Eqev

Devarim 7:12-11:25

Carving Our Place in Torah

Aryeh Bernstein, 5763

In the middle of this week's parashah, Mosheh rehashes the events of the giving and shattering of the first tablets of the 10 Commandments and of his carving out the replacement set (Devarim 10:1-5):

The way Mosheh tells it here in Devarim matches up just fine with the way the Torah describes the events back in Shemot, chapter 34. However, in both places, the description calls our attention to a couple of fairly major problems.

Problem #1: God's commandment that Mosheh carve out two tablets of stone like the first is paradoxical and, therefore, seemingly impossible to fulfill. The dominant feature of the first tablets was their divine, unnatural form. They were "written with the finger of God" - "כְּתֻבִים בְּאֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים" (Devarim 9:10 and Shemot 31:18); they were "written on both sides; on this and that side were they written" - "כְּתֻבִים מִשְּׁנֵי עֶבְרֵיהֶם מִזֶּה וּמִזֶּה הֵם כְּתֻבִים". "The tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets" - "וְהַלֻּחֹת מַעֲשֵׂה אֱלֹהִים הֵמָּה וְהַמִּכְתָּב מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים הוּא חָרוּת עַל הַלֻּחֹת" (Shemot 32:15-16). By contrast, the second tablets were carved out by Mosheh with his human hands (see the bolded words above, from our parashah). While the Torah describes God as actually inscribing the words on them, nowhere do we hear of a miraculous two-sided inscription, nor are the words described as written with the "finger of God".

Problem #2: our parashah tells that God "inscribed on the tablets like the first inscription, the Ten Commandments" (verse 4, above). However, as we saw last week, the text of the Ten Commandments is not identical in Shemot (20:1-17) and Devarim (5:6-18). Most famously, in Shemot, we are commanded to "remember" ("זָכוֹר") the shabbat, while in Devarim, we are commanded to "observe" ("שָׁמוֹר") the shabbat, and in Shemot, the reason for shabbat is because Hashem rested on the seventh day, while in Devarim, the reason is that we, who remember having been slaves in Egypt, must allow our servants a day of rest. (Compare and look for at least three other differences.)

The Netziv explains that God commands Mosheh to carve out the second tablets himself in order to demonstrate that from now on, human activity is a central component in the creation of Torah (Ha‘Ameq Davar on Shemot 34:1):

Rav Yitzchak Hutner (Pahad Yitzhak Shabbat 9) takes this a step further, applying this reasoning even to explain the differences in the text between the two sets of tablets. The reason God commands the shabbat, from God's perspective, is to commemorate that God rested on the seventh day and sanctified it. However, once this commandment is given to the Israelites, who are located in their own story as freed slaves, they, of course, understand the day of rest as a commandment about the proper way to be free when they have people working for them. This is a human creation of a new Torah value, generated because the people learning Torah take ownership of it and work hard to understand it in the context of their lives. The implication is that each and every one of us has not only the opportunity, but the responsibility, to enrich and deepen Torah, to generate new Torah ideas and values, by learning it actively, and not passively.

When Torah was first given to our ancestors, it was given in the form of the pure, objective, universal perspective of God-totally produced by God, with no human involvement. We couldn't handle that. As soon as we lost contact for 40 days, we went into meltdown and yearned for something else that could be absolute, foolishly producing the Golden Calf. This was a huge mistake and we paid for it dearly, but it emerged out of an impossible situation. God realized, as it were, that it is not viable for human beings, who are limited and involved with their own time-bound stories, to receive something universal, outside of the context of their world. Therefore, God commanded Mosheh to involve himself in the second tablets. God removed Godself from the picture a little bit in order to admit us into the process of making Torah, and the result is a much richer Torah, the Torah that has guided us for thousands of years, in all sorts of different places and circumstances, and that will continue to guide us in all our ways.

As we all begin a new year of learning, I hope we can all hear and embrace the commandment to "פְּסָל לְךָ" -"carve out for yourself" a place for new, deeper Torah. That means setting goals, finding teachers, working very hard, and asking tough questions on everything we encounter in learning. We all benefit from it and so does Torah.