that is granted to us.
Shabat shalom.
Rabbi Berel Wein
