Reasoning in Stone

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
by Yanki Tauber

“Moses turned and descended the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand: tablets inscribed from end to end, on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tablets were the work of G-d, and the writing was the writing of G-d, engraved upon the tablets. Exodus 32:15-16

We refer to the 613 commandments by various synonyms: mitzvah (commandment), dibbur (word), mishpat (law), ed (testimonial), and chok (decree).

Chok implies a supra-rational decree observed in submission to authority which we don’t have the right or capacity to question. The chukim are a class of mitzvot which the human mind cannot rationalize: mitzvot such as the prohibition to mix meat with milk and the laws of Mikvah and ritual purity, which express our inability to fathom the Divine will.

The literal meaning of chok is engraving. Indeed, explains Chassidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the difference between the supra-rational chok and rational law or testimonial, is the difference between engraved letters and written letters.

We have the Torah scroll in writing: Moses wrote the Five Books of Torah SheBichtav, by Divine dictation in physical ink on parchment. In its original spiritual incarnation, before becoming a guide to mankind in physical life, the Midrash describes the Torah as written in black fire on white fire--the supernal equivalent of ink on parchment.

But there is also a deeper and more basic state of Torah—not as written law but as engraved law. The Zohar refers to a supernal level where the Torah is engraved as the genesis of the Divine will. In its transmission to man, the written Torah was also preceded by an engraved Torah: the entirety of Divine law was first encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, etched by the ‘hand of G-d’ in two tablets of stone.

When something is written, the substance of the letters (the ink) remains a separate entity from the substance on which they have been set (the parchment). The two bond to form a single entity—the document—but this remains an entity that consists of two things: the ink and the parchment, the message and the medium, the definitive forms and the abstract background.

On the other hand, letters engraved in stone are not added to their medium but are forged in it: the words are stone and the stone is words.

Our understandings and feelings are inked upon our soul. Matters we acquired that comprise our personality; nevertheless, remain an addition to our quintessential self. We distinguish between our I and our intellect and emotions: the former is set and unalterable, while the latter are in a state of flux, developing and changing as he progresses through life.

Thus, the rational mitzvoth which we observe with an understanding and appreciation of their positive function—as they indeed should be observed, for this is why they were garbed in garments of reason—are as ink written upon the parchment of our souls. Something has been added to our self, appended to our psyche with the adhesive of reason and emotion. I am doing the mitzvah to the extent that my intellect and feelings are “me”—to the extent that ink and parchment become one in the document.

The chok, however, is an engraved decree. We do it for no reason other than our innate obedience to G-d. And our obedience to G-d is not something we acquire or develop (though there might, at times, exist the need to awaken it, when it is silenced and suppressed by the dross of material life). It is an integral part of our very essence, impressed in the spark of G-dliness at the core of every soul.

The Veneer of Reason
Chok is not only a certain type of mitzvah; it is also a general name for all of G-d's commandments.
This is expressed in the opening words of the Torah section of Chukat (Numbers 19-21) that begins with the law of The Red Heifer, opening with the statement

Zot chukat haTorah—”This is the chok of Torah”.
The simple meaning of these words is that this mitzvah is the chok of Torah, the ultimate supra-rational law. Indeed, the red heifer law is the prototypic chok—the law of which King Solomon, the wisest of men, said: “I sought to be wise to it, but it is beyond me.” There are also other mitzvot that defy rationalization; but the law of the red heifer is also counter-rational, with paradoxes and logical inconsistencies.

But the words “This is the chok of Torah” have yet another meaning. As Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi reads it, the verse is telling us: This mitzvah expresses the chok of Torah, the most poignant example of the supra-rationality of Divine law. All of Torah is chok, the unfathomable will of G-d. Thus, parah adumah Chok quality makes it the essence of all the mitzvot.

Each mitzvah is an expression of the Divine will. Obviously, no reason or function—certainly no reason or function that the human mind can grasp—can possibly explain or describe a Divine desire. So the Torah is really not two independent parts—rationally inked laws on the one hand, and supra-rational chukim on the other. Rather, these are two dimensions of Torah as a whole, each mitzvah possessing a written element in addition to its engraved essence.

If our human mind agrees with the mitzvah “Do not murder,” if it appreciates the profound and beautiful enrichment of Shabbat, it is only grasping at an auxiliary garment in which G-d chose to clothe His expressed will. On the other hand, even the most mystifying chok can be studied and analyzed, and profound lessons derived to guide and inspire.

Indeed, the engraved Ten Command-ments (which, incidentally, are all rational mitzvot) embody the entire Torah, while also the most supra-rational chukim were inked by Moses upon parchment. Every mitzvah can, and ought to, be related to as

G-d’s unfathomable will, driven by the obedience to G-d etched in the core of our souls. And every mitzvah can, and ought to, also be appreciated intellectually and emotionally, thereby appended to our thinking and feeling selves.

The only reason we classify mitzvot into logical laws, rational testimonials, and supra-rational decrees is because certain mitzvot are heavily garbed in reason, so that our natural and initial reaction to them is a rational-emotional one, while others come to us as less veiled expressions of G-d’s will, with the immediate effect of stimulating our innate obedience to their commander.

This is not to say, however, that we confine our observance and experience of a mitzvah to the most obvious face it presents to us. In the case of the ostensibly rational mitzvot, we must strive to nevertheless observe them with a simple, self-negating obedience to the Divine will. Regarding the chukim, the challenge is to study and ponder their significance (including the significance and function of their non-rationality as stimulators of our unequivocal obedience to G-d) to the point that we observe them with the passion and intellectual involvement that characterize the most appreciated law or testimonial.

End To End
But why bother with such externalities? If the mitzvot, in essence, are G-d’s unfathomable will; if every soul, in essence, possesses an innate obedience to the Divine will; why not keep our mitzvot pure? Why not strive only to awaken our intrinsic loyalty to G-d and observe His commandments, without the extraneous ink of intellectual inquiry and emotional empathy?

Because G-d commanded otherwise. G-d clothed His unqualifiable will in the patent logic of the mitzvah of charity, in the genius of the Torah’s judicial code, in the emotional experience of Shabbat, in the subtle insights we glean from the most esoteric chok. G-d instructed us to not only implement His will, but also to study it, analyze it, debate it and expound on it. Why think and feel when it comes to G-d's decrees? Because this, too, is a Divine decree.

This is the ultimate meaning of the statement, “This is the chok of Torah”. All of Torah is chok: not only is every law and testimonial essentially a supra-rational decree, but also their written surface, also our intellectual-emotional quest to comprehend and appreciate them, is to be undertaken in supra-rational obedience to the Divine will.

For this, too, we have a metaphor in the two engraved tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. If the difference between rational appreciation and supra-rational obedience is the difference between writing and engraving, the difference between obedience sans reason and obedient reasoning is the difference between two types of engraving.

Usually, engraved letters penetrate below the surface of the stone but do not cut through it. In other words, while the letters form an integral part of the stone, not every part of the stone defines the letters. If the letters are carved one inch deep in a two-inch-thick tablet, then only the front inch of stone is engraved.

This is comparable to a mindless obedience to the Divine will. The person’s performance of the mitzvah is engraved in his soul’s essence, but it does not cut through it from end to end. Certain aspects of his being—his intellect and emotions—remain untouched. True, these are the more external, appended aspects of his being—the reverse of his stone, if you will—but they are part of it nonetheless.

The two tablets that embodied the Ten Commandments were inscribed from end to end. Each letter was a complete hollow, bored front to back; every inch of stone was both the medium and the substance of the letters. This represents a state in which also the soul’s externalities—the elements of self usually associated with writing—are part and parcel of the engraving of the Divine desire in the human essence.