As thinking people, we tend to want to understand everything about our lives. When things happen to us that are inexplicable, we have a hard time wrapping our heads around it. Why, we ask ourselves.
Perhaps, if we think about it, it is good for us not to understand everything and just accept that certain things are out of our control. When we know that we are not in command of every aspect of our lives, we have less anxiety.
This does not mean that we should not try to comprehend, but when things come up in our lives that are beyond our sway, we should just learn how to accept them.
We learn this concept from this week's Torah portion, Chukat. Chukat means laws that are inexplicable. Specifically, the portion talks about the laws of purity and impurity, and how to purify oneself (in the times of the Temple), with the red heifer. One detail that is relevant to our discussion is that if a person comes in contact with a corpse, the person becomes ritually impure. What is interesting to note is that even if only one finger touched the corpse, the whole person becomes impure, not only their finger. When part of your body is affected, your whole body is affected.
Although the laws of purity and impurity are more complex than our understanding, the lesson is clear.
We cannot compartmentalize who we are as people. There is a part that understands and a part that doesn’t, but we are viewed as one whole person. When we learn to accept the things in our lives that we cannot understand, such as the will of G-d, it will have a positive effect on everything that we do. We will feel connected to G-d when we understand, and even when we don’t. This will help us have a happy disposition toward life.
Interestingly, the Torah wants us to understand the Torah and not to follow it blindly. Yet at the same time, there is an advantage to having just one little “finger-worth” of Torah that is unexplainable, that can teach us this positive lesson. This lesson teaches us how to always have a positive attitude in life.
In today's environment when there is still so much unknown, we yearn to understand, yet we cannot. We want to have some order and direction, yet we can’t find it. We just accept it as is. We are asked to accept that we don’t have the answers. We are asked to accept that it is OK to go shopping and to socialize, but at the same time, you must also wear a mask. Not all of it makes sense to a lot of people. However, we are being asked to just follow along. We should see ourselves as just a finger, and the world is the body, and keep our eye on the big picture.