Revolution for the hell of it

Published: August 15, 2007, 1:56 am

[Moses] hurled the tablets from his hands. Why did Moses break the tablets? And what did breaking them accomplish? Early readers asserted that Moses’ action agreed with the Divine intent, and that G-d acknowledged this to Moses, saying “More power to you that you broke them” [Talmud Shabbat 87a]. But we know the Sages also said that breaking an object in anger is tantamount to idol worship; and if they said such a thing with respect to breaking an ordinary object, how much more so would it be the case with tablets “inscribed by G-d’s finger”? I see the answer to the questions I have posed to be inherent in the statement of the early Sages that when Moses broke the tablets, the writing peeled off of them and the letters became ethereal. Whoever said that said quite a bit. For in creating the golden calf, our ancestors demonstrated that they had not yet reached a refined stage of faith, inasmuch as they could not imagine G-d as an elusive One

[ Full article ]

Blog link

Rating: 0

Comments