I’ve always felt that one of the scenes depicted in this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tissa, is one of the most heart-breaking. Moshe has been up on Mount Sinai receiving the two tablets, engraved by the finger of God, while the Israelite people below have built a golden calf, an idol to worship. And when Moshe comes down the mountain holding the greatest divine gift imaginable, he sees the betrayal of the people. He immediately smashes the tablets to the ground in a fit of rage and disbelief. Sometimes I wonder how Moshe could have done such a thing. Sure, he was angry, but perhaps breaking this Godly creation was a bit extreme.
The Midrash, however, wants to be a little bit more forgiving of Moshe, believing hat Moshe actually had no choice in the matter. You see, the Midrash teaches that the stone upon which the Ten Commandments were inscribed was unbelievably heavy. It was only the divine letters, inscribed upon them by the finger of God, that made the tablets light enough for any human to carry. When Moshe saw the golden calf and the people’s act of idolatry, the letters written by God, perhaps as a sign of God’s sense of betrayal, flew off of the stone, making them unbearable for Moshe to carry. It was God’s involvement in the stone, God’s act of writing letters on them, that made them bearable for any human to carry.
A teacher of mine in rabbinical school, Dr. Eitan Fishbane, wrote that “it is especially the dynamic of heaviness and lightness here that is so theologically and psychologically evocative: taken figuratively, it is the infusion of divine vitality, the inner force of spirituality, that makes the burden of physical life bearable.” This offers us a powerful reminder that when we welcome into our lives a sense of spirituality, Godliness, even when it takes effort and work, we are able to ease the burden of life. It doens't make pain go away and it doesn't make things great when they're not, it simply means that God then helps us carry the load when we didn’t think we could bear it on our own.
There will be times in our lives where it feels as if the Divine letters have left us, where we feel a heaviness, a brokenness. We feel the weight of the stone, the weight of being human. We hope, in these moments, that our hearts will be made light again. We seek reminders that the divine letters are written in our lives and on our hearts. And we, too, will remember that there’s a second set of Tablets, a set that was created through the partnership of Moshe and God together.
