[Avodah] Not Eating From the Etz Ha Das - A Classic Example of a Chok

[Yitzchok Levine]

RSRH writes the following in his commentary about 
the commandment of not eating from the Etz Ha 
Das. I have bolded the last paragraph. YL

Bereishis 2

16 And God commanded man [saying]: From every 
tree of the garden you may indeed eat;

17 But from the tree of knowledge of what is good 
and what is evil you shall not eat, for on the 
day you eat from it, you must die.

The command set forth in verses 16 and 17 begins man’s training for
his moral calling. It begins human history, and it shows all future generations
the path in which they are to walk. It is a prohibition, and it
is not a Mitzva Sichlius, a rational prohibition. 
On the contrary, all the perceptive
faculties given to man — taste, imagination, and intellect —
oppose this prohibition. Man, with his own intellect, would never have
decreed upon himself such a prohibition. What is more: even after the
prohibition was given to him, he could find no reason for it — other
than the absolute Will of God.

This prohibition, then, is a classic example of a Chok. Moreover, it is
a dietary prohibition, and those who were bound by it received it as an
oral tradition. It was communicated to Adam, yet Chavah and her descendants
were commanded to obey it. This command, then, is a Mitzvah lo Sa'asah,
  a Chok, it prohibits Micholos Isooros, and it 
was transmitted as Torah Sh'baal Peh.
Thus, all the aspects of the future Torah of Israel at which the
Yetzer Harah (our sensual nature) and the Oomos Haolam (the non-Jewish world)
have always taken umbrage are contained in this command, with which
God began man’s development.

And this command was given la daas tov va rah: Through this command
it will become known and revealed what is good for man, so that he
should choose it, and what is bad for man, so that he should reject it.
The subordination of our nature to God’s Will is a basic condition
for all morality, a condition that is inseparable from man’s moral calling.
Moral freedom is the foundation of man’s higher dignity, and there can
be no moral freedom without the ability to sin. Yet man cannot sin
unless his senses are attracted to evil and repelled by goodness. Otherwise,
man, too, when choosing the good and shunning evil, would be
acting only according to instinct, and he would cease to be man. Man’s
mastery over the urges of his senses, the subordination of his nature to
the Will of God — that is the whole eminence of man and the foundation
of his whole education. The Educator of mankind laid down in
His first command the first principle of education.

Things have not changed, and the same applies today: We all stand
before the tree of knowledge, as did Adam and Chavah in their day.
Faced with the demands of God’s moral law, we have to decide whether
to obey bodily sensuality, the imagination of the sensual mind, the
wisdom of instinctive animal life, or to be mindful of our higher calling
and to obey the voice of God. Today, too, we do not hear God’s voice
directly, but rely on an oral tradition, just as the first command was
given to man as a tradition to be transmitted orally.

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