Joan Judge
Shabbat Shalom.
I want to open with what may appear to be perfunctory disclaimers but which are not: this is my first dvar Torah and I am far from learned in Jewish texts.
That said, the material we have to work with in parsha Ki Tisa is blessedly rich: action-packed and semantically resonant. It includes God's final instructions for the making of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), the sin of the Golden Calf, and the granting of the Second Tablets. There is much in these chapters that is intriguing — Moses' appeal to the gaze of Egypt as his first line of argument in dissuading God from annihilating the idolatrous people (32:12), for example; much that is disturbing — the summary execution of 3,000 of the guilty on Moses' authority; and much that is simultaneously alienating and illuminating — the continued elusiveness of God's intrinsic nature even as his Thirteen Attributes are articulated.
I've chosen to focus, however, on the shattering of the Tablets. As narrated in (32:19), "And it happened when [Moses] drew near the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing, and [his] wrath flared, and he flung the Tablets from his hand and smashed them at the bottom of the mountain." I will probe questions this incident raises about the encounters among God, his reluctant prophet, Moses; and the stiffnecked revelers in the "cult" of the Golden calf. Most specifically, I will ask whether, in shattering the Tablets Moses acted on his own or divine authority and what the heuristic purpose of his action vis-a-vis the children of Israel could have been. Ultimately, I will consider what this incident reveals about the relationships between divine directive and prophetic authority, heavenly will and human autonomy: God and man.
DID MOSES SHATTER THE TABLETS ON HIS OWN AUTHORITY: FOUR VIEWS
We can isolate four views in rabbinic literature and midrash on the question of whether Moses shattered the Tablets on his own authority.
The majority opinion is that Moses shattered the Tablets on his own authority and that his action was in accord with God's intent.
This action was one of a number which Moses allegedly undertook on his own initiative. The list of these autonomous acts varies. In addition to the breaking of the Tablets, it includes staying another day on the mountain (a Baraita), abstaining from intercourse with his wife after taking on his prophetic role, (a Baraita, Plaut, 653), allowing the mixed multitude to join the Israelites when they left Egypt (Midrash), setting up his tent of communion with God outside the camp (Heschel), and ordering the Levites to kill those who had worshipped the calf (Midrash Yelammedenu).
According to Rabbi Ishmael (and others) while Moses acted on his own, he drew an inference from the word of God. "If the Paschal sacrifice, a single Mitvzah out of the 613, was not to be given to idolators [foreigners, 12:43]," Moses allegedly reasoned, "how much more so the entire Torah [should not be given to Israel who are all apostates]! [He] thus shattered [the Tablets]." While prophets were usually understood to be under an oath to follow divine instructions precisely under pain of death, the practice of drawing inferences was often considered compatible with the prophetic role. Subsequent prophets also made logical inferences — often with significant practical consequences — from divine instructions.
Biblical commentators have found further indirect evidence of God's approval of Moses' action in the Torah. According to the early twentieth century Rabbi Barukh Epstein, for example, because it is not decent to remind someone of something they had done in anger, had God disapproved of the shattering of the Decalogue He would not have referred to the Tablets as those "that you smashed" (34:1) in speaking to Moses. And there are clear indications that Moses' position became even more exalted after the destruction of the First Tablets. We learn near the end of the parsha that "The skin of his face glowed," (34:31). This aura both reflected divine glory and served to repair the crisis in leadership which had initially provoked the incident of the Golden Calf.
Midrash offers further elaboration on God's approval of Moses' action. According to Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish (in a midrash found in Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 87a and Menahot 99a) when God referred to the Tablets as those, "Which you shattered" (Ex. 34:2, Deut. 10:2), he was actually saying "more power to you that you shattered them!" This interpretation plays on the phonetic similarity between asher (the which in "Which you shattered") and yishar from the phrase yishar kohakha "more power to you." Elsewhere, God consoled Moses saying the Second Tablets would contain more material including Halachah, Midrash, and Aggadah (Midrash Rabbah). A parable, repeated with slight variations in a number of sources (Midrash Tanchuma, Rashi, Midrash Shemot Rabbah) further implies God's sanction of Moses' deed. In one version of it a king went overseas, leaving his wife with her maidservants. The latter conducted themselves scandalously and the wife unjustly gained a bad reputation. The king's good friend arose and tore up the marriage contract explaining, "if the king will say that she should be killed because he thinks that she committed adultery, I will say to him, 'she is not yet your wife.'" The king investigated the matter. Finding the scandalous conduct only among the slavewomen, he reconciled with his wife. Her good friend then said to the king, "write another ketubah for her because the first one was torn up." The king said, you tore it up, now you buy the paper for yourself and I will write her another ketubah in my hand." The king is, of course, God; the maidservants the mixed multitude; the wife, Israel; the good friend, Moses; the ketubah, the Ten Commandments, and the paper the Tablets (Midrash Tanchuma).
While the view that Moses smashed the Tablets on his own authority with divine sanction appears in the literature as the dominant view, the three other positions also bear consideration. According to Rabbi Akiva and others (Yehudah ben Betereira, Eleazar ben Azariah, Meir), Moses did not shatter the Tablets until instructed to do so. This view is often supported by (Deut. 9:17) which, however, is, in my mind, less than convincing evidence. In this passage Moses declares, "And I seized the two Tablets and flung them from my two hands and smashed them before your [Israel's] eyes."
Others claim the Tablets fell following a struggle between God and Moses. According to this view, after the incident of the calf, God attempted to take the Tablets back from Moses. As both God and Moses clung to a third of the Tablets, Moses managed to wrestle them away (Rabbi Shmuel ben Nahman in the name of Rabbi Yonatan) before letting them drop. In another midrash which implies God's complicity in the incident, Moses saw the writing vanish from the Tablets as he approached the camp, the letters flying back to God. At once the stones became too heavy and slipped from his hands (Avot De-Rabbi Natan, cited in Plaut, 653).
Finally, some have taken the position that God actively opposed the destruction of
the Tablets and chided Moses for his action. This view is supported by the statement in Ecc. 7:9: "Don't let your spirit be quickly vexed," as Moses' spirit was when he approached the camp. Proponents of this view further argue that God rebuked and fined Moses by instructing him to hew out the Second Tablets by himself. (34:1, Plaut, 653).
MOSES' MOTIVATION IN SHATTERING THE TABLETS
If we adopt what is to me the more convincing view that Moses shattered the Tablets on his own authority, the next question is the motivation for this violent action. Two divergent explanations have been given: that this was a spontaneous act of uncontrolled rage and that it was a premeditated act with a self-conscious prophetic, educative, or legal purpose.
Those who interpret the act as a spontaneous emotional reaction, describe the motivating emotion not as anger — which results when we are personally injured — but as indignation, a moral feeling that sweeps over us when we are witness to a great outrage against justice and right. Moses already knew what the people had done and had felt the divine wrath which their actions had provoked. Seeing, however, is a much more vivid experience than hearing. And, what he saw did not completely tally with what God had told him. He had not imagined how much the idolaters were enjoying their fall, how fully they had repudiated the covenant, and how free of remorse they remained (R. Moses Alshikh, Soforno, Arama). Following this line of reasoning, Rashbam argues that the scene was so shocking that Moses' vitality ebbed from him and he could no longer hold the Tablets. Maimonides asserts that it was not physical but spiritual weakness that overcame Moses when he beheld the sight of idolatry. He interprets (Deut. 9:17) which we just cited as "When I saw you dancing in front of the calf I could not control myself and I broke the Tablets."
These arguments for the spontaneity of Moses' actions provoked by moral indignation, emotional shock, or a kind of spiritual seizure, are countered by those who believe Moses was too great a man to succumb to his passions. This position is, in part driven by skepticism that Moses would give in to the fury which he had just dissuaded God from expressing in asking Him to "Turn back from Your flaring wrath" (32:12).
Some explain Moses' self-conscious purpose in shattering the tablets as prophetic, part of his program of intercession and extenuation of Israel's sin. It was an attempt to share the blame with them-to tear up the ketubah himself in the language of the parable I cited earlier-and offer them a second chance (Midrash Shemot Rabbah 43, 1). Moses thus challenged God by stating, ""They have sinned but so have I with breaking of the Tablets. If you forgive them forgive me too. . . But if you don't forgive them, do not forgive me but blot me out of Your book." (Shemot Rabbah).
In a similar vein, Avot De Rabbi Natan claimed Moses realized that if he gave the people the Tablets he would "obligate them in all of the commandments and make them deserving of death. For it says in the Ten Commandments, 'You shall have no other gods besides Me'" (Exodus 20:4). The text continues, in a passage already cited, that "Moses looked at the Tablets and saw that the writing had flown off of them." Rather than helplessly drop the weighty tablets as in the previous elaboration, however, in this version Moses said, 'How can I give the Children of Israel Tablets with nothing on them? Rather, I will take hold of them and break them, as it says, 'I gripped the two Tablets and flung them away with both my hands, smashing them before your eyes' (Deuteronomy 9:17).'"
Other commentators offered a less benevolent view of Moses' action. According to Rashi, the prophet did not want to exonerate but to punish the Israelites who had broken the covenant between them and God in heaven. Abarvanel and others concur that the self-conscious motivation for his action was to shock the people into a realization of the gravity of their transgression. Finally, in legal terms, Moses followed ancient Near Eastern practice in smashing the Tablets on which a binding agreement had been written in order to signify the abrogation of that agreement (Alter).
Convincing arguments have thus been made for the shattering of the tablets as an act of either self-conscious purpose or un-premeditated rage. More compelling, in my view, however, is a position which combines the two and reads the incident as the product of passion but not of a thoughtless frenzy. Moses was aware that this specific act-the smashing of the sacred stones inscribed "with the finger of God" — was crucial to reforming the people of Israel. It was crucial not only because of the message the Tablets conveyed but because of the danger the media conveying this message represented. His objective was not merely to punish the people for having defied the first and second commandements, but to shatter all tendencies towards fetishizing corporeal embodiments of the divine. These physical fetishes-the media of the message — included Moses' own personage. He had, uncomfortably, served as a stand-in for God, Israel's visible contact with an invisible Lord. Without him Israel was a leaderless mob overcome by the anxiety actualized in the idolatrous moment. It was imperative that Moses instruct them that even if he had not reappeared the Torah would have persisted.
And it was imperative he teach them that the very objects he reappeared holding were not intrinsically holy: the moment the people had transgressed the Tablets had become devoid of sanctity. Fearing that the stiff-necked rabble would deify the Tablets as they had deified the calf, Moses' impulse-as much the product of spontaneous rage as of cumulative reflection-was to break the Tablets and force the reform of Israel's ways.
The radical distinction between the objects of gold and stone was nonetheless enshrined in Jewish history. The Golden Calf was ground down, diluted, and forcibly consumed. The shards of the broken Tablets, in contrast, would be deposited in the Ark next to the second Decalogue (Talmud, Shabbat 87a; Ibn Shu'ib on Exodus 34:1, citing the midrash of R. Joseph in the BT Menahot 99s; the Novellae of Nahmanides on BT Shabbat 87a). There they would stand as testimony to the imbrication of divine commandment and prophetic passion, to the human element in God's revelatory purpose.