Rebbe on this week's פרשה, פרשת בחוקותי. The פרשה starts with the words אם בחוקותי תלכו, if you will go in my חוקים, and the Torah gives us a berachah. And Rashi says, what does it mean בחוקותי תלכו, that you will go in my חוקים? It means שתהיו עמלים בתורה, that you should work hard, you should toil in learning Torah. The word בחוקותי means חוקים. Now we know חוקים always refers to those mitzvot that we don't understand. There are three categories of mitzvot: חוקים, עדות and משפטים. משפטים are those mitzvot that we understand, and even with chas veshalom without the Torah, we would still keep them because they make sense. עדות are mitzvot that make sense, but if not for the Torah, we wouldn't do it, but after the Torah told us, we know why we do it, like Shabbos. We wouldn't keep Shabbos if not for the Torah. But now that the Torah told us Shabbos, we understand why: to show that we believe that the Eibershter created the world in six days, etc., etc. חוקים refers to those mitzvot that we don't understand, we don't have an explanation. So it seems like a contradiction here: if the pasuk uses the word בחוקותי, which represents things which we don't understand, how does Rashi explain that it means שתהיו עמלים בתורה, you should work hard and learn Torah? What does it mean working hard in learning Torah, toiling in learning Torah? It means trying to go deeper and deeper and try to understand it more. So

here we're talking about understanding, when the pasuk uses the word בחוקותי, which refers to חוקים that we don't understand. Then the Rebbe has another she'eilah. What does it mean בחוקותי תלכו, you shall go in your חוקים? Going means continuing, progressing, going higher. That shayach is when you understand something, you can say understand it deeper. But when we're talking about בחוקותי, things that we don't understand, how is there תלכו, how could you go higher and higher, something you don't understand, and that's finished? So the Rabbi explains it like this: that even though the word בחוקותי usually means the מצוות that we don't understand, but there's another רמז here. בחוקותי could also be a רמז for Torah. Because in Torah, when we learn, whenever we understand something, there is always another layer that's deeper than that that we don't understand. Torah is בלי גבול, Torah is unlimited. So whatever you understand, there is a layer on top of that that you don't understand. When you understand that, later you understand that, that you didn't understand yesterday, but today you understand it, there's a new layer that you don't understand, and you can go on and on and on. And this is what the פסוק means: אם בחוקותי תלכו means that in the חוקים, which is the part of Torah that you don't understand, that's the רמז, תלכו you should go. If you

learn today and you understand it in a certain level, and a certain next level you don't understand yet, so tomorrow you should understand even that level. When you understand that level, now there's a new higher level that you don't understand, and that's how you should go on and on and on. So that's what the פסוק means according to this רמז: בחוקותי תלכו, you shall go, you should progress, go higher and higher, ילכו מחיל אל חיל, from strength to strength, you should go in the חוקים, meaning in the parts of Torah that you don't understand, that your חוקים change. Today your חוקה, which means you're not understanding, is in one level. Tomorrow that level becomes understanding, and now you have a new level of חוקים of not understanding. That's what the Torah tells you. But the question is: how can that be? If it's something that you learned and you didn't understand, why would you think that tomorrow you're able to understand it? That's what Rashi says: שתהיו עמלים בתורה, דאַרף האָרעווען אין תורה, you have to work hard, you have to toil. And if you work hard, that's going to happen. When you learn and you don't understand something, and you work hard as much as you can, and now you don't understand, tomorrow you sit down, you work even harder. And if you're עמלים בתורה, so what was a חוקה yesterday is today not a חוקה. What yesterday was not understood, today it's understood. But now you have a new level that you don't understand, which is a חוקה in Torah. In learning Torah, we're not talking about מצוות now, we're talking about the רמז of Torah. So, but you work hard tomorrow, you will understand what you didn't understand yesterday, and now there's a new חוקה, and תלכו, you go further and further and further. And that's the deeper פשט in what Rashi says, שתהיו עמלים בתורה, you should work hard in Torah, not just סתם to tell you work hard, try to understand, but try to understand things that you didn't understand before, and work hard, and you will understand that. And tomorrow you will go higher and higher. So even though the pasuk really talking about the word chukim means mitzvot, but here, as Rashi says, the pasuk is talking about Torah, and we're talking about the concept of Bechukotai, chukim in Torah, on the not understanding, the part that you don't understand in Torah, and that could always go higher and higher, you could understand. And this is a hachana to

Shavuot. It says in the Gemara that chachamim made that Bechukotai should be read always before Shavuot, because of the תוכחה, the קללות, but there's always a interruption of Bamidbar, it's only kedei to separate between the curses and Shavuot. But really the Torah the chachamim wanted we should read Bechukotai before Shavuot. So this is another reason, because Bechukotai tells you how you have to learn Torah, and we're going to Shavuot, in time of learning, of accepting the Torah again and learning Torah. So it tells us you have to work hard, so hard that every day you understand more than you understood yesterday. If you work hard, what yesterday was not understood was a chukah in Torah, in learning Torah, today it becomes something you understand, and you reach a higher level of chukah, the next level that you don't understand, and then you go higher and higher from there to from there higher and higher, till it goes you're mekayem the inyan of ילכו מחיל אל חיל.