Raising Holy Tablet Breakers by Rav Moshe Weinberger

From the Fire

Parshas Ki Sisa Raising Holy Tablet Breakers

By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

Our parsha contains a lesson regarding what it means to grow up. Every year, it is so hard to read the story of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Tablets, the luchos. How could the Jewish people have possibly fallen so far so soon after personally hearing Hashem’s voice on Sinai merely because of a slight perceived delay in Moshe’s return from the mountain?

One way we can understand it is through the lens of the Kuzari by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, zy”a. He explains that the root of the people’s sin was not actually idol worship. Rather, their mistake was that they attempted to channel their faith in G-d into something which they could feel and touch.

This desire, while misguided, is understandable and natural. The reality is that it is very difficult to talk to and serve a G-d we cannot see. In one of my shiurim at yeshiva a few years ago, I asked the boys: “What is more difficult: davening or learning?” They all answered that davening was more difficult. I asked them why. One young man asked me if I was sure I wanted to hear the truth. I confirmed that I did. He answered, “It is so hard to daven because I feel like I am just talking to the wall.” The desire to see and feel Hashem’s presence is very strong because it is truly difficult to internalize Hashem’s presence before us when we cannot see Him. That is why the Kuzari explains that “the intention of the nation was not to depart from the service of G-d. Rather, they believed that they were working toward the service [of G-d].” They were really saying (Mechilta D’Rabbi Yishmael, Yisro, 2), “Our desire is to see our King!”

The truth is that what the Jewish people went through is the paradigm for the growing pains every person experiences when he grows up. That is the path from spiritual immaturity to spiritual adulthood. The Torah tells us (Shemos 32:16), “The luchos were the work of G-d, and the writing was the writing of G-d.” Everything came from G-d. And in reality, nothing could be greater than that. But as a person grows to spiritual maturity, he begins to wonder, “Where am I in all of this?” We felt like children whose parents did everything for them. That is wonderful, but as children mature, they will never feel like whole human beings until they begin creating a life for themselves by making their own choices.

Moshe descended from Sinai and saw the people dancing around the work of their own hands. He recognized that a mature nation can only rejoice in spiritual accomplishments it makes on its own. The Jewish people were like children who rejected that which their parents gave them. Moshe saw that, in the end, forcing us to accept the Torah (Shabbos 88a) simply did not work. That is why he threw down “the work of G-d” and “the writing of G-d.” And Hashem acknowledged that Moshe did the right thing when He said (ibid. 87a), “You acted correctly by breaking [the luchos].”

We have never had a generation of children when parents were able to give more to their children. We give them everything, including the beliefs and the Torah life of our fathers and mothers. But our children continue to rebel like in previous generations. It is apparent that the problem is not a failure to bring down more Yiddishkeit on our children from above. At some point in their lives, they must make Torah their own. And in order to do so, they feel that they have no choice but to shatter the luchos given to them by their parents.

There are so many ways to serve G-d within the parameters of Yiddishkeit. But we must understand that many of those will not coincide with the exact brand of Yiddishkeit we feel most comfortable in or in which we raise our children. They must blaze their own path in the service of G-d. Only then will they feel ownership of it. Only then will it last forever like the second set of luchos which Moshe, not Hashem, carved.

The root of this principle is the fact that (Menachos 99b) “the foundation of the Torah is its nullification.” While the Jewish people stumbled and sinned grievously by building the Golden Calf, their attempt to fashion their own way in the service of G-d was actually a step toward a more mature, ground-up way of serving G-d. So, too, when our children stumble in their efforts to forge their own identity, independent from the way we raised them, we pray that they eventually will find a path within Yiddishkeit that they have taken personal ownership of, which belongs to them.

We also find this underlying concept in halacha. When a father redeems his first-born son from the Kohein (the pidyon haben), he makes a festive meal because the child is transitioning from the sanctity of being set aside for holiness to the more permissive mundane life of a regular Jew. But why is this a reason to celebrate? It sounds more like a reason to mourn! The child is going from a state of holiness, with which he was born, to a lower state, one in which he will have to eventually be involved in humdrum physical life. The answer must be that a state of holiness which only exists because one is born with it is like the first luchos which came from G-d. It is wonderful, but it is not the ultimate goal. The pidyon haben ceremony is like Moshe’s breaking of the luchos. It signifies the transition from a G-d-given, unearned Yiddishkeit to one in which a person will work to find his own way toward Hashem’s service.

The breaking of the luchos brings about a tremendous loss of the Torah which came before. But ulti-

mately, “the nullification of Torah is its foundation” because that is what gives us the power to choose and toil in Torah, to find the sanctity of Torah for ourselves. It enables us to fashion a path within Yiddishkeit that we have made with our own hands. That is what it means to leave the sanctity of G-d’s womb and enter a mundane human life which belongs to us. The Yiddishkeit we choose has much more staying power than the Yiddishkeit handed to us.

The Ibn Ezra explains, in the name of the Gaonim, that the second luchos were greater than the first because they were carved by Moshe. They correspond to the Oral Torah, in which we discover and derive the Torah’s teachings on our own. Because we work out the Torah’s message inch by inch, word by word, on our own, it belongs to us. We acquire it. It is ours. “At the beginning, [the Torah] is called in the name of Hashem, but in the end, it is called in his name [the name of the one who studied it]” (Avodah Zara 19a).

The pre-Golden Calf Torah which comes purely from above does not last. When we mature, we must break the luchos which are the work of Hashem’s “hands” and build our own personal relationship with G-d from the ground up.

Along these lines, the Baal Haspelling, the word is an acronym for five of the six sections of Mishna: Zeraim, Kodshim, Nashim, Yeshuos (meaning Nezikin), and Moed. The Baal Haturim teaches that Yaakov gave all of this over to Yosef. But one of the six sections of the Mishna is missing. There is one section Yaakov

The Yiddishkeit we choose has much more staying power than the Yiddishkeit handed to us.

turim offers an amazing explanation of the pasuk regarding the relationship between Yaakov and Yosef, which the Torah (Bereishis 37:3) explains as “because he was a son of his old age [zekeinim].” The Baal Haturim says that the word for old age, zekeinim, lacks the letter Vav. According to this never gave over to Yosef. And that is Taharos, the laws regarding that which is holy. A parent can give over all of the “do’s” and “don’ts” to a child. But he cannot transmit holiness to the child. That is something the child must discover and attain on his own according to his own path in Yiddishkeit, a path he acquires himself.

Parents must have the wisdom, gentleness, and patience to give their children the luchos of their beliefs, of their love, and of their own sacrifice for Hashem and Torah. But at the same time, they must have the flexibility, humility, and broad-mindedness to encourage them to forge their own path in Yiddishkeit. That is true wisdom.

May all of us merit to raise our children in this way, and may we merit to see our children successfully fashion a path in Yiddishkeit that belongs to them so that every generation will continue rising higher than the one before, each in its own unique way.

Rav Moshe Weinberger, shlita, is the founding Morah d’Asrah of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, NY, and serves as leader of the new mechina Emek HaMelech.

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