Parashat Chukat, a very expensive cat, and the invisible rules that shape our lives.

The Red Heifer is one of the Torah’s most frustrating ideas.

Not because it makes no sense.

Because it forces us to admit how many things we do without fully understanding them.

Parashat Chukat opens with the famous chok — a commandment performed not because we understand it, but because G-D commanded it. The Red Heifer purifies those who have become impure through contact with death, while creating impurity elsewhere in the process. The details are baffling. The logic is elusive. Even King Solomon, the wisest of men, reportedly admitted defeat.

Naturally, Jews have spent thousands of years trying to explain it anyway.

We are not a people particularly comfortable with unanswered questions.

Supporting documentation.

If possible, a spreadsheet.

The Torah occasionally responds with a divine equivalent of, “No.”

The Red Heifer is not there to satisfy our need for understanding. It is there to remind us that understanding is not always the point.

That is an uncomfortable idea in the modern world.

We live in an age that demands justification for everything. Every action must be rational. Every decision must be explained. Every commitment must survive a cost-benefit analysis.

And yet the older I get, the more I suspect that much of life is governed by chukim.

Not necessarily G-D’s.

The private rules we follow without fully understanding........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)