WHY IS BRAKING GOOD?

A boy asks his father to explain the differences between irritation, aggravation, and misery.

Dad picks up the phone and dials a number at random. When the phone is answered he asks, "Can I speak to Ralph, please?"

"No! There's no one called Ralph here." The person hangs up.

"That's irritation," says Dad.

He picks up the phone again, dials the same number, and asks for Ralph a second time.

"No--there's no one here called Ralph. Go away. If you call again,

I shall telephone the police." End of conversation.

"That's aggravation."

"Then what's ‘misery’?" asks his son.

The father picks up the phone and dials a third time:

"Hello, this is Ralph. Have I received any phone calls?"

This week’s portion, Ki Tisa, it says: After the Jews created a Golden Calf, Moses smashed the stone tablets carved by G-d, engraved with the Ten Commandments. Moses pleads with G-d for forgiveness, and He gives them a second chance. Moses hewed a second set of stone tablets; G-d engraved them with the Ten Commandments, and Moses gave the new ones to the Jewish people.

A question comes to mind.

The rabbis share a profoundly strange teaching:

The whole tablets and the broken tablets nestled inside the Ark (of the Covenant.)

This seems strange. Why would they place the broken tablets in the Holy of Holies together with the second set of whole tablets? After all, these fragments were a constant reminder of the great colossal failure and titanic sin of the Jewish people, their betrayal of G-d merely forty days after their “marriage” at Sinai. Why not just store them in a safe place?

What is more, the High Priest did not enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur in his usual golden vestments, only in white linen garments. Why? Explain the Sages, because the High Priest was entering there to atone for the people; how then can he come in dressed in gold, which would serve as a reminder of the golden calf the people created?! It is like the defense lawyer turned into a prosecutor.

Yet oddly enough, throughout the entire year, not only on Yom Kippur, the very physical results of the golden calf – the shattered tablets – were situated right there in the holy of holies, a constant reminder of our lowest moment, seemingly the worst prosecuting evidence against the Jewish people. The purpose of the Ark is to atone for the people; why would you place there an incessant reminder of their guilt and disgrace?

The Talmudic commentators explain:

The broken Tablets, and the act of breaking them, are precious to G-d, for if He would have been upset that they were broken, He would not have said to place them in the Ark in the Holy of Holies. A prosecutor does not become the defender.

There is a fascinating Midrash:

Moshe was distressed for having broken the Tablets. G-d said to him, “Do not be pained that you broke the first set of Tablets. For the first one contained only the Ten Commandments, while within the second set of Tablets, I am giving you the entire body of Torah wisdom—Halakhot, Midrash, and Aggadah.

This seems absurd. The Jews commit this gravest of sins, Moses breaks the tablets, and then he feels bad. G-d says: Actually, this was a job done well! The first tablets were missing some serious parts of the Torah; by destroying them, and getting the new tablets, you are getting a much better deal.

Strange or what? It seems like the breaking of the tablets was the best thing that could have ever happened for the Jewish people! Without it, they could not receive the full Torah.

The Rebbe shared a most profound and extraordinary perspective. Its application to our lives today is transformative.

The great Chassidic master, The Rebbe of Kotzk, once said: “There is nothing as black as a white lie and nothing more whole than a broken heart.”

The prerequisite for all real wisdom, growth, and discovery is a sense of absolute humility.

Say I am struggling with my relationship with my children, my spouse, or a sibling. “My wife can’t tolerate it when I relax.” “My kids are just selfish and spoiled and despise me even when I give them everything.”

What needs to happen? I need to create an open space for a new kind of awareness. But how? My defensive walls are tall, dense, and fortified; I have erected them many years ago and each month I add another layer to the concrete. For me to become whole again, to discover my true inner wholeness, there is only one way: The walls need to be breached. “There is nothing as whole as a broken heart.”

Or as Leonard Cohen put it:

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

This is true with all wisdom and of course the source of all wisdom—the Torah. If there is no crack, the light gets blocked. If all my “walls” are not broken down, I remain closed to anything beyond me, and certainly to infinity.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing,” said one of the great Jewish thinkers. “The ultimate knowledge is the knowledge that I do not know.”

A heart that is whole is broken—it’s a fragment of its true self, an insignificant small creature in the presence of infinity. But a broken heart, a heart that knows it is small and broken, is open to the awesome and endless wholeness of life.  

A simple folk tale relates this mystical idea in a beautiful image: A water carrier had two large pots, each hung on an end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots was perfect and sound, while the other pot was cracked and leaked, arriving only half full at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house.

For a full two years, this went on daily. The perfect pot was naturally proud of itself and its superior water-carrying capability. But the leaking pot felt miserable and dejected, and one day by the stream it spoke to the water bearer: “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you.” “Why?” asked the water bearer. “What are you ashamed of?” “Look at me!  I am defective!” the pot said. “I have ONE JOB. But with this crack in my side, I’m only able to deliver half my load at best.”

The water bearer smiled and said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want to show you something.” He pointed to the well-worn path they took each day, and for the first time, the pot stopped looking inward and instead looked outside itself. Only then, did the pot notice a ribbon of color edging its side of the path? “I’ve always known you leaked,” the water carrier said. “And so, I planted seeds under you, and thanks to you, these flowers have been nourished to full bloom. They give us the most beautiful aroma.”

Had the water carrier seen the pot’s only purpose as carrying water up a hill—it would always feel deficient and would not understand that perhaps it had a whole other reason for being that its brokenness could bring a different and unique kind of beauty into this world.

People have asked me, why is it they feel the presence of G-d in recovery meetings more than anywhere else, sometimes even more than in synagogues.

The answer is simple: G-d can be felt wherever there is the absence of ego. When the walls of our egos come crashing down, the light of Hashem is allowed to enter our space.

Whenever you are in the presence of people whose lives and sense of haughtiness and arrogance have been shattered by their mistakes and terrible choices, there is a vulnerability in the room. You will feel G-d there. “Where is G-d?” Asked, again, the Kotzker Rebbe? “Wherever you let him in.”  

When I realize I am in the presence of G-d when I recognize that my I is part of the Divine thou, I can be both assertive and humble at the same time, both fully confident and fully humble, both with a whole heart and a broken heart, since both are true expressions of my oneness with G-d, the source and truth of all reality.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky