Parshah Commentary
Parshat Va’etchanan begins with Moses imploring the Israelites to obey God’s commandments and warning them of the punishments they will face after they enter the Promised Land if they do not. Early in the parshah, Moses introduces two different terms to describe the precepts the Israelites must follow: “chukim” (ordinances) and “misphatim” (statutes). “Listen to the chukim and mishpatim that I am instructing you to observe,” Moses warns, “in order that you may live to enter and inherit the land that Adonai, the God of your ancestors, is giving to you.” This pair recurs again and again throughout the reading. So what’s its significance?
Early rabbinic commentators, noticing the seeming redundancy of the terms, teach that there is meaning to be gleaned from the difference between them. “Mishpatim,” they explain, are the laws that “even if they had not been written, it would have been logical that they be written.” In other words, these are generally accepted norms that clearly make society better, such as the prohibitions against murder or stealing. “Chukim,” by contrast, have no known rationale. When considering laws such as the prohibition against mixing wool and linen, regulations around purity and impurity, and various dietary prohibitions, it is impossible to articulate why we are instructed to abide by these rules. As commandments without any clear justification, chukim seem to typify uncritical obedience and conformity, demanding the arbitrary surrender of logic. They are, as Rashi describes them, decrees of the King, and we, as God’s subjects, have no right to criticize them.
But the 20th-century philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz offers us another framework for understanding chukim, arguing that the irrationality of devotion can act as a check on the perceived self-interest of the human collective. He describes Judaism as “a particular way of serving God and not any particular conception of man, of the world, or of history, . . . a system of halakhic praxis, a program fixing detailed arrangements of the every day.” In this view, “love of God is but the observance of the mitzvot. Their justification is not ‘national’ and not ‘moral’ and not social. Their sole point is the service of God. Had the rationale of the mitzvot been national welfare, fulfilling them would express love of Israel. Had it been moral, their observance would indicate the love of mankind. Had it been social, observing them would serve important human needs.” For Leibowitz—a harsh critic of Zionism and the State of Israel—the transcendence inscribed in the chukim guards against the impulses and priorities that can produce the earthly ills of ethnonationalism and Jewish supremacy.
Thus, while mishpatim help us create a just and moral society in a more explicit way, chukim also serve such a goal. This is because we must be invested in building a society that is not simply an expression of our already-held, personal moral instincts. In other words, our tradition cannot be rendered subservient to any person or group—crucially, including the nation itself. This is why Moses emphasizes the dyad of chukim and mishpatim at the very moment the Israelites stand at the threshold of the Land of Israel. Without chukim alongside mishpatim, Moses prophesies that we will surely defile the land. Because in a world of conquest, chukim reflect a posture of self-abnegation and surrender before the unknown. By embracing what defies our comprehension, we can cultivate humility and devotion to something beyond ourselves.
Laynie Soloman is a teacher and associate rosh yeshiva at SVARA.
