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July 26, 2002/Av 17 5762, Vol. 54, No. 45
Shattered tablets still touch our souls
Torah study
RABBI NEIL GILLMAN
Ekev/Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25
Again this week, I had occasion to marvel at the audacity of the midrash.
The book of Deuteronomy is devoted to a review of events that were originally described in the first four books of the Chumash (first five books of the Hebrew scriptures). This week we are treated to Moses' retelling of his experience on Sinai: God gives Moses the twin tablets of the Decalogue, Israel worships the golden calf, and in his rage, Moses shatters the tablets.
Again, as in that original version, God then tells Moses to carve out a new set of tablets like the first, to make an ark of wood and to come up to Sinai.
There follows this verse: "I (God) will inscribe on the (new) tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets which you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark." (Deuteronomy10:2)
The midrash centers on that apparently innocent word "them." What does "them" refer to? Clearly, the literal meaning is that "them" refers to the new set of tablets. What else could it possibly mean? Moses is to make a new set of tablets - for the first set was smashed - and deposit "them," that new set, in the ark. Nothing could be more clear.
Not at all says the midrash. The word "them" does apply to the new set of tablets, but it also applies to the words that immediately precede it, to "the first tablets which you smashed." Both the new set of tablets and the shattered tablets should be placed in the ark.
So, Rabbi Joseph teaches: "Both the tablets and the fragments of the tablets were deposited in the ark." (tractate Baba Bathra 14b)
What led Rabbi Joseph to suggest this daring midrashic interpretation of that innocent word "them"? I say "daring" because the fragments were tied to Israel's idolatry. They were an expression of Moses' fury, of God's repudiation of Israel's behavior. Why should they be preserved?
Yet, Rabbi Joseph suggests, they should be - because even in this shattered state, they retained an element of their original sanctity. Those fragments should not be left on the rubbish heap of history.
In our own day, the phrase "shattered tablets" and the notion that the shattered tablets should be deposited in the ark have become suggestive metaphors for the entire Jewish tradition. For many modern Jews, the Jewish tradition as a whole has become fragmented. It no longer coheres. It no longer serves as a source of meaning or as a guide to living in this confusing world.
But for many of our fellow Jews who feel this way, this fragmented tradition is not to be rejected out of hand. These Jews recognize that there are still incredible riches to be found among these fragments and that the fragments may yet be able to be knitted together again in new and unsuspected ways. And they are willing to try their hand at this enterprise.
That is why the fragments of the tradition must be deposited in our own, personal arks, in the repositories of our personal Jewish identities, and carried with us in our journeys through modernity.
What impresses me most about both Rabbi Joseph's midrash and its current application is the way both legitimatize our sense of the ambiguities of Jewish belief. The reality is that for many of our contemporaries, elements of the tradition have become ambiguous. Yet, at the same time, those very ambiguities retain a measure of sanctity. We remain very much aware of their power to touch us, and we are not at all prepared to abandon them.
For that, we must be grateful.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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