Chukas-Balak: The Body Does Not Know Why

Good morning. 

You woke up. 

You did the thing.

You got up. 

You think you got up because it is the right thing for you to do. It is the effective thing to do. 

So that the rest of your day will go smoothly.

You will prepare yourself with ample time. 

You will be able to leave your house without the inner crisis of a man on the run. 

You will make it to shul and daven properly. 

It's the practical thing to do, no?

No. 

It can't just be that. 

There is a depth to working on the self, to acting in the ways of Hashem and His Torah, that is easy to miss. 

So many Shmoozen sell the practicality of Torah. The efficiency of Torah. 

“Wow, see how the Torah has affected the world and formed all these cultures into being slightly less than savages!”

So is that all the Torah is?

Just a series of efficiency protocols? 

זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה

Why doesn’t the Torah call Parah Adumah “the Chok of the Parah"? 

Instead, the Torah calls it the "Chok of the Torah."

Reb Levi Yitzchak of Barditchev says that the honest truth is that all of the Torah's commandments are Chukim. 

All of Torah are mitzvos whose true reason we do not understand.

Hashem revealed just enough for us to do something real. But the true depth? That is hidden. 

The neshama understands it. 

The neshamah knows the true depth, but Hashem created this world where the body is at odds with the truth. 

This is an Alma D’piruda. 

A world where nothing is connected. A world of separation. From truth. 

The body naturally resists. 

The body may think it's doing things because of efficiency. 

But that's a selfish game. 

So selfish to think that all Torah is good for is self-preservation. 

To take the highest Ohr of the Ein Sof and plug it into this physical world as a way to get along? 

So Hashem gives us the chukim. 

To remind us that we do things even if we don't know the full reason. 

And it's the Chok of the Torah. Because really every mitzva is this way. 

How small would the torah be if it could fit into neat explanations? 

The higher knowing of your soul is hidden deep within morning routines and practical dietary laws. 

Kosher is good for you, really.

Really? Is that all it boils down to?

How quaint. 

But know that it's normal. 

You are human. We are human. 

We see patterns everywhere we want to make it all make sense. 

It's the practical thing to do to make it all make sense. 

We love to serve the gods of comfort and ease and practicality. 

Shaking the lulav is a practical way to show how grounded we are.

If you read the Torah a certain way, you can see the secret codes shining out that PROVE the Torah is true. 

But is that all there is? 

No, there is so much more. 

So how does one tap into that ‘so much more’? 

How can we taste our neshamah's true understanding?  

At Har Sinai, Klal Yisrael said,

נעשה ונשמע

“We will do, and we will hear.”

The Jewish way is not “I understand, therefore I do.”

It is deeper. 

I do, and through the doing I become able to hear.

Hearing, even hearing deeply, isn't enough. 

You need to do things without hearing. 

You need to do Hashem’s ratzon, and that will carry you through the world of practical advice for living into the world of Dveikus Bashem.

Your neshama can't be heard in this physical, detached world. 

But you can draw it out when you take action. 

The Sefer Hachinuch teaches in Mitzvah sixteen “כִּי אַחֲרֵי הַפְּעֻלּוֹת נִמְשָׁכִים הַלְּבָבוֹת”. 

“It is action itself that draws out the heart."

Even a Rasha can turn himself around by doing the things. 

Doing the things, often without knowing the why, draws out the neshamah. 

It draws out your heart to feel and to know the truer things of your soul. 

Like a sixth sense. But more than that, a feeling of returning to the place you always were. 

This is the point of the Chok. 

To remind you that there was always more beneath the surface.

This is why it is the Chok of the Torah, not just the Chok of the Parah. 

Why is this lesson revealed with the Parah Adumah?

The Kedushas Levi continues and shows us that when the Neshama leaves the body, the body that is left becomes tamei. 

Because the soul is what carries the truth, the engine of life. 

When it leaves, it reverts the body back to the physical plane.

How tragic that when alive we never fully tap into the soul that's here. 

Like the Kotzker said, "I see dead people walking around who are still alive."

The Parah Adumah is the perfect mitzvah to teach this lesson. 

Where the one who is Mitaher becomes Tamei. 

I don't know why. But my soul knows why. 

And I do it because I will be able to draw my soul closer to the surface.

This is what a tzadik does. 

He refines the body so that the body itself becomes imbued with the kedusha of the soul. 

So what is there for you and me to do?

To be a Gibor is not to be perfect. 

It is to live a mission-driven life. 

That does not mean you do this Jewish thing because it makes sense, or because it works, or because it is practical. 

You do it because it is the truest truth.

The goal is to remember Him and to bring Him into your world. 

To create a Dira Bitachtonim. 

To be daveik to Him. 

In whatever way you are able. 

Even when the body does not know why.