Emotion plays a crucial role in decision-making and behavior, often operating below the level of conscious awareness. The laws and rituals of Judaism, such as the chukim, may seem irrational, but they serve to bypass the rational brain and create instinctive patterns of behavior to counteract destructive emotional drives.
For example, the prohibitions against mixing seeds, meat and milk, and wool and linen instill a respect for the integrity of nature and establish boundaries that prevent ecological destruction. The ritual of the Red Heifer addresses the primal instinct of thanatos, the death instinct, by emphasizing the sanctity of life over death. This contrasts with cultures that worship ancestors or seek contact with spirits of the dead.
In essence, these laws and rituals serve to guide behavior based on emotional intelligence rather than pure reason. They remind us that the holy is found in life, not in death, and that it is important to balance our emotional drives with rational thought to make wise choices and maintain harmony with the world around us.
Freud was right to suggest that the death instinct is powerful, irrational, and largely unconscious, yet under certain conditions it can be utterly devastating in what it leads people to do.
The Hebrew term chok comes from the verb meaning, âto engrave.â Just as a statute is carved into stone, so a behavioral habit is carved in depth into our unconscious mind and alters our instinctual responses. The result is a personality trained to see death and holiness as two utterly opposed states â just as meat (death) and milk (life) are.
Chukim are Judaismâs way of training us in emotional intelligence, above all a conditioning in associating holiness with life, and defilement with death. It is fascinating to see how this has been vindicated by modern neuroscience.
Rationality, vitally important in its own right, is only half the story of why we are as we are. We will need to shape and control the other half if we are successfully to conquer the instinct to aggression, violence, and death that lurks not far beneath the surface of the conscious mind.