My Private Collection of Chukim – Because It’s the Right Thing to Do

Parashat Chukat, a very expensive cat, and the invisible rules that shape our lives.

The Red Heifer is one of the Torah’s most frustrating ideas.

Not because it makes no sense.

Because it forces us to admit how many things we do without fully understanding them.

Parashat Chukat opens with the famous chok — a commandment performed not because we understand it, but because G-D commanded it. The Red Heifer purifies those who have become impure through contact with death, while creating impurity elsewhere in the process. The details are baffling. The logic is elusive. Even King Solomon, the wisest of men, reportedly admitted defeat.

Naturally, Jews have spent thousands of years trying to explain it anyway.

We are not a people particularly comfortable with unanswered questions.

We like reasons.

Explanations.

Flowcharts.

Supporting documentation.

If possible, a spreadsheet.

The Torah occasionally responds with a divine equivalent of, “No.”

The Red Heifer is not there to satisfy our need for understanding. It is there to remind us that understanding is not always the point.

That is an uncomfortable idea in the modern world.

We live in an age that demands justification for everything. Every action must be rational. Every decision must be explained. Every commitment must survive a cost-benefit analysis.

And yet the older I get, the more I suspect that much of life is governed by chukim.

Not necessarily G-D’s.

Ours.

The private rules we follow without fully understanding why.

The obligations we honour even when they make little practical sense.

The things we do because not doing them feels wrong.

I started thinking about this while sitting with Petunia.

Over the past few weeks my sweet cat has managed to acquire an alarming collection of medical problems. First came the jaundice. Then the blood tests. Then discussions about tumours, kidney failure, liver disease and all the other possibilities that arrive at three o’clock in the morning and refuse to leave.

The latest diagnosis is feline hepatic lipidosis — fatty liver disease — together with diabetes.

This is apparently what passes for good news in veterinary medicine.

The strange thing is that none of this has prompted me to perform a rational analysis of the situation.

No spreadsheet has appeared.

No cost-benefit calculation has been conducted.

No committee has been formed.

Instead, I have spent money I do not have, lost sleep I cannot afford, and monitored Petunia’s eating habits with the intensity of a Mossad surveillance operation.

Why?

Because I love her.

That answer feels complete and incomplete at the same time.

Love itself contains a remarkable number of chukim.

We care for people when they are difficult.

We sit with mourners when we would rather be at home.

We phone friends in crisis.

We attend funerals.

We make meals.

We show up.

Often there is no reward.

Sometimes there is not even gratitude.

Experience suggests that many of the people for whom we move mountains would not necessarily return the favour.

Yet most of us continue doing these things anyway.

Why?

Because it is the right thing to do.

Which, if we’re honest, is often just a more respectable version of saying, “Because.”

I suspect every person carries around a private collection of chukim.

Some are noble.

Some are ridiculous.

Some are inherited from our parents. Some emerge from experience. Some are so deeply woven into our identities that we no longer notice them.

Mine probably include sending birthday messages to people who forgot mine years ago, checking on friends when they disappear from social media for too long, and refusing to abandon a sick cat even when my bank account is loudly expressing alternative opinions.

The funny thing is that many of the behaviours we admire most in others make very little sense from a purely transactional perspective.

Loyalty is irrational.

Kindness is frequently inefficient.

Generosity rarely maximises profit.

Forgiveness has terrible short-term returns.

Love is an accounting nightmare.

And yet civilisation would collapse before lunch without them.

Which brings me back to Israel.

Living here has revealed just how many collective chukim we share as a people.

Why do soldiers leave their families and report for reserve duty?

Why do communities rebuild after tragedy?

Why do Jews continue investing in a country that spends a disproportionate amount of its existence being criticised by people who cannot locate it on a map?

Why do people make aliyah, raise families here and insist on planting vineyards in a region where history routinely behaves like an unsupervised toddler?

At some point, every answer runs beyond logic.

You arrive at something deeper.

Because this is who we are.

Because this is where we belong.

Because some commitments exist independently of convenience.

The world often mistakes this for irrationality.

The Torah calls it covenant.

Perhaps that is the lesson of Chukat.

Not that reasons are unimportant. Judaism has never been hostile to thinking. Quite the opposite.

The lesson is that some of the most important things in life cannot be reduced to thinking alone.

Love cannot.

Loyalty cannot.

Responsibility cannot.

Faith certainly cannot.

The Red Heifer remains mysterious after thousands of years. Perhaps it is supposed to.

Its purpose may not be to teach us how to understand everything.

Its purpose may be to teach us how to live faithfully alongside things we do not understand.

That is a lesson I am still learning.

Petunia is still ill.

The world remains chaotic.

The news remains alarming.

The future remains stubbornly unwilling to provide advance copies of itself.

Yet tomorrow I will feed my cat, check on people I care about, say my prayers and continue investing in the things that matter.

Not because I can fully explain any of it.

But because, somewhere deep down, I know it is the right thing to do.

And perhaps that is my chok.