Waiting for Rain: Reflections at the Turning of the Year

Chapter Seven Shattered Tablets, Broken Hearts

Chapter Seven
Shattered Tablets, Broken Hearts
The cornerstone of our penitential liturgy, from the predawn Selihot of the month of Elul through Ne’ilah at the closing of the gates on Yom Kippur, is what is classically known as the Sh’losh Esreh Midot— the 13 Divine Attributes of Mercy. The repeated recitation of these attributes was not seen merely as an incantation that would automatically induce divine mercy, but as a guide to repentance. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the 16th-century author of the mystical work Tomer Devorah, stresses that the Talmud (B. RH 17a) portrays God as saying: “Let them carry out this service (the invocation of the attributes) before Me;” that is, not only to recite them, but to be inspired by God’s example to similar acts of mercy, imitatio Dei. In the wake of such a moral transformation, man may indeed merit forgiveness. An expression of this idea is found in the concluding stanza of the selihah for the eve of Rosh Hashanah, titled “The Thirteen Attributes,” composed in the 13th century by the liturgist Rabbi Shlomo ben Menachem: “If all have indeed repented wholeheartedly and come to beseech Thee through each proper attribute, please con137 cur in Your pardon; act, Lord, for Your sake and forgive Your assembly , return on behalf of Your servants, the tribes of Your lot.” However, this formula of divine attributes reaches its liturgical crescendo in the denouement of Yom Kippur, the Ne’ilah prayer. As is well known, Yom Kippur is not only the climax of the 10 Days of Repentance; it is also the most important liturgical day of the year. In the final hour of Yom Kippur, the declamation of the attributes becomes the refrain that is desperately and incessantly chanted, expressing our last hope for mercy. In the Bible, the attributes are first introduced in Exodus, chapter 34, when the second tablets of the law are given to Moses. Rabbinic literature makes the claim that the auspicious day on which God magnanimously gave Israel a second set of tablets to replace those that had been smashed was Yom Kippur. Exploring the story of the two sets of tablets that Moses brought down the mountain enhances our understanding of Yom Kippur. The story begins as follows: His heart fearful and full of foreboding, Moses headed down the rough and craggy path from the summit of Sinai to the plain below, where the Israelites were encamped. The Almighty had already told him what awaited: Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely. They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined upon them. They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it, saying: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exod. 32:7–8) Despite this warning, not until Moses actually witnessed this travesty with his own eyes did the shock set in. Only a few days earlier, Moses had left the nation at a spiritual zenith as he ascended the mountain. He returned to find them having plummeted into an idolatrous frenzy. The raucous sounds and images of the wanton worship of the Golden Calf extinguished the exalted visions and voices of 138
Waiting for Rain Sinai. Standing above the people, Moses reacted with intemperate anger: As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. (Exod. 32:19) The shattering of the Tablets of the Covenant is one of the classic moments of drama in the Bible. We recount the story twice yearly , in our synagogue reading of Exodus in the winter, and in the passage from Deuteronomy, in which Moses retells the event that we read every summer. The familiarity of the tale inures us, perhaps, to the question that leaps out from the page of Scripture: how could Moses have allowed himself to destroy the tablets? Dismayed though he may have been by the people’s sin, “the tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets” (Exod. 32:16)— no small matter. The Rabbis amplify the unique nature of the Tablets, listing them among the 10 items that God created at twilight...