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Orchard of Delights
“break our hearts,” undergoing a crisis of identity and purpose.
Indeed, Moses was attempting to break the hearts of the people
of Israel when he broke the tablets. He needed to do something so
shocking and dramatic that even those dancing around the Golden
Calf would be shocked into a state of regret and repentance. God
Himself applauds Moses’ spontaneous action as it succeeded in
bringing the people back to their senses and created the circumstances
where reconciliation between God and Israel could be facilitated.
As light appears to be stronger when dispelling a previous state
of darkness, this world is preceded by the breaking of the vessels,
which paradoxically paves the way for true and lasting rectification.
A beautiful remez to this concept is found in the Torah’s last three
words le’einei kol Yisrael (“before the eyes of all Israel”), whose first
letters spell the Hebrew word “kli” (vessel).
The Midrash teaches that God created teshuvah even before
creation itself. This too is hinted at by the connection between the
end and the beginning of the Torah. As we reach the end, we hasten
to return to the beginning again to further rectify creation and our
own lives by taking with us all the broken moments of genuine
teshuvah experienced over the High Holiday season. From these
broken moments we fashion our own “world of rectification.” For if
there was no teshuvah there could be no rectification, which is the
underlying purpose and fabric of this world.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach frequently used the image of the broken
tablets, noting that they were housed in the ark in the Holy of Holies
next to the second set of whole tablets. One might have assumed
that once the tablets were broken and their letters ascended back to
their heavenly source, there would be no need for the broken tablets,
especially as they were a reminder of the colossal failure of the people
of Israel. Yet these broken tablets were reverently kept in the holiest
place in the Tabernacle! This, Rabbi Carlebach points out, represents
the power of a broken heart transformed by teshuvah: it reaches the
profoundest, innermost place – the Holies of Holies. The “breaking
of the vessels” is a theme that manifests itself on all levels of reality,
from the end of the Torah to its primordial beginning, from Adam to
all humanity, and from the individual Jew to the nation of Israel.
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Nitzavim
next few portions demonstrate. The second fits in with the Chassidic
notion that the portion always reflects current events; thus, making
it eminently sensible for the “today” in our verse to hint to Rosh
Hashanah, implicitly counseling us to prepare mentally and
psychologically for the upcoming Day of Judgment.
Alternatively, the word “today” has also been understood
figuratively to imply that every day should be treated as if it were
this very unique day on which Moses is speaking to the Jewish people.
This idea is derived from the interpretation of another seminal event
in Jewish history – the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. When
the Jews arrived in the Sinai Desert on the first day of the third
month, the Torah states that they arrived “on this day.” Since the
rest of the sentence is in the past tense Rashi points out that the
phrase “on this day” should have been written “on that day.” It was
written in the present tense, he comments, to teach us that when we
learn Torah it should feel as new and exciting to us as if we had just
received it today (Rashi on Exodus 19:1). In other words, in both
seminal cases, the Torah is teaching us that we should not relate to
these unique experiences as onetime events in the past; rather, we
should treat them as ongoing experiences. Each and every day the
Torah should feel new and each and every day we should feel like we
are standing before God.
The word “today” also reminds us that the present can become the
future in the blink of an eye: the Talmud teaches that Mashiach will
come “today, if you listen to His voice” (Psalms 95:7). Thus, every
day has the potential to enable us to come closer to God as we do on
Rosh Hashanah, to experience the revelation of the Torah as we did
at Mount Sinai, and to reveal the coming of Mashiach.
An additional aspect of “today” is expressed by King David in
Psalms (2:7) when he states, “God said to me: ‘You are my son,
this day (today) I have given birth to you.’” David felt as if he
was constantly being given the gift of new life. As discussed in the
portion of Ki Teitzei, this was a result of David’s soul not having
been apportioned time in this world. When Adam prophetically
foresaw this predicament, he gave David seventy years of his own
life. David was constantly aware of this gift and of how tenuous his
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