Yeshiva
Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Shmot
- Ki Tisa
Moshe, did, indeed, break the Luchot in our Sedra, in response to the people’s sin of the Egel HaZahav, the Golden Calf they fashioned and worshipped when Moshe delayed returning from Har Sinai with the Torah. Now, most readers look at Moshe’s act and assign it to his elevated sense of anger. But Moshe was not, typically, an angry person. He did definitely have a strong sense of righteous indignation; whenever he saw injustice (such as when he caught the Egyptian beating a Hebrew; and at the well when the shepherds mistreated Zipora, etc). He also reacted strenuously when his people misbehaved, such as at Mei M’riva. And so he would have certainly been
justified reacting viscerally when he saw Bnei Yisrael acting in a wild, (semi) idolatrous fashion with the Egel.
But Rashi – in a statement at the end of Devarim – has a whole different spin on this episode.
Rashi says that Moshe – our supreme leader and expert defense attorney - broke the Luchot in an act of defending the Jewish People. You see, idolatry’s "sister sin" among the 10 Commandments is adultery. Cheating on Hashem - by worshipping another "god" - is akin to cheating on your spouse, and vice-versa. Both demonstrate infidelity.
And so Moshe ingenuously took the Luchot – which Chazal refer to as the "Ketuba" which validates our "marriage" to Hashem - and he shattered it. The effect of this, symbolically, was that we were now "single" again, and
so could not be guilty of committing the sin of adultery! Bad judgment, yes, boorish behavior, certainly, but not the capital crime of adultery and wholesale rejection of Hashem.
Perhaps this is why the Torah mysteriously says that this act took place, "tachat ha-har," under the mountain. You see, Har Sinai was not just the place where Matan Torah took place; symbolically, it was the "Chupa" under which we stood when this union between Man and G-d occurred. So it was therefore the most fitting place at which to dissolve the union – albeit temporarily – for the much greater good of saving the nation for posterity.
As always, it was Moshe, our hero, to the rescue.
Rabbi Stewart Weiss
Was ordained at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois, and led congregations in Chicago and Dallas prior to making Aliyah in 1992. He directs the Jewish Outreach Center in Ra'anana, helping to facilitate the spiritual absorption of new olim.
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Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part I
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
