Chukim: Particularly Meaningful
Twenty years ago, I was sitting in a college history lecture when my mother called me on my cell phone. I didn’t pick up, but she rang again and again. I eventually left the classroom to take the call. My father had a stroke while eating lunch - likely at Diamond Dairy - and Hatzolah took him to the Roosevelt Hospital Emergency room. I was the only member of the family in Manhattan, so I hopped on the train and went right to be with him. At that time I was not a regular tefillin-wrapper or minyan-goer, but that night I decided I wanted to daven for his health, and the next morning went to the campus Shacharit minyan with my tefillin. I don’t understand how God operates or whether my prayers contributed to my father’s recovery. But I do know that this act of wrapping leather straps around my arm - something that by any account is a chok, a statute that we don’t understand, somehow this act was deeply meaningful to me. The beginning of our parsha talks about the laws of t...