I grew up inside, so nobody needs to sell me on it. The meals that show up after a birth. The loan with no interest and no questions asked. The chevra kadisha. The man you barely know who finds your son a job. Nobody builds that by accident.

But here’s a question we never ask. Something that valuable, how does it protect itself? Anything worth that much attracts people who want the benefits without paying for them. So a community like ours needs a way to know who’s really in.

And the strongest test anyone ever came up with is a rule you can’t question. Think about it. A rule with a reason, anyone can follow. They’re just following the reason. A rule with no reason, kept anyway, proves everything. It proves you accepted that the logic is above you. You will never be the authority above the authority. And before anyone gets offended, I’m not calling that a flaw. That’s the system working, and the tradition isn’t shy about it. Chukim aren’t the embarrassing part of Torah. We call them the crown.

Hold that. Now let me tell you about a boy. You know him. Every family has one.

He’s twenty-six. Motzei Shabbos he tells his mother he’s going out with friends, and it’s true. Religious friends, just modern. They take the train into the city. There’s a club. For a few hours everything is loud and fast and he feels more awake than he’s felt all week.

Now, what this boy is not. He’s not a kofer. He didn’t read the wrong book. He has never once questioned Hashem. Not at nine, not now. The emunah went in before language did. On Yom Kippur he means every word. Some years he cries.

He has a script for the city, and you know the script, because we’ve all heard a version of it. It’s fine for now. Not when I’m married. By then I’ll be good.

Except the years pass. The wedding gets closer, or it happens. And the pull doesn’t shrink, because it was never a phase. So now he’s living in two halves that don’t touch, and the hatred he carries for himself, I’ve seen it up close, and it’s not what you think. It’s not guilt. It’s worse.

The question that eats him at two in the morning is actually a good kushya. Everyone got the same rules. Everyone was warned about the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)