Numbers Cycle 6 Hukot

Hukot

The Beauty of  the Words Rav Lekha

Chava Lion

                                                

In the  parshat Hukot there is a momentous occasion. Moshe and the Israelites cross the Arnon brook. After crossing Moshe begs God to let him into the Promised Land. And God responds rav Lekha.  Enough of this. Enough for you.  What a strange thing to hear God say to our prophet, he who transmits the Sh’ma from Mt Sinai, he who has so much humility he can see God face to face.

God is asking Moshe to step down of course, to stand aside, go away for a while.  The main message alone is hard to understand. Of course there are reasons given by our sages and in Torah as to why Moshe does not enter the Promised Land. The subject of this teaching though is how God says it.  Why so direct? God could after all say wow Moshe you sure have been a great prophet and I really love you but your work isn’t needed for this Promised Land gig.

Rav Lekha.

Rav Lekha  is the  refrain for Hukot. To prepare us, in parashat Korah we find this expression used twice between Korah and Moshe. You might say this is where the volley begins before the ball goes bouncing into Hukot.

Rav Lekha.  It’s time to stop, re-evaluate the situation. It’s time to breathe into a transition. If we see ourselves as heightened, it’s time to land. If we see ourselves as grounded, it’s time to fly. If we like rock music, it's time to try classical. If we have been stuck in a nowhere job for twenty years it's time to move on. If we think we know Hebrew or this new medical procedure or that technique of painting it's time to enter a whole new level of knowing. A strong display of words from anyone therefore is not an insult but an honor. Someone cares enough to see. Someone…sometimes God…does not want to only inform you but to shock you into a necessary change.

  

 Rav Lekha means it’s time to act, to get on that plane, to say I love you, to allow new vision, to leave the old fears behind.  It is a sharp reminder of our soul- work on this earthly plane. Perhaps, we are being told, to get over it, to stop clinging to our emotional chains or to our set blueprint or to our rebellion or our position or our meditation or our music or our intellectual escape-plans. 

The words rav Lekha jump-start us to follow the Hok, the statute. They propel us towards the faith we must find in the face of a rule that we can’t momentarily understand fully. Of course, a Hok is not necessarily a mitzvah. The second we do if we think we get it. The first we do if we think we don’t get it. In truth, the words from God are often so far above our level that trying to wrap our brains around them is like stepping into a cesspool of ego.  A Hok sometimes is not about us now. It’s about what we might do in a year or another lifetime or in the world to come. The object is to respect these statutes, drink them and trust they are not poison. This alone is holy work.

As for the red heifer, this Hok is the archetype of faith. Supposedly, even King Solomon doesn’t understand it. After all, it’s paradoxical. Why should he who purifies the dead…i.e. the priest…become impure? Why a red heifer? Why a heifer at all?  Wiggle around these questions as we might (and we will wiggle) we are (for the most part) not tzaddikim or prophets. We need to learn to say rav Lekha to our need for control and rational understanding, to the need to explain an animal that can’t speak for itself, to our own need to explain ourselves in the face of a clear and concise decision by God (or through God-like messages).

Rav Lekha can point to our death. At some point, our bodies need to accept that they have done the work, that it is time to let the soul return.

Rav Lekha can point to our intimacy with God during this lifetime. According to Rabbi Nahman, when  we say rav Lekha to the stick and the rock and focus on the mind’s eye, the inner light,  we are closer to God. We need to understand that the embracing of rav Lekha is a great healing, from madness, from our egos, our obsessions, our expectations, ourselves.

 In the end we need to know when to say rav Lekha to rav Lekha.  Moshe is a great example of this. For many of us, it seems strange that he can’t go into the Promised Land. It has the same aspects of a Hok in that it’s an action that must be followed yet can’t be understood. I think this happens to all of us and the best thing we can do is to follow Moshe’s lead. After the necessary shock, that often humbling wake-up call, we embrace the wisdom of the message.  No doubt, we want to honor and be in the process of God even if, God forbid, we don’t know what God means.

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