Jewish with Feeling by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Author:Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Judaism; Jewish spirituality; Jewish inspiration; Jewish spiritual practice; Modern Jewish spirituality; Modern Judaism; Progressive Jewish spirituality; Liberal Jewish spirituality; Liberal Jewish practice; Introduction to Jewish spirituality; Living Jewishly; Beginner’s Jewish spirituality; Beginner’s Jewish practice
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Published: 2013-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

ACTS OF MYSTERY

Chok (plural chukim) is the deepest level of mitzvah and the hardest level to understand. Chok means law or decree and comes from the root meaning engraved. These are the laws that are carved in stone. A Hasidic interpretation imagines the three levels like this. Mishpatim, the logical injunctions, are like letters written on plastic. They are legible and clear; they leap to the eye and the mind. Yet they are easy to wipe off and rewrite. Eduyot, the witnessing commandments, are like writing in indelible ink. They are not so easy to wipe away: something always remains. And yet they, too, could fade after long exposure to the sun. Chukim are engraved, chipped out of stone with a hammer and chisel. They can’t be wiped off, nor will they fade. The letters may get filled up and obscured, but as soon as you wash them off their message reveals itself again.

In order to transmit an engraved message, the medium of transmission must give up something of itself: this is what the chipping-out process of engraving entails. And the medium of transmission here is us. More than the other types of mitzvot, the chukim ask for a higher level of surrender to a will that is not our own. Though chukim can be so hard to accept, they are also the level of mitzvah that I would be most afraid to tamper with, for I have found that they touch much deeper, preverbal levels in me than mishpatim and eduyot. They bring me closer to the realization of God. As sorely tempted as we may be sometimes to rewrite or simply jettison these mitzvot altogether, I don’t think any practice we would make up today—having vetted it for respectability and conformation to our modern views—could touch us in so deep a way.

Circumcision is perhaps the best-known example of a chok. Yes, the Torah commands us to perform the bris as a sign for all time of our covenant with God, so it has aspects of edut as well. But all the explanations and all the meanings shatter at the rock of “How can I do this to my son?” This practice cannot be logically defended. I have such trouble with it, have wrestled with it, and yet I feel more commanded with this than I feel with any other mitzvah. I couldn’t do it unless I felt so commanded. It counters so many things that I believe—yet I’m convinced that the transmission would be lost for uncircumcised Jews, that we would lose them. This is raw soul to raw body, without the mind intercepting.

Emotions often take over when we perform one of these mitzvot. Imagine a modern Jewish couple who give birth to a boy. For days they anguish over the question, “Should we have him circumcised?” Often their extreme ambivalence results in a compromise, and the boy is circumcised at the hospital by a surgeon, sometimes without even the parents in attendance. But if after much hesitation

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