Chukat / Between faith and reason … trusting Hashem in Eretz Israel

In 1946, according to legend, a young polish boy digging through the rubble of the Warsaw ghetto found a tube with a manuscript inside. The African American soldier he sold it to for a dollar, recognized it as something Jewish and brought it to the chaplain of the U.S. 8th Army, Rabbi Herschel Schachter, ob”m.

Rabbi Schachter quickly realized this was the manuscript of the holy Piaseczner Rebbe, Rav Klonymus Kalman Shapiro H”YD.

Rav Shapiro, one of the last rabbis of the Warsaw Ghetto, was deported to the concentration camp at Trawniki where he was murdered on Nov. 3, 1943. From 1939 to 1942 he gave a weekly shiur (class) on the Torah portion and the transcript of these classes was the manuscript Rabbi Schechter held in his hands.

This manuscript became known as the Eish Kodesh, the words of holy fire which illuminated the darkness of the Warsaw Ghetto.

In his discussion on Shavuot in June of 1940, Rav Shapiro notes the verse from Tehillim (Psalm 121):

“Esah Einai el he’harim; mei’ayin yavo ezri…”

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains; from whence will come my salvation? My salvation is from Hashem (G-d) who fashions the heavens and the earth.”

If one already knows his salvation is from G-d, asks the Eish Kodesh, why does the verse add the fact that G-d is the creator of heaven and earth? Once I know G-d is my salvation, obviously I know He created everything, so why the extra sentence?

Explains the Eish Kodesh: Sometimes you get into a jam and you know what has to happen for you to be saved; imagine you run a red light without realizing it and suddenly find a truck coming through the intersection — you hit the brakes and pray he will hit his and that you will both stop, or swerve, in time — you know what to pray for.

But what if you find yourself in a situation from which you cannot imagine escaping?

Imagine you are in an airplane at 35,000 feet leaning against the door, when it accidentally pops open and you fall out, with no parachute, at 35,000 feet! What do you pray for? Wings? It’s over, right?

Says the Piaseczner Rebbe: Just remember Whom you are praying to. Hashem made the heavens and the earth, and airplanes and gravity; if He wants you to survive, you’ll survive, so never give up hope.

The Piaseczner Rebbe was sharing this Torah in the Warsaw ghetto; if there was ever a time the Jewish people could not have imagined how they would be saved, this was it. Who would have imagined, as a Jew on a train to Trawniki in 1943, that five years later they would be dancing and celebrating the birth of the Jewish State of Israel in the streets of Tel Aviv.

Chukat, this week’s portion which speaks of the ultimate chok, or mitzvah we find incomprehensible, follows Shlach which speaks of the sin of the spies, and Korach which speaks of great men and leaders who allowed themselves to be led astray and misread history. What connects these three portions?

In Shlach, the spies convince an entire nation that they are not ready to enter the land of Israel. Despite all of G-d’s miracles, one way of understanding their contention is that it just does not make sense: A nation of slaves is just not ready to face the battle hardened Canaanite Nations

They are, after all, in a spiritual nirvana with manna from heaven, clouds of glory, and the leadership of Moses and Aaron; why would they leave that and risk the inevitable spiritual decline that conquering the land of Israel (wherein the overt miracles would gradually cease and the Jewish people would have to be partners with G-d in conquering the land) would entail?

It is interesting to note that Calev, the tribal prince who argues for entering the land, does not even mention the miracles in his argument for trusting G-d; he just says: “Let us go up; we can conquer,” which is the pre-Nike version of “Just Do It!”

The next portion, Korach, which we read last Shabbat, is all about a struggle for leadership. Korach, the great grandson of Levi. felt that he, too, was entitled to a leadership role as the next in line after Moses and Aaron. Jewish tradition points out that Korach was a man of great qualities: not only a leader, but a Torah scholar and according to some traditions even a prophet. Yet all his greatness did not prevent him from missing the boat and not realizing that history was mapping out a different course.

And then we arrive at our portion this week: Chukat.

“Zot Chukat haTorah,” begins our portion. “This is the (great) Chok of the Torah…”

A Chok is a mitzvah Hashem has given us to fulfill which we can never fully understand. It is, like the red heifer (the parah adumah whose ashes purify those made impure by death, whilst simultaneously making impure those that began in a state of purity) ultimately incomprehensible. It bespeaks a willingness to fulfill that which we cannot understand; it is faith beyond reason.

Indeed, in this portion we read of the ultimate Chok, when both Aaron and Miriam die in the desert, never meriting to enter the land of Israel. This is the ultimate Chok, the paradigm of that which we can never fathom: death; and even more, the death of the righteous who suffer, never entering the land they dreamed of for so many years.

One way of understanding Calev’s reticence in mentioning the miracles, is precisely that the time was right to take a leap of faith; faith beyond reason.

“Let us go up; we can conquer” says Calev: not because it makes sense, but because Hashem asks it of us, and history demands it.

The mistake of the spies was that they were afraid to leave such a spiritual environment and sully themselves with the physical and even mundane challenge of conquering the land. Yet, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe suggests in his Likkutei Sichot, this was precisely what Hashem was asking them to do. They had to be willing to fight, to be partners with Hashem in conquering the land, and they had to have faith that in doing the right thing, they would survive not only physically, but spiritually as well.

So perhaps it is no accident that in the next portion we see clearly how leadership channeled in the wrong direction can result in a rebellion which, though in the name of G-d, is actually the antithesis of what Hashem wants.

One wonders how a prophet and great Torah scholar like Korach, who rubbed shoulders with Moshe himself, saw the splitting of the Red Sea, and even heard the word of G-d at Sinai, could so misread the call of the day. And yet, clearly this is one of the messages of Korach. Which is finally followed by Chukat, which suggests that whilst we need to do what needs to be done, even fighting to conquer the land, we need to ensure that we do it not because we think it is right and it makes sense, but because this is truly what we believe Hashem asks of us.

This week, one of the issues occupying the headlines here in Israel, is the drafting of yeshiva students who believe Torah study contributes to the country’s well-being (with which I agree), and who believe that entering the army would cause them to risk their spiritual growth.

If we can have faith in Hashem’s salvation in the Warsaw ghetto, believing the Jewish people will survive against all odds, we can certainly have faith in the spiritual survival of the Jewish people and each individual Jewish Torah scholar, in the midst of the same physical and spiritual conquest of the land of Israel the spies so feared.

Seventy Five plus years ago, a generation of Torah scholars made a terrible mistake (perhaps their vision was collectively obstructed by Hashem as was Yaakov’s when he could not see Joseph was still alive?) and told their flocks in Europe not to leave; it was not time, they felt, to go home to Israel just yet. Like the spies 3,000 years earlier, they feared the spiritual decline that might result from such a move.

Three thousand years later, let us hope our generation will realize we are ready to fight for the right to stay in the land of Israel and that such a magnificent mitzvah as defending the Jewish people will result not in spiritual decline, but in a great and purifying spiritual growth that will see the entire Jewish people home, and in peace, one day soon.