When Moses was coming down the mountain, carrying the two tablets on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments \u00a0that he had received from God, he saw the people dancing around the golden calf. \u00a0And when he saw this, Moses took these two tablets, these holy objects, and he smashed them.<\/p>\n
There are many different commentaries in the midrash on why he smashed them. One says that because of the sin of the golden calf \u2014 the letters flew off the tablets, and that, when there were no letters on the tablets, they became too heavy to bear \u2014 Moses could not sustain his strength when the tablets lost their purpose! \u00a0\u00a0So he did not smash them \u2014 he dropped them.<\/p>\n
Another midrash says that when Moses saw the people worshipping an idol, directly violating the second of the ten commandments, he broke the tablets, because he figured \u2014 you cannot be held liable for violating a law that you did not yet know about\u2014 that had not yet been established. \u00a0By breaking the tablets instead of telling the people what was written on them, Moses was protecting the people from being found guilty.<\/p>\n
Another great midrash asks a very simple question: \u00a0What happened to these broken pieces of tablet? \u00a0Were they simply swept up by some janitor and thrown away? Were they picked up and put in a trash can?<\/p>\n
The answer of the midrash is that Moses went back up to the top of Mount Sinai, and stayed there with God for another forty days and nights, and came back with a second set of tablets. And these tablets were put into the Holy Ark. \u00a0And then it says: \u00a0\u201cLuchot, vishivrey luchot munachim ba\u2019aron\u201d. Both sets of tablets, the second set and the fragments of the first set were put into the Ark.<\/p>\n
Why did the Israelites do that? \u00a0If you had a perfect set, why would you need to keep the broken set as well? And why would you put it in the Ark, right next to the second, new, shiny set?<\/p>\n
The answer of the midrash is: \u00a0\u201cIn order to teach you that broken people, that people who once knew the Torah but who have lost their memories and no longer know anything, are to be treated with respect, even in their broken state.\u201d \u00a0People, \u00a0who are holy, remain holy, even when they have Dementia, or Alzheimer\u2019s \u2014 even when they no longer know who you are, even when they no longer know who THEY are.<\/p>\n
A friend of mine had a different take on the broken tablets. \u00a0\u00a0He said that the broken tablets are like the glass that we break at a wedding. \u00a0\u00a0The Jewish people were about to begin their intense relationship with God \u2014 which many rabbis have likened to a marriage \u2014 but just as we are reminded at a regular Jewish wedding that a relationship is fragile\u2014that bad things happen and even on our happiest day we remember the destruction of the Temple \u2014 so too on the day when we agreed on a relationship with God \u2014 we were reminded how easy it is to let the relationship break.<\/p>\n
I was especially moved by these thoughts because after 50 years of marriage, my parents are having a difficult time deciding if they want to continue being married. \u00a0\u00a0It may just be weariness, or it may be the beginning of slight dementia on my mother\u2019s part. \u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m doing my best to just be there for both of them \u2014 and not to listen too much about their complaints about the other one. \u00a0They seem to have lost the sense of the other being broken \u2014 but still holy.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, \u00a0and I am reminded of the fact that we often hear talk about people having found their soul mate. \u00a0I read an article by a colleague of mine, Rabi Irwin Kula who argues that we don\u2019t find our soul mate – we co-create our soul mate. Soul mate is a verb hiding out as a noun, and over the course of our relationship we engage in soul-mating.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the initial reasons we fall in love are not the reasons we stay in love, as the first phase of love is about self-affirmation – narcissism. But soon enough we discover each other’s differences, flaws and weaknesses and that’s when our love becomes intentional, intimacy begins, and we start to \u201csoul mate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Only at the end of our relationship, after we have successfully helped each other to seek the truth about ourselves and to become the best people we can be, \u00a0\u00a0do we actually know whether we have found our soul mate.<\/p>\n
When we say, “we found our soul mate,” or our perfect match, we are not expressing a fact but an aspiration – a yearning – because the truth about love is its uncertainty, vulnerability, and fragility.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Kula says \u2014 and it\u2019s worth saying slowly \u2014 that the paradox of love, is that the fantasy of permanence we imagine, and try to create, \u00a0erodes the security of the very passion and romance for which we yearn.<\/p>\n
It is precisely the impermanence and uncertainty of love that generates our longing and desire for greater intimacy. \u00a0\u00a0When a glass is shattered under the chuppa (the marriage canopy), we are inviting fragility and vulnerability right into the moment we make our “unbreakable” commitment. \u00a0\u00a0We feel most attracted and in love, and passionate, when we know it might not last.<\/p>\n
Intimacy, passion, romance – soul mating – is learning the risky dance between closeness and distance, happiness and disappointment, gratitude and resentment, loyalty and betrayal, control and surrender, spontaneity and boredom, trust and doubt, tenderness and aggression.<\/p>\n
If we want Valentine’s Day to really work we have to do more than give our loved ones roses. \u00a0We have to hold the thorns: the insecurity of love. We need to embrace the sacred messiness of love.<\/p>\n
Let me finish with a story. A friend of mine says that he overheard this conversation in a doctor\u2019s waiting room. \u00a0A man came up to the window, and said to the secretary that he knew that the doctor was falling behind, but could she do something to help him get his appointment on time.<\/p>\n
The man explained why he was in a hurry. He said to her, \u201cMy wife has Alzheimer\u2019s, and she is in Assisted Living, and I have to get there by noon so that I can feed her her lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The secretary said she would try her best to get him in as soon as she could, but she said to him, \u201cWhy do you have to rush to get there on time? If she has Alzheimer\u2019s, she probably doesn\u2019t even know who you are?\u201d<\/p>\n
To which the man answered, \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s true, but I know who I am, and I know who she is, \u00a0and therefore I have to get there on time.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wish my parents great strength and wisdom as they struggle to discover and re-discover who they are \u2014 and us as well, in our relationships to each other and to God.<\/p>\n
Shabbat Shalom.\u00a0 Rabbi Paul Arberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Moses was coming down the mountain, carrying the two tablets on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments \u00a0that he had received from God, he saw the people dancing around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-shabbat"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hayleyroosphotography.co.uk\/mosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}