Ki Tissa

 

 

God said to Moshe, “Make for yourself two tablets of stones like the first ones; I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

                Exodus 34:1

 

 

 

            Moshe had broken the first set of Tablets (written by God) when he threw them down on Mount Sinai in reaction to the Golden Calf.  This time, God required Moshe to make the tablets himself…After the incident of the Golden Calf, all conversations between God and Moshe took place outside the Israelite camp.

                                                                        Rashi

 

 

            The condition for the restoration of God’s original intimate relationship with Israel is that we must accept again in our midst His Law as the only intermediary in this relationship. Since the people has broken the Law, the people must now hand to God the blank tablets, with the humble request that the old Law be inscribed upon the new tablets by the finger of God.  Our transgressions do not in any way alter the contents of the Law of God.  God will not reform the Law to accommodate our weaknesses.  The Law that we scorned stands unaltered, awaiting our return to give it our unqualified allegiance.

                                                                        Samson Raphael Hirsch

 

 

            You find that when God said to Moses, “Go, get down, for the people has dealt corruptly,’ Moses still grasped the Tablets in his hand, refusing to believe that Israel had sinned, and saying: “Unless I see it (with my own eyes), I cannot believe it,”…He did not break them before he had actually seen with his own eyes.  Woe betide those who give testimony on what their eyes have not beheld!...And (Moses) began to feel remorse for breaking the Tablets.  God reassured him, saying, “Do not grieve about the first Tablets. They only contained the Ten Commandments, but in the two Tablets I am about to give you now, there will also be Laws, Midrash and Aggadot.

                                                                        Midrash Rabbah:  Ki Tissa

 

 

            (When Moses ascends the mountain the second time) his vantage point will be above the earth, so to speak.  Since things created by God directly have no lasting existence, i.e. are by their very nature created only for the brief moment they are needed, such as the manna in the desert, and since the second set of Tablets needed to endure, they had to be constructed by human hands.

                                                                        Akedat Yitzchak:  Ki Tissa

 

 

            Through the (first set) of tablets transcendence and immanence meet.  Anyone who saw those tablets, with the words that could be read from both sides, felt ameasure of Divine energy.  However, despite the enormous significance of the Sinai experience, barely 40 days later, the Israelites were worshipping a golden calf.  Can such spiritual amnesia be prevented in the future?  Does the Torah help us understand how such memorable experiences can be so easily forgotten?...

 

            The answer perhaps lies in the second tablets, a “tikkun,” or repair, of the first set…Might it be that  Moses did not destroy the holiest objects in history out of momentary anger?  Is it not more likely that the master of all prophets came to realize that there was a flaw built into the first tablets which made the Israelites’ backsliding almost inevitable?

 

            My rebbe, Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, extended the idea…  The first tablets would have sufficed only for a totally spiritual nation – and did not come with an Oral Law.  Since the Israelites were not y et completely holy – indeed, the Bible commands them “to become holy” – the only way they could be expected to develop properly is to immerse themselves in the Torah enterprise.

 

            The first tablets didn’t work because they were totally a gift of God, devoid of human involvement.  Moses understood this, and realized that they had to be destroyed.  The second tablets allowed for an Oral Law, which had to be studied and analyzed, explicated and expanded to meet the needs of every generation, an oral law which would make its interpreters partners with the Divine in the very substance of Torah.  Only in such a way would the nation truly become transformed by Torah.

 

            The Written Torah is God’s gift to us.  The Oral Torah is – in large measure – our gift to God.

                                                                                    Shlomo Riskin

 

Questions: 

 

1.         Which of these texts view the breaking of the first set of tablets as a totally

negative event?

 

 

2.         How does Midrash Rabbah convert this incident into an ethical teaching?

 

 

3.         How does  Hirsch’s interpretation differ radically from Soloveitchiks?  How do

their views of Jewish law affect us to this day?