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from his 40 day stay atop Mount Sinai carrying shnai loochot ha-
Almighty. You know what happens next. As it says in the text, "The
ETERNAL spoke to Moses: 'Hurry down, for your people -- note that
now it's your people, not my 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 commanded them. They have made themselves
an egel masecha -- a molten calf, and they have bowed low to it and
sacrificed to it, saying 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out
God tells Moses, "Am k'shay oref hu. I see that this is a stiff-necked
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then Moses turned and journeyed down that mountain, carrying the
shnai loochot, the two stone tablets which were, according to the text,
When Moses finally arrived near the camp and saw the people
reveling in idol worship and other lewd behaviors, he hurled the stone
tablets from his hands and shattered them - v'yeeshbor otam - at the
foot of the mountain. Then he took the golden calf made out of their
jewelry and coins and burned it. Then he had it ground into powder,
By the time we get towards the end of this week's Torah portion, we
are reading about Moses and the Jewish people's second chance at
with the words p'sal lecha shnai loochot avanim ka-reeshonim -- God
says to Moses, "Carve for yourself two stone tablets like the first
ones." P'sal the verb that means "carve" and "lecha" means for
mountain. This time he will bring stone tablets that he has carved
himself (God had created the first set), and he will return with the text
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of the commandments and the covenant, bringing these sacred
Rabbis over the centuries have taken a close look at this second set
phrase, "p'sal lecha," and considered how the Hebrew verb p'sal -- to
meanings. One tradition states that the phrase, "p'sal lecha," "carve
saying to Moses, "carve for yourself" these two new stone tablets, if
you read instead of the Hebrew word p'sal the related word pesolet,
which means "leftovers," then what you end up with is God saying to
Moses, "the leftovers are for you." What leftovers is God talking
about? This midrash teaches that God was referring to the leftover
bits and pieces of the highly valuable stone material that the first set
of tablets were made up of. As God carved the letters into that first
holy set of tablets, little bits and pieces of the stone fell onto the
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them up and keep them, and sell them. The midrash says that
Moses did just that, and in fact became very wealthy in the process!
But then the sages add that Moses, being Moses, didn't care for the
interpret this idea that the "chips, or leftovers" are yours. Looking at
different teaching from these words of Torah. The scraps and bits of
religious language, our sins. The Hasids went on to teach that these
first looking at those "chips" as if they are his or hers as well, and
search him or herself out for the same faults. The chips aren't just
One last thought to share tonight. Rabbis and students of the bible
have been fascinated for centuries with the moment in which Moses
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explodes and hurls the stone tablets, carved and written by the hands
object so holy as those tablets. And yet he did, and, as one recent
doesn't state that God ever criticized Moses for destroying the sacred
moment in Torah, they were coming from the perspective that one
should tenderly bury even a scrap of paper that had certain Hebrew
names of God written upon it. Smash the sacred tablets? Why didn't
a lightning bolt immediately flash and turn Moses into a heap of ash?
Why didn't the ground open up or the mountain explode? And what
teaches that not only did God refrain from criticizing Moses for this
act of destruction, but God actually thought well of it. The sages
again, with their penchant for plays on words in the Torah's Hebrew,
explain their reasoning to us. They wrote, "And how do we know that
the Holy One, blessed be God, gave approval for what Moses did
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with the first set of tablets? Because in the passage where God says
to Moses, "p'sal lecha shnai loochot," -- "carve for yourself two stone
tablets," the verse actually ends with the words "two stone tablets like
the first ones that you shattered." In the Hebrew, the phrase, "that
rabbi known as Resh Lakish reasoned that the word asher sounds an
awful lot like the word yasher, which can only be a hint for the
go!" or "good job" in Hebrew. So really, what the words "that you
shattered" are trying to teach is that God actually said "carve for
yourself two stone tablets like the first ones, and yasher koach - way
after someone has finished their d'var Torah, so I'll take my cue and