Last week, I wrote about the question, "Why Pray?"  With this week's Torah portion, there is an even deeper question to answer: Why observe any of the commandments? It is a question that goes right to the heart of our ability to understand the world around us.

Parashat Chukat begins with one of the strangest of all the commandments in the Torah. Moses instructs the Israelites to slaughter and burn a cow that is entirely red and to save the ashes for a ritual to purify people who have come in contact with a dead body. If that's not odd enough, the passage also contains this paradox: the person who gathers the ashes of the Red Cow is rendered ritually unclean by the same ashes that are used to purify others (Number 19:9-10).

The paradox has been apparent since ancient times. In the midrash, wise King Solomon is said to have exclaimed, "I succeeded in understanding the whole Torah, but, as soon as I reach this chapter about the Red Cow, I searched, probed and questioned. 'I said I will get wisdom, but it was far from me.'" (Yalkut Shimoni 759; Ecclesiastes 7:23).

Ever since, there has been an argument in Judaism about how inexplicable laws in the Torah should be viewed. Some say that God's laws are beyond question and must be observed without question or explanation. According to this point of view, the mitzvot are their own justification—we fulfill them because God has asked us to do so. The more inscrutable a law is, the better it is to teach us this lesson.

This is the logic of the Vilna Gaon (Rabbeinu Eliyahu of Vilna), who taught that any attempt to explain a law would lead to the violation of the law. He says that once people begin coming up with reasons for observing a law, they begin looking for cases in which the reason does not apply and excuse themselves from observing the law in those cases. 

For example, if I believe that the reason for the prohibition on playing musical instruments on Shabbat is to prevent me from repairing an instrument that breaks on Shabbat, I might think that it is okay to play the instrument as long as I don't repair it. The rational explanation, argues the Vilna Gaon, actually leads to the law's violation. He says that it's better not to explain the laws and just to observe them without question.

If that seems like shaky reasoning to you, you are not alone. The Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides) ridicules the Vilna Gaon's objection (five hundred years before the Vilna Gaon was born!). According to the Rambam, those who believe that it is impermissible to consider rational explanations for the commandments suffer from "a certain disease of the soul." He explains:

Those people imagine that if the laws appear to make any sense at all or to serve any purpose, others will assume that the laws must have come from human reason and not from God. It is only if the laws have no reason and serve no purpose that people will attribute them to God, since no human being could come up with something so inexplicable. According to this weak-minded theory, human beings are more perfect than our Creator! For we do things that have a purpose, while God's actions are different; God commands us to do what is of no use to us, and forbids us to do what is harmless. Far be it from so! On the contrary, the sole object of the Torah is to benefit us. (A Guide for the Perplexed, Section 3, Chapter 31)

So, then, how would the Rambam explain the law of the Red Cow whose ashes render the impure pure and the pure impure? The Rambam says that the laws of ritual purity serve to create awe and reverence for God and the Temple in the hearts of the Jewish people. He seems to suggest that the ashes behave the way they do simply because there needs to be a way to purify the ritually impure and it needs to be something miraculous. Red Cow ashes are as good at fulfilling those requirements as anything else might be.

Still not satisfied? Here's my take on inscrutable laws: the explanation is that there is no explanation. 

In the time of giving of the Torah, laws like that of the Red Cow made sense to people based on their traditions, customs and understanding of the world. There is no reason to assume that the Torah's first audience was more mystified by the ritual of the Red Cow than we are mystified by the pageantry of halftime at the Superbowl. On reflection, the ancient Israelites surely saw the strangeness of the law,  but they accepted it as "the way we've always done it." Even if they did ask, "What is the point of this?" the answer could only have been the same one we give about the Superbowl: "That's just the way it is."

The common cultural understandings for these laws disappeared millennia ago (long before the time of the rabbis of the Talmud and midrash), and we are left only with the mystery. But that's a good thing. Mystery is much more interesting than a cultural oddity. Our reflection on the Red Cow reminds us that there is so much about the world that we do not and cannot understand. We find that we don't really understand the past. We certainly don't understand the future. And, perhaps, we will learn at last that we don't really understand the present, either. 

The purpose of the Red Cow is to remind us that we submit ourselves to a universe and a God that is beyond our ken. We don't observe commandments just because we understand them, we observe them also because we wish to celebrate a world that we don't understand.

In response to the rebellion, Moses first fell on his face to the ground in a stunning display of modesty. He did not argue with his accusers or act defensively. Instead, he put his trust in God and said, “Tomorrow, God will make known who belongs to God and who is holy.”

Later, Moses called for Datan and Abiram to appear before him. They refused to go to Moses, and their words were as far from modest as can be imagined. They said, "We will not come!  Is it not enough that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us?”

Moses, it seems, wouldn't go to them, either. Nobody likes to go looking for trouble.

Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy in this story?  Most of the classical commentators are quick to paint a picture in black in white—Moses is the man of God and the rebels are selfish, narrow and power-hungry. But nothing in Torah is ever truly black and white. Moses may be a well intentioned leader and faithful to God, but that may not be enough.

Listen to what Rabbi Simchah Bunim of P’zhisha has to say. This hassidic master is one of the few commentators who is willing to find fault with Moses’ behavior. He asks, “Why did Moses have to send for Datan and Abiram and wait for them to attend to him?” Moses failed to bring peace to the Israelites during this, his greatest challenge, because he did not bother to go to them and try to appease them. Instead, he waited in his tent and sent to have them brought to him.

When I, like Moses, say, “If trouble wants me, let trouble come and get me itself,” in my mind I have reduced a human being to being nothing more than “trouble.”  I have neglected to see the human aspect of the person whose needs and desires—no matter how base I may consider them—are nothing but a source of bother to me.  

If I were to look at the human beings behind my “trouble”—I would begin to learn about who they are and what needs lie behind behaviors I, at first, labeled “selfish, narrow and power-hungry.”  I would see people in pain, I would see people who feel excluded, people who want the same things I want—love, acceptance and an ear to hear their plight.

When our communities overcome the human tendency to see those who think or behave differently as “trouble,” we begin to create peace. When we take the time to see the human being on the other side of the divide, it becomes much harder for us to see the other person as a villain.

The Torah teaches that Moses was the most modest man on the face of the earth.  Yet he, in all his modesty, was too busy burying his face in the earth—bemoaning his own sense of persecution—to walk to the source of his “trouble,” and begin to see, instead, a person.

May we, who have many points of view—we who are human beings who have each known pain, exclusion and isolation in our lives—come to truly see each other. Let us not wait for trouble to come to us, even when we believe ourselves to be in the right. Let us stand up, walk to trouble’s tent, and come to know the human face across from us.

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses sent out spies to check out the people who lived in the land of Canaan. Ten of the spies returned with a report that the Canaanites were giants.  They said that Israel would never be able to conquer them. The spies’ report spread fear among the Israelites, and resulted in God’s decision to have them wander in the wilderness for another forty years. 

This week's haftarah reading, from the book of Joshua, tells a parallel story in which things are turned around. It is Israel’s enemies, the people of Jericho, who are scared to death. The spies whom Joshua sent to check them out return to say that the land is already as good as conquered because the people who live there are already trembling in fear of the Israelites.

In both stories, the spies’ reports do not say nearly as much about the military capacity of the enemy (what you would expect spies to report!) as they do about the emotional state of each side in relation to the other. Those who are confident are presumed to prevail and those who are fearful are presumed to fail. Perceptions become reality.

One of the major differences between the story in the Torah and the story in the haftarah is that, in the latter, the spies made personal contact with Rachav, a member of the enemy city. They got up close to see the full extent of the enemy they faced. In the Torah story, the spies merely looked at the Canaanites from a distance and made no personal connection. From a distance the Canaanites looked like giants. Would they have looked differently if the spies had gone right up and engaged them in conversation? 

Fear is a natural and normal response to a threat. That's why we are programed instinctively to fear things that are strange to us. However, fear that is automatic and unquestioning can be destructive. The two stories we read this week—the story of the fearful spies and the story of the confident spies—can be understood as a challenge to confront the things that make us fearful. We are urged to get close enough to the things we perceive as threatening to see their true nature. When we do this, we may discover that the things that scare us actually are as weak and unthreatening as were the cowering people of Jericho.

We have spent the last seven weeks since Passover counting the days and weeks to Shavuot, which begins this Tuesday evening. What does this suggest about the holiday we call the "Time of the Giving of the Torah"? We await the Torah's arrival like one would await the arrival of a beloved friend...or a lover. We count every day in growing anticipation of Torah's passionate entrance, as this classical midrash suggests:

Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:12-13
“Give me the kisses of your mouth!” (Song of Songs 1:2).  When was this said? Rabbi Yochanan answered: It was said at Mount Sinai!

An angel carried each of the Ten Commandments from the Holy One of Blessing and brought it to each Israelite and said, “Do you accept this commandment? These rules are attached to it, these penalties, these precautions, these precepts, these lenient and strict rulings, and these rewards. Do you accept?” The Israelite would answer, “Yes!” The angel then said, “Do you accept the Holy One of Blessing as your God?”  The Israelite would answer, “Yes, Yes!” Immediately, the angel kissed the Israelite on the mouth.

The rabbis, however, say that it is not an angel that kisses each Israelite. It is the commandments themselves.

There is no question about the kind of kiss that the Torah's commandments are delivering. Song of Songs, after all, is not about chaste pecks on the cheek! This is a passionate, amorous kiss that comes with the acceptance of the Torah. Does it seem strange that we would think of the laws of the Torah as sensuous pillow-talk between lovers? How can we re-imagine the Ten Commandments as a cosmic come-on that God is whispering into our ears?

This is exactly the way the rabbis intend for us to understand Torah. Beneath the outer garments of laws and rules, Torah is a love-song between God and Israel in which the deep secrets of divinity are revealed. God is wooing us to enter into the ways of the Torah, to walk along paths that draw us into the deepest joy of living life fully and meaningfully. The laws of the Torah are a tantric courtship stimulating us to the highest levels of awareness in our relationship with God. 

On Tuesday night, the Torah will call to us, beckoning us to come spend the night together (!) in the practice of Tikkun Leil Shavuot, the all-night study session on the night of Shavuot. The wait has been long—we've been counting the days and weeks—but when your lover arrives, you, too, will say, "Yes! Yes!"