This past week, I took a rare, sacred pilgrimage, also known as a “date night”, to Tinseltown to watch the new blockbuster movie, Barbie. 

At face value, Barbie is a toy, and like one of my favorite movies of all time, Toy Story 2, there is a power to simply referencing the toys of our youth. Whether it’s Barbie or Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, little green men, or monkeys in a barrel, toys elicited moments of nostalgia. Like a melody or a scent, they have a power to transport us to our childhood, to simpler times. 

But sometimes, as outlined in Barbie, toys mean something much more. In traveling back in time, we see that the object represents a feeling: the hope, the potential of a better tomorrow; they take us to a time when we used our imaginations in a different way, when we dreamt of all that we could be. That’s the power of a single object. 

For the Jewish people, we have an object, a text that represents our Jewish future by linking us to our Jewish past. Each time we read from it, the stories and teachings come alive as if we are there in the story. The Torah- all of its iterations- from the tablets to the expansion of its teachings in the Talmud, stands as a constant symbol of our history- how we used our collective imagination to dream of Jewish peoplehood and a Jewish homeland, and of our future, as a guide to Jewish living in real time. And today, we’ll talk about how we broke that one sacred object.

We can look at our Torah reading from different perspectives: chronologically within the storyline itself, where its reading falls on the Jewish calendar, and how we, today, can relate to its message.

Last week we read the 10 commandments and the Shema, the pair that serve as the basis of our ethical and theological code of living. For the Israelites of the desert, who found themselves right outside the land of Israel, they needed to hear Torah that would lay the groundwork for a successful future in the Promised Land. That’s where we are chronologically. 

On the Jewish calendar, we commemorated Tisha B’av some 10 days ago,  the saddest day on our calendar; a day in which both temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. For the Israelites of the Second temple, the readings of last week and today serve a different purpose. Having experienced the loss of the temples, left bereft of a spiritual home, a place where the people would bring sacrifices to mark significant moments in their lives- where would they go? What could they do? What would Judaism look like for them?

A story is relayed in Avot d’Rabbi Natan, a companion volume to Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers.

Once, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai left Jerusalem, and Rabbi Joshua followed after him. Rabbi Joshua saw the Holy Temple destroyed, and he lamented: ‘Woe to us, for this is destroyed—the place where all of Israel’s sins are forgiven!’”  [Rabbi Yohanan] said to him: My son, do not be distressed, for we have a form of atonement just like it. And what is it? Acts of kindness, as it says, “For I desire kindness, not a well-being offering.”(HOSEA 6:6).

As the Psalmist writes (Psalm 89:3), ע֭וֹלָם חֶ֣סֶד יִבָּנֶ֑ה, the world will be built on acts of lovingkindness, which is to say, our home is in our text and its teachings. Rabbi Yohanan and his disciples (including Rabbi Joshua) would go on to establish a yeshiva in Yavneh (BT Gittin 56b), formulating a new form of Judaism in a world where we long for Jerusalem and the temple, but they are no longer the epicenter of Jewish life. 

An object, the torah, the best of the best ethical teachings, can get us even through the darkest hours. But today is about a broken torah. 

One of the silver linings of our modern synagogue is the ability to catch a musical moment or a word of torah from thousands of miles away- whether in real time or later on Facebook or YouTube. Over the past few years, I have found a sincere voice of Torah through the -8-12 minute sermons of Rabbi David Wolpe, Max Webb Senior Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. And just a year ago, David Wolpe announced his retirement after 26+ years in his congregation. He now serves, amongst other roles, as the Inaugural Rabbinic Fellow of the Anti-Defamation League.  Throughout the past year, I would find myself listening to the Rabbi’s sermons as he marked his farewell tour, creating a window into his rabbinate and his congregation. His final sermon was just a few weeks ago, and you guessed it, it was about broken tablets. 

Wolpe tells a story of his first ever drash/sermon at Sinai Temple, Parshat Ki Tissa, the story of Moses shattering the first set of tablets. He quotes the biblical scholar Arnold Ehrlich, who 

“believed that Moses saw the calf and thought: If the Israelites worship this calf, which they created with their own hands, what will they do when they see the tablets carved by God? Surely, they will turn these tablets, which are so much more precious than the calf, into an idol! If I don’t destroy the tablets, they will commit the ultimate desecration. By smashing the tablets, Moses was making a declaration to all of Israel: Even the handiwork of God, which you might think of as inviolable, is nonetheless just another thing. It is not a God – it is a physical artifact. I am destroying it to return you to the greater truth, which is that you were not delivered from Egypt by a thing, but by an intangible, unfathomable God, no more embodied in the tablets than in the calf.” 

At first glance, broken tablets are a reminder of where we went wrong, a low point for Moses and the people of Israel. It’s also a reminder of our humanity. Wolpe argues that Moses loved the people so much, he broke the tablets so they could get a redo; the Israelites would get a chance to grow as a people, make a few mistakes on the way, and ultimately be judged on other merits. Not this moment. 

Wolpe points to his own evolution on why Moses broke the tablets. He points out something he never saw when he delivered that first sermon a generation ago; time and experience paint a new perspective. In this his last message to his congregation, he says that  “He broke the tablets, so his heart could be whole.”

We explored our Torah from the perspective of those wandering in the desert, to those who lost their spiritual home, and now, we come to us, those who as I said earlier re-enact this story each and every time we read from the Torah. What does the story hold for us? Well today, Parshat Ekev, reconfirms that the brokenness is part of our story.  

“At that point, God said to me—carve two stone tablets…and I will write upon those tablets, the words that were on the first tablets which you shattered, and put them in the Ark” (Deuteronomy 10:1-2).

From these two verses, our rabbis derive the idea that both sets of tablets, the broken and the whole, made their way into the Ark. The Israelites carried both sets, not as a reminder of the bad. In carrying the broken, they included the whole story. 

The rabbis of the Talmud echo this idea that broken isn’t always bad:

Regarding the tablets, which represented the entire Torah, and Israel at that moment were apostates, as they were worshiping the calf, all the more so are they not worthy of receiving the Torah. And from where do we derive that the Holy One, Blessed be He, agreed with his reasoning? As it is stated: “The first tablets which you broke [asher shibarta]” (Exodus 34:1), and Reish Lakish said: The word asher is an allusion to the phrase: May your strength be true [yishar koḥakha] due to the fact that you broke the tablets. (Shabbat 87a)

Every time someone returns from an honor, we offer a “yasher koach.” One may find it ironic that we say “yasher kokacha”, a reference to breaking the tablets, to someone who has upheld torah, but the Ashkenazi greeting makes a lot of sense. Each of us, human, is a keeper of Torah. There are moments when we feel broken, and moments when we feel whole. We live in both realities, often at the same time- we can love and not stand our kids, love our jobs while not liking them all the time; we make mistakes even if we strive for perfection. The greeting “may your strength be true” is symbolic of the ark that each of us holds, filled with the broken and the whole; the “broken” as much a part of us as the whole. That’s what life experience offers us. 

Parshat Ekev reminds us that ideas live forever; the temple, the scrolls, humans not so much. And when we feel broken, as if the point of our journey is to be repaired, we’re reminded that life is a journey towards wholeness, marked by the experiences, good and bad, happy and sad, that make up our existence. No shame attached. As humans, the “brokenness” we feel is a core, sacred chapter of our Torah, a story that will far outlive our place in this world. We are co-authors in its ongoing writing. If we continue to play a role, then it’s our story that lives on in perpetuity. We find purpose in knowing it’s our life experience that can partner with our tradition, looking back and building forward towards a real, lived Torah. May we all find a place for the broken, the real, the raw, the whole Torah that is in each of us.