Mishpat & Chukkah
“This is chukkat ha-torah that God has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid…it shall be slaughtered…the priest will take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting…Gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a pure place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community. It is for purgation.” (Bamidbar 19:2-9)
By all accounts, the ritual of the Red Heifer is a strange one. It involves a complicated procedure including sacrificing a cow, burning it to ash, adding in some herbs, and creating a ritual elixir from the mixture. This elixir is useful - it restores purity when someone encounters a dead body. But…what a strange ritual!
Rashi comments: “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 [Torah] writes the term chukkah about it, implying: It is an enactment (gezeira) from before Me; you have no right to criticize it.”
In essence, Rashi says that when we see the word chukkah, we know (1) the law is definitely weird and hard to explain to others and even oneself; and (2) we still follow it simply because God said so.
In rabbinic literature, chukkah (or the related word chok) is contrasted withmishpat, literally “judgment.” These are two categories of laws. Mishpat refers to laws that any reasonable person could come up with rationally through thinking hard enough, while chukkah cannot be arrived at through intellectual means. We have to take God’s word for it. In other words, when the Torah tells us we must do something, sometimes we can understand why and other times the rationale is inscrutable.
What’s at stake in understanding the reason behind a religious practice? As a strength, when we understand why we are doing a practice, we are more inclined to appreciate it and observe it. If I believe that giving tzedakah(charity) restores the dignity of humans in different economic circumstances and increases fairness in the world, even just a little bit, I am motivated to give tzedakah because I value those reasons.
As a weakness, though, having a reason for a rule means you can challenge the rule for not being the best expression of that reason. If the reason for keeping kosher stems from a desire to minimize animal suffering (one of the various explanations I’ve seen), you could rationally argue that in our era, there are way better ways to minimize animal suffering, and in fact continuing kosher slaughtering practices actually causes unnecessary harm at this point. For anyone invested in the long-term endurance of a ritual, having a reason for it may actually backfire! Calling it a “because God said so” chukkahinsulates the practice from logical criticism.
The 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which launched a coherent early Reform Jewish movement, had this to say about kashrut: “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” In other words, the original reasons for kashrut no longer hold! Saying we do something for a reason means that if the reason changes, or if there is a better way to accomplish that reason, our practice will change. In this way, you might imagine the early Reform movement as amishpat-elevating Judaism.
On the extreme opposite of a Reform approach to Jewish practice, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994) argued that “Halakhic observance as a way of life, a fixed and permanent form of human existence, precludes conversion of of religion into a means to some ulterior end. Most of the Mitzvoth are meaningless except as expressions of worship.” (Religious Praxis, p. 16) In other words, virtually the entirety of Jewish practice should be consideredchukkah! All that matters is that God said so, and no other reason is needed (or even possible).
Most Jews and Jewish communities find a middle path between “here’s why we do this” and “we do it just because.” I’d be curious to hear from you where you place yourself in the spectrum!
What do you do out of an innate sense of commandedness (whether by God, authorities, loved ones, conscience, even habit) without overthinking, and what do you do because a long, thoughtful process of rationalizing has led you there? What elements of Jewish practice are you curious to understand better? What might you be willing to jump into without knowing everything about it first?
May this Shabbat bring the right mixture of mishpat and chukkah, thoughtful exploration and the most wonderful stubborn persistence of ritual that you do just because that’s the way you do it.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
