A Chok Beyond Reason: Purifying the Body

1“Hashem spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, saying: This is the chok of the Torah which Hashem commanded, saying …”¹² The commentators, the Kli Yakar and the Ohr HaChaim, ask why the verse speaks of “the chok of the Torah,” a chok being a decree given without a reason.³ The parshah speaks only of the mitzvah of the red heifer, so it should have said, “This is the chok of the heifer.” We must also ask about the words “which Hashem commanded, saying.” The verse has said at its very start, “Hashem spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, saying.” Why does it say “saying” a second time?

2Let us first cite the words of the holy Zohar: “Come and see: when a person sins, he draws a force of impurity upon himself, and it defiles him and all the people of the world. This is the evil serpent, which is impure and defiles the world. For we have learned: when it takes the souls out of people, an impure body is left behind, and it defiles the house and all who come near it, as it is written, ‘One who touches the dead body of any human being shall be impure for seven days’ … Come and see: when people sleep in their beds at night, they all taste death. And because they taste death, this impure spirit roams over the world and defiles it. It rests upon a person's hands, and they become impure. When he wakes and his soul returns to him, everything he touches with his hands becomes impure, because an impure spirit rests upon them … Therefore a person must guard himself on every side from this evil serpent, so that it will not rule over him.” So far its words.⁴ These words of the Zohar need explaining.

3We know from the chronicle Seder Olam Zuta that at Marah, Hashem, blessed be He, gave Bnei Yisrael a few sections of the Torah to occupy themselves with: Shabbos, the red heifer and civil laws.⁵ Why were these mitzvos in particular given to them before the giving of the Torah? Shabbos we can understand: back in Egypt, Moshe had already chosen the holy day of Shabbos as a day of rest, as the Tur records.⁶ But why were they now given the red heifer and civil laws as well?

4Let us open with the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on this verse, which resolve the questions about its wording that we raised. He built on a teaching of the holy sefer Kedushas Levi:⁷ Avraham Avinu gave the angels food so that they would not bring accusations against Bnei Yisrael. The angels would see that human beings need physical things and a livelihood, and that this is why people sometimes sin. That is the gist of the Kedushas Levi's words. This, my holy father said, is hinted in “This is the chok of the Torah,” for chok is a word for food, as the Gemara says.⁸ So “the chok of the Torah” is the food without which there is no Torah, for “If there is no flour, there is no Torah.”⁹ It is something “which Hashem commanded,” and people sometimes, Heaven forbid, transgress His command. Still, because of “the chok of the Torah,” people's need for food, the verse adds “saying.” Hashem did command, and people were sometimes not as careful with His command as they should have been. Even so, there is room to plead in their favor before the Holy One, blessed be He, that He lead us with amirah, “saying,” which is gentle speech.¹⁰

5aAll this will become clear from what the holy sefer Kedushas Levi writes on this verse at the beginning of our parshah.¹¹ It is a foundation and a great principle, he writes, that no one can grasp the reasons for the mitzvos at their root. We must keep the whole Torah only because Hashem commanded it. This is the meaning of “This is the chok of the Torah”: the whole Torah is a kind of chukah, since no reason for any of the mitzvos is revealed to us. We keep the Torah and the mitzvos only because they are what “Hashem commanded.”

5bThis is also the idea behind the command to prepare a red heifer to purify people from the impurity of the dead. The principle is that a person's soul, hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory, always wants to serve the Creator, blessed be He, without a moment's pause; it is only the body that does not let it. There is a constant war between the soul and the body, and a person who is worthy defeats the body and acts as the soul wishes. But why does the body not want to keep the Torah and the mitzvos? Because it does not grasp their reasons. The soul, hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory, does grasp the reasons of the Torah and the mitzvos, and so it always wants to do them, without a moment's pause. A person who is worthy makes the soul prevail over the body, so that he does keep the Torah and the mitzvos. That is why, when a person dies and the soul rises above, leaving only the body, the body imparts impurity. That is the gist of his words.

6It follows that the task of a Jew, and the goal Hashem desires, is to work on himself to refine his physical matter and raise it to form, that is, to make the body into soul. The reason lies in the soul: it is hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory, and so it wants and longs to do mitzvos. The body does not feel or grasp what the mitzvos are, and it does not want them. So when a person dies, and the soul rises to Heaven and the body is left alone, all the impurities are drawn to it, because the body did not want to keep the Torah. This should really have happened to it while the person was still alive, but the soul held it back; now that the soul has departed, nothing stands in the way. This is what the mitzvah of the red heifer, itself a chok, comes to remedy. Through it the body is rectified and purified of its unwillingness to keep the Torah as a chok. That is why, as we find, the red heifer purifies only from the impurity of the dead.

7Yet the true goal is to transform even the body into soul. This is possible only through mesirus nefesh, the readiness to give one's life: refusing to listen to the body, which by its nature has no desire for mitzvos. This is what my holy father said in explaining why we say mesirus nefesh, “giving over the soul,” though it would seem we should say mesiras haguf, “giving over the body.” When a person is privileged to reach the level of mesirus nefesh, he said, the body too is raised up and becomes soul, so it is quite right to say “giving over the soul.”

8But a person reaches mesirus nefesh only after he has been privileged to feel the taste of avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem, and of the mitzvos. We know that when a person longs for something, he can readily give himself over to attain it. So once a person is privileged to feel the delight and sweetness of the mitzvos, he attains mesirus nefesh for them, out of great longing. And through this mesirus nefesh he overcomes the body, which has no desire for Hashem's mitzvos.

9This lets us explain what the holy Zohar says at the beginning of our parshah, on the verse “And this is the Torah which Moshe placed …”: “Come and see: the words of the Torah are holy, they are lofty, they are sweet, as it is written, ‘They are more desirable than gold … and sweeter than honey.’”¹² The Zohar is hinting at the way to be purified from the impurity of the dead body. Only when a person feels how desirable the words of the Torah are, and how much sweeter than honey, can he reach the fullness of mesirus nefesh and strengthen the power of his soul. [Then, in the course of time, the body is refined; it too desires to do the mitzvos and becomes soul, as we cited from my holy father.]

10Before his sin, Adam HaRishon was certainly on this level: his body and soul alike longed only for avodas Hashem. He was the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, made in utter perfection, and he was surely like an angel of Hashem, desiring and longing only to do his Maker's will. He wanted to keep the Torah as a chok. But through the serpent, which enticed him and brought him to the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, a contamination was cast into him and into all mankind.¹³ The nature of this contamination is that reasoning split the body off from the soul, so that the body was no longer one with the soul, longing together with it only for Hashem's will. For reasoning holds a person back and weighs on him, keeping him from doing Hashem's will as a chok, and this is the root of the body's impurity. This explains the holy Zohar's words well: the impurity of the serpent, the impurity of the body in death, and the impurity of a person when he sins all have one root. All of it comes from the serpent's contamination, which brought in the reasoning that weighs on the body and keeps it from longing for Hashem's will. Because of this, the spirit of impurity rests on the body when the soul departs from it.

11This also lets us explain why the verse says “saying” a second time. As is well known, the pious R' Yosef Yaavetz, zt"l, wrote that in the days of the decrees in Spain, it was the people of lesser standing, the simple ones, who held fast. They withstood the test and gave their lives, more than the men of high rank and the philosophers, because they kept the Torah with simplicity, as a chok.¹⁴ This is the meaning of “saying,” leimor: to be passed on to the generations. If the Torah is kept as a chok, all the generations to come are assured that the Torah will endure and remain in their hands, as happened in the days of the decrees in Spain. That is “which Hashem commanded, saying.” When the Torah is kept in the way of “the chok of the Torah,” everything Hashem commanded is kept by Bnei Yisrael always, in every generation.

12This lets us understand why civil laws and the red heifer were given at Marah, before the rest of the Torah's mitzvos. The red heifer is a mitzvah of the chok kind, kept without understanding. Civil laws are mishpatim, laws that the mind can grasp and reason out, as Chazal said, “One who wishes to become wise should occupy himself with monetary laws.”¹⁵ So these two were given before the other mitzvos to show how one prepares to keep the Torah: by keeping it as a chok. Even civil laws, which have a reason and can be understood, must be kept only as a chok, like the red heifer, and in this way a person can go on to keep the whole Torah. That is why these were given to them before the giving of the Torah, for this is the preparation for receiving it.

13This explains well what the Zohar says: “Bnei Yisrael occupied themselves with studying the Torah they had learned at Marah, and that holy covenant joined with them, and the crooked serpent separated from that well of water.” So far its words.¹⁶ That is, because Bnei Yisrael occupied themselves with the Torah they learned at Marah, the serpent had no hold over them. This fits what we have said. At Marah they learned that the whole Torah, even civil laws, must be kept as a chok, and through this one removes the serpent's contamination, which sought to bring reasoning into us.

14In our day we lack both of these things, and we must toil to repair them: mesirus nefesh in avodas Hashem, and serving Hashem with simplicity, without probing with our minds while we do the mitzvos. As Chazal said, “Korach, who was clever, what did he see to commit this folly?”¹⁷ The tzaddikim explained that in avodas Hashem it is forbidden to be too clever, and that such cleverness is itself a kind of folly. May Hashem grant that we be privileged to reach this and bring near the coming of the righteous Redeemer. Amen, may it be His will.