Why Some Things Are Unknowable by Design
Tech Tribe Dispatch #307
💡 Think:
This week's Torah portion, Parashat Chukat, speaks about the mitzvah of the red heifer. The red heifer is the quintessential mitzvah that cannot be understood.
Generally speaking, mitzvot are divided into three different categories. Mishpatim are those that are logical, those that make sense—don't murder, don't steal, things like that.
Eidot commemorate historical events: the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Those may not be ones which we would have come to on our own rational understanding, but they make sense. They exist in a secular context in civil society today as well, we also commemorate historical events—the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, other such things.
If so, what is a chok? This is the mitzvah that cannot be understood. Its very essence is one that no mind could truly grasp. This is the will and the wisdom of the infinite Creator which the human mind is unable to fathom. The commandment of bringing the red heifer—a special sacrifice brought to purify those who are impure—is one that even King Solomon himself said he could not understand despite his great wisdom.
If so, one may ask, why does the Torah have mitzvot that can't be understood by the human mind? After all, Torah is meant for us to understand. It's meant for us to parse, to analyze, to compare and contrast, and to delve deeper and deeper into its mysteries. Why then would G-d give us mitzvot that we can never understand?
The reason is because every mitzvah at its core has an element that transcends logic and thought. The mitzvah’s are the will of the unknowable infinite essence of the Creator, and thus at some point, our physical minds reach their limit.
For most mitzvot, we are able to access their purpose, on the physical plane and in spiritual ones as well… but those mitzvot we can not understand connect us to the Torah’s transcendent core.
This is true both for something like the red heifer—something that is inexplicable in its very nature—and something which is logical: not to steal, not to murder, not to cheat, to do good to other people, to give charity. Every mitzvah has a component which connects us to the infinite Creator, a transcendent quality that defies the very limits of the mind to understand. This is integral to our very observance of those mitzvot.
If a commandment is based purely on rational thought, then eventually we'll rationalize it away. If not to steal or not to murder is based only on what makes sense to us, then inevitably we'll find an excuse as to why it is justified to break that commandment to do something else.
Only when we do things because the transcendent G-d—the G-d that defies and goes way beyond the limits of our mind—has commanded us to do it, then we can perform these mitzvot with true dedication, with true purpose.
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