When I was a kid, walking to shul with my dad was one of my favorite times to ask the questions I’d been storing up all week. When I was younger, I wanted the esoteric stuff, especially things related to the coming of the Mashiach. What happens at the end of days? What will the world look like then?
On one of those walks, I asked him to spell it out for me in detail. I was eagerly awaiting an answer that detailed an unending supply of candy apples on Simchat Torah and Chanukah all year round. But then, he told me something he’d learned: that all the synagogues in the world would be uprooted and transported to Jerusalem.
I remember the feeling that landed when I heard that. Instead of the wonder that I imagined, I was slightly deflated. Because the answer, however beautiful in its own way, had put a ceiling on something I wanted to be limitless. It told me what the synagogue was for, where it was headed, and what the story ended with. In doing so, it closed a door I hadn’t even known I wanted to walk through.
I wanted to keep imagining the awesome nature of what redemption could be. His answer capped it in a way that snuffed out my imagination for it. Maybe there’s another way, a path that leaves the question unanswered, and in doing so, makes more space for innovation.
One of the great ‘why’ questions of the Torah opens up this week’s Torah portion, Chukat. Its opening details the following peculiar ritual:
“God spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: This is the ritual law that God has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.” (Numbers 19:1-2)
Curiously, no explanation is given for why this law is given. On the surface, it is offered as a purification ritual for those who have become impure through contact with the dead. Interestingly, it is introduced as a chok, a category of law that defies reason. Unlike something like tithing or giving the corners of one’s field to those lacking in resources, the law of the red heifer doesn’t come with an obvious reason.
That lack of an answer provides a fruitful jumping-off point for the commentators throughout the generations. A particular one from the Noam Elimelech, one of the early chasidic masters, caught my attention this week.
He asks a deceptively simple question about the opening of the Torah portion. As we noted above, the Torah calls the law of the red heifer a chok, a divine decree with no stated reason. The Noam Elimelech then quotes Rashi, who explains that this categorization is because the nations of the world mock us for it. Since no rational justification can be given, the Torah simply designates it as a chok, and we are simply supposed to do it. The Noam Elimelech stops and asks: “Isn’t that backwards? If anything, shouldn’t we want to explain ourselves to the skeptic? Isn’t silence more of a liability than an asset?”
His answer reframes the entire category of chok. He reads the phrase that opens the portion, ‘God commanded to say’ as the key. The reason was left unstated not to shut down inquiry but to open it up infinitely.
“The fact that the text is lacking an explicit reason is so that we, the readers, will come up with our own. And this is a gift without limit. For every reason we comprehend, it comes with a unique application and when we say it aloud, we create new worlds.” (Sefer Bamidbar, Chukat, ‘Comment’ 2)
A fixed, written reason has a limit, he argues. Someone can always come along and knock it down or poke a hole in it. But when the reason is left open, every person who arrives at their own understanding creates something new. The Noam Elimelech calls these “shamayim chadashim,” new heavens. Every interpretation is a world.
In other words, the chok is more an invitation than a stifling. Its opacity is a deliberate act of generosity that says to the reader, “You fill this.”
Through the lens of this teaching, I think differently about that walk with my father. What deflated me as a kid was the feeling that the question had been closed and that the synagogue’s meaning had been fixed.
What the Noam Elimelech surfaces is that the most alive teachings are the ones that resist that closure. The discovery that happens in the space where there is no explicit answer has immense application for the world of organized religion. It turns out that for a lot of people, especially now, and especially for the generations that walk in already suspicious of pre-packaged answers, the open form is the one that is intriguing enough to bring them into the fold.
The research on how young people are relating to religion is more complicated than the headline “They’re leaving” suggests. Springtide’s 2025 Research found that 75% of young people claim a specific tradition, worldview, or spiritual identity, including “spiritual but not religious” as something they actively identify with. This group just happens to be refusing a particular kind of answer.
What they’re refusing, I’d argue, is the ta’am mefurash, the pre-supplied reason. It’s the explanation “handed down from above” that tells you what the practice means before you’ve had a chance to find out yourself. Institutions, with the best of intentions, often offer exactly this: here is what Shabbat is for, here is why we keep kosher, here is where the synagogue is headed. Those questions contain bounded answers that many would prefer to stay open. That’s not to say there can’t be limits. After all, communities are forged by shared commitments and structure. But perhaps the balance needs to shift.
The Noam Elimelech would recognize the dynamic immediately. When the reason is fixed, he warns, it can always be knocked down; someone will find a counter-argument. But when the form is left open or when the practice hands the question back rather than closing it, it creates room for re-creation.
What’s striking in the data is where young people are showing up: in spaces that tend to offer form without over-determined meaning. In the Jewish world, the 2025 JFNA survey found that among Jews who refer to themselves as “only somewhat,” “not very,” or “not at all engaged,” making up more than 80% of the Jewish community, over 30% are actively deepening their involvement. That same survey found that the sharpest increase in engagement came from those on the margins, and the forms they reached for were largely informal: conversations, music, and podcasts.
That is a living, breathing model for the Noam Elimelech’s ein lo kabtzavah, something without a limit. The spiritual world is adapting in real time into a form capacious enough to hold whatever someone brings to it.
The synagogue that travels to Jerusalem is a complete image. I understand now why my dad offered it; it’s consoling, and it promises continuity. But the synagogue whose meaning you’re still in the middle of discovering is a different kind of place. It’s the one where the question you walked in with doesn’t get answered so much as deepened. It’s a space where you leave with more to carry than when you arrived. Maybe that will push us slightly closer to redemption.