Carving New Tablets

Ki Tissa 5776/ 27 February 2016

רָאִיתִי אֶת־כָּל־הַמַּֽעֲשִׂים שֶֽׁנַּֽעֲשׂוּ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ
וְהִנֵּה הַכֹּל הֶבֶל וּרְעוּת רֽוּחַ:

מְעֻוָּת לֹֽא־יוּכַל לִתְקֹן
וְחֶסְרוֹן לֹֽא־יוּכַל לְהִמָּנֽוֹת:

I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun:
and, behold, all is vanity and a torture of the spirit.

What is crooked cannot be made straight;
and that which is defective cannot be numbered.^[1] 

I find it easy to understand why the Talmudic Sages tried to suppress the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes).^[2] Its bleak mood surfaces right at the beginning and does not let up; the book’s focus on philosophical speculation runs against the grain of a tradition generally more focused on practical human behavior. And yet its verses undeniably contain some uncomfortable truths about human experience; perhaps it was that same discomfort that prompted our ancestors’ ambivalence about Kohelet in the first place.

“What is crooked cannot be made straight.” In that one short declaration lies all the dramatic tension of our parshah. In the midst of Exodus and Revelation, the Israelites have turned their attention away from God and devoted themselves to an idol of their own making. The sense of betrayal is palpable: A midrash compares the Israelites, dancing around the Golden Calf at the base of Mount Sinai, to a bride committing adultery under her own huppah.^[3] Indeed, at first God wants no reconciliation, only revenge: “Now therefore let me alone,” God demands of Moses, “That my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.”^[4] Moses, too, experiences a rage so profound he smashes the tablets of stone on which God directly engraved the words of the covenant.^[5] 

How, then, should we understand the end of our parshah, when God instructs Moses, פְּסָל־לְךָ שְׁנֵֽי־לֻחֹת אֲבָנִים כָּרִֽאשֹׁנִים, “Carve two tablets for yourself, like the first ones”?^[6] Earlier, the Torah told us הַלֻּחֹת מַֽעֲשֵׂה אֱ־לֹהִים הֵמָּה, “The tablets were the work of God,”^[7] and now God tells Moses to make two new tablets like the first ones? How could Moses possibly achieve such a thing?

The medieval Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra, generally inclined toward the most straightforward explanantion, interprets כָּרִֽאשֹׁנִים, “like the first ones,” to mean that Moses should make his tablets according to the same size and design as the originals.^[8] Malbim, a 19th-century rabbi, points out that although Moses, and not God, carved these tablets, in both cases the writing was engraved by God.^[9] Sa’adiah Gaon, the early Jewish philosopher, goes in the other direction, listing seven qualities that made the second set of tablets better than the first set.^[10] But here, too, the second tablets would be different than the first. How can we make sense of God’s telling Moses to make the new tablets כָּרִֽאשֹׁנִים, “like the first ones”?^[11]

We must conclude that while the new tablets were meant to be like the first ones, they were not strictly the same. Plato, in the dialogue Cratylus, has Socrates tell the others, “Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.”^[12] Herein lies the tragedy of time: we see the past with clarity, and yet we move inexorably forward, into an unknown and uncertain future. We live in an age of self-help, an approach to life predicated on the belief that change is possible; and yet if we are honest about our lives, we must admit that change is more than possible: it is inevitable.

I remember sitting once with a young couple, preparing for their wedding, and cautioning them: they understood, intuitively, that they couldn’t enter a marriage expecting the other to change in some specific way; but they also needed to know not to expect the other to stay the same. “All things are in motion and nothing at rest; you cannot go into the same water twice.” If we read parashat Ki Tissa as a story of rupture and reconciliation, is it any different than our own lives? Who among us has not been hurt, or hurt someone themselves? Who has not needed to give or accept an apology, ask for or grant forgiveness?

And still we can never stand in the same water twice. We can repair a breached relationship, make amends, learn to trust again; but we can’t put things back exactly the way they were. We can, indeed we must, make new tablets — but they will always be כָּרִֽאשֹׁנִים, “like the first ones,” never the same. Our Sages tell us, לוחות ושברי לוחות מונחין בארון, “The whole tablets and the broken tablets were placed in the same Ark.”^[13] The new tablets neither replace nor hide the first, broken set; but they do allow the relationship to continue, a chance for reconciliation.

With this in mind, we can better understand the Talmud’s startling assertion: מקום שבעלי תשובה עומדין, צדיקים גמורים אינם עומדין, “In a place where those who have repented stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.”^[14] There is something that ba’alei teshuvah, those who have done wrong, recognized it, and made amends, understand about life that the completely righteous person can not comprehend: although time, and thus life, moves only forward, although we can not change the past, nevertheless each moment holds open for us the opportunity to choose again, to choose differently, to repair, to heal, to reconcile. In a sense, Kohelet was right: “What is crooked cannot be made straight.”^[15] But he tells us only half of the story. Against Kohelet’s philosophical resignation, our parshah insists:פְּסָל־לְךָ שְׁנֵֽי־לֻחֹת אֲבָנִים כָּרִֽאשֹׁנִים, “Carve two tablets for yourself, like the first ones.”^[16] We can not fix the broken tablets, but we can make new ones. Those new tablets, similar to the first but not the same, go in the ark, and so do the broken pieces. And we move forward, beginning again.

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Tags: Ki Tissa, New Beginnings, Teshuvah