V’Zot Ha-Brachah
Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12
“Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Eternal knew face to face, for all the signs and portents that the Eternal sent him to perform in the land of Egypt…and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before the eyes of all Israel.” (Deut. 34:10-12)
With these words we come to the end of Torah, but we will never come to the end of rabbinic commentary about practically every word and verse in the Five Books of Moses. For Rashi, one of Moses’ display of “great might and awesome power” was the smashing of the Tablets of the Commandments. You remember the scene: Moses has been communing with God for forty days on the mountain, and now, as he walks the last few yards of the trail down the mountain, he sees the Israelites dancing and singing around the Golden Calf. Rashi writes,
“His heart stirred him up to smash the Tablets before their eyes, as it is said: ‘And I shattered them before your eyes’ (Deut. 9:17) – [Sifrei 33:41]. And [regarding Moses shattering the Tablets], the Holy One Blessed be He gave His approval, as Scripture states, ‘[the first Tablets] which you shattered’ (Ex. 34:1); [God said to Moses]: ‘Well done for shattering them!’” [Shab. 87a]
What an odd episode for Rashi to single out in Moses’ final blessing to the Israelites before he died! And come to that, why would Moses end his forty-year journey with the Israelites by reminding them of their worst moments, when they caused him to smash the tablets written by God? “V’zot Ha-Brachah,” begins this final Torah parashah: “This is the blessing.” But what kind of a final blessing is that?
Perhaps our assumption that Moses shattered the tablets in rage at the Israelites’ idol worshipping is wrong. His reasons may not have been as straightforward as yours and mine might be. Imagine the scene. Their leader had been on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, and it looked like he’d never come back. Imagine the fear of being in the wilderness with nowhere to go and no leadership to guide you. Of course, the Hebrews regressed to the tangible, concrete, immediate presence of the Egyptian gods they had just left behind! They sought protection, comfort, and reassurance. Now, imagine Moses coming upon that scene and knowing instinctively why the people felt a need for an idol to protect them. What is he going to think? “If I suddenly appear with the Tablets as they’re praying to that Calf for a leader, they’re going to believe that the Golden Idol brought me back.” If Moses had allowed such a belief to be seeded in their minds, all would have been lost. He had no choice, therefore, but to act violently in a punishing way in order to elicit remorse in the hearts of the Israelites and distract them from any thought that their idol worship had been successful. He smashed the Tablets with a show of rage, burned the Golden Calf, ground it into a powder, and made the Israelites drink it. It was a mighty and awesome moment, for he knew in a heartbeat that his people were not yet ready to receive what the finger of God had inscribed on the Tablets.
Which brings us to the deeper reasons behind Moses’ smashing of the Tablets, God’s congratulations for doing so, and the transformation of an abysmal failure into the highest blessing. Maimonides wrote that “God allowed the Israelites to be tempted into making the calf only for the sake of their ultimate teshuvah (return, repentance): one which would bring them to an even higher level of spirituality than they had achieved before the sin” (Hilchot Teshuvah 7,4; in M. Schneerson, Torah Studies, p. 345). How can we not be in awe of our tradition when Maimonides, one of our greatest rabbis, affirms that God allows us to sin in order to open for us the highest gates of spiritual achievement? Spirituality is an unruly dance with a lot of twists and turns. We need to mess up in order to grow up, fail in order to learn, become lost in order to return. The power of teshuvah lies not merely in its ability to invite forgiveness for the mistakes of our past, but in its capacity to bring us to new spiritual heights. Teshuvah grinds our life’s golden calves into a powder that—like a homeopathic treatment—we might drink and be transformed. Moses has blessed us with a powerful blessing indeed—and this is a perfect way to roll the Torah to a close.
“Chazak, chazak, v’nit’chazek—Strength, strength, may we all be strengthened” on our journey of teshuvah!