NJ Jewish News | Brokenness and wholeness coexist

by Rabbi Richard Hirsh
executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Wyncote, Pa.

This week’s Torah portion celebrates an event of regret and renewal that becomes paradigmatic for the coming High Holy Day season.

We recall that when Moses descended from Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments, he smashed the tablets in anger at the sight of the molten calf. In the 10th chapter of Deuteronomy, we read: “The Lord said to [Moses]…carve out two tablets of stone like the first…. I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark. Then [Moses] left and went down from the mountain, and deposited the tablets in the ark that [Moses] had made, where they still are, as the Lord commanded….”

A later biblical citation suggests that only the intact tablets survived to be placed in the ark: “There was nothing in the ark but the two tablets of stone which Moses placed there…when the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after their departure from Egypt.” (I Kings 8:9)

However, in clear contradiction to this, the Talmud clearly asserts: “The intact tablets and the broken tablets were both kept in the ark.” (Berachot 8B/Baba Batra 14B)

How do we explain this apparent contradiction?

As we anticipate the High Holy Days, we find a striking and appropriate metaphor in the rabbinic version of this story. The rabbis of the Talmud taught that brokenness and wholeness coexist side by side, even — and perhaps especially— in the holiest space in the Jewish tradition: the ark that contained what they believed to be the revealed word of God.

The High Holy Day season, beginning soon with the month of Elul, is about the quest to make whole that which has been broken, to repair what has been damaged, to lend form and structure to that which appears random, and to reconnect that which has become separated. So brokenness and wholeness coexist side by side, even — and perhaps especially — during the holiest season of the year.

We yearn for our lives to be whole, to experience a sense of unity and one-ness, but more often than we care to admit, that experience is elusive, evasive, unattainable. The intact tablets, pristine in their perfection, convey an image of completeness and wholeness that is at odds with our fragmentary experience. The image of the broken tablets offers a more accurate representation of our lives and our world.

The symbol of brokenness is central to Judaism; uncovering the meaning of broken and shattered events in our communal and personal lives is at the heart of our quest for wholeness. To live in the real world is to experience brokenness, incompleteness, and frustration. This season presents us with the opportunity to understand more clearly why “the intact tablets and the broken tablets were both kept in the ark” — why we must have both brokenness and wholeness.

The image of the broken and intact tablets anticipates the sound of the shofar, which is sounded in Elul at the conclusion of daily morning services. We listen as a single, whole, unbroken note — Tekia — is broken into the three-note cry of Shevarim, and then shattered into the nine-note wail of Terua. But we complete the sounding of the shofar with the healing unity of the Tekia gedola, the long, single, unbroken blast.

And that is why the rabbis of the Talmud affirmed — against the plain sense of the Bible — that “the intact tablets and the broken tablets were both kept in the ark.” If we had only the broken tablets, we would know only a legacy of rebellion, frustration, and fragmentation. We would know only the despair that comes from seeing the pieces and not knowing if — let alone how — they fit together.

But if we had only the intact tablets, we would expect only wholeness and completion, surely in conflict with our daily experience. Thinking that life demands perfection, we would never cease to see ourselves as failing to measure up to what is expected of us; the commandments, after all, were meant to be kept, not broken!

The rabbis of the Talmud teach: Both sets of tablets were kept in the ark because you cannot have one without the other. Perhaps this is why they taught that the second, intact set of tablets — preserved forever as the symbol of the goal toward which we must strive — was given by God to Moses on, of all days — Yom Kippur, the great day of atonement and reconciliation.

This, then, is the message of the High Holy Days: Against brokenness, to affirm wholeness; against harming, to affirm healing; against separation, to affirm reconciliation.