Rabbi's Derasha

The Parasha begins with a funny verb.  It doesn’t sound funny; it’s pedestrian enough.  But the condition should be, “if you keep my Chukot.”  Or “if you do them.”   Why does it say, “walk”?  Most commentators say that that is why Rashi tells us that this is a reference to learning Torah with great effort and not to doing Mitzvot in general.    

But that just shifts the question.  Why is it that “walking” is the term for what we are doing in this deep learning of Torah?  The Maharal says that that is because in the realm of Chukot, the journey is everything.  It is, after all, never-ending -- it’s like that because the ultimate understanding of a Chok is always elusive.    

We are beginning the last fifth of the Omer.  All of the commentators ask a simple question: Why do we count up instead of counting down?  Anticipation grows when you count down.  In my childhood, regularly-scheduled programming was interrupted so that we could hear NASA count down to take-off.  

We’ve all heard people say it’s not the destination that matters but the journey.  In English, it’s often associated with Emerson.  But those are admonitions not to be too obsessed with the destination at the expense of the journey.  But here the emphasis on the journey is a little different.  In regard to Torah, the lesson is that only the journey creates the destination.  When we count down to a destination -- when the mile signs to one’s destination count down -- it is because the destination is waiting for us and our job is to whittle down the distance from here to there.  

If we were to see the Torah as a destination that awaits all those who get to the finish line, then we would be misunderstanding it completely.  Uprooting that understanding is what the Sefira teaches us.  The news here is that the Torah that will last is not waiting for us.  It is being made by us.  

This is why Shavuot cannot be identified as the Chag of Torah.  That would make it a standing destination.  That is also why it cannot have a date or a day of the week.  That again makes it into a standing destination.  

If we can widen the picture here, we can say that that is also why the next world is never mentioned in the Torah.  This is also why the Mishna says that all Jews have a piece NOT “in” the world to come but “towards” the world to come.  It is not a destination we reach but rather something that we create.  What will exist for us there at the end depends on what we do here.  

Now we can also understand why the first word that is ever commanded by Hashem to a Jew is when Hashem tells Avram to go, to walk.  And why he is not told where he is going.  This is true at the Akeida as well, the pinnacle experience of Avraham Avinu.  Again, walk.  And again without a specific destination.  

The journey of Torah typified in the search for meaning in a Chok is fueled by the passion to know more, to understand better.  Only then can it settle into one’s heart and be applied with care, and only then is it lived.   The first comment Rashi makes in Shir HaShirim, describing the quest for Torah, is that Hashem promises to “appear to the [Jews] again to explain to them the secret of [the Torah’s] reasons and its hidden mysteries….”  This is the quest for Torah, and the quest itself creates the Torah.   

An everyday example: The Rambam, based on a Gemora in Ketubot, says that a waiter should be allowed to eat from the food he is serving. That is the merciful thing to do.  I read a story of a person who heard that Halacha in a class that included a restaurant owner.  The owner immediately rejected it.  “Do you realize how small the margins are in a restaurant?” the owner asked.  Waiters would rather have a job than to eat the restaurant’s food.  The owner surveyed the waiters and they agreed that they would rather go to McDonald’s than lose their jobs.  

But the owner was a pious man and when he heard a new halacha that applied to him, he did it.  That was even if he did not yet understand it.  The person in the class lost touch with him but he ran into the owner’s son many years later.  He asked about the episode and he was told that it helped business because the waiting staff became more animated in describing the food and that created a more positive vibe in the restaurant as a whole.  That’s not the reason given for this Halacha, but it’s the lesson that comes out if one is looking to learn.    

Even logical Halachot sometimes begin as Chukot in our eyes.  But we have to push on, keep walking, because the quest for understanding is never done -- the journey goes forever.  What we will all have in the end is what we made during that journey.