The Fragile Relationship
Ekev, 5771
Shmuel Herzfeld
How many days was Moshe up on Mount Sinai for?
Parshat Ekev teaches that Moshe was up on Mount Sinai for a total of 120 days.
First, he goes up the mountain right after the Ten Commandments were given.
The verse states (9:9), “Va- eshev ba-har arbaim yom vearbaim lailah, lechem lo achalti umayim lo shatiti; And I dwelt on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread nor did I drink wine.”
Moshe comes down forty days later, on the seventeenth of Tamuz. On that day, he sees the children of Israel worshipping the Golden Calf and he immediately breaks the tablets.
The very next day—the 18th of Tamuz--Moshe goes up the mountain to plead with Hashem not to kill the Jewish people. We see this from a verse in our portion which states (9:18), “vaetnapal lifnei Hashem karishonah arbaim yom vearbaim lailah lechem lo achaltim umayim lo shatiti, and I fell down before God like the first time for forty days and forty nights I did not eat bread or drink water.” We know that this second set of forty days was also on a mountain top because of a verse in Exodus right after the story of the Golden Calf (32:30) which states: “And it was the next day and Moshe said you have sinned a great sin, and I will go up to Hashem and perhaps I will achieve atonement for your sin.”
After this second set of forty days Moshe again goes down from the mountain. The date is the 29th of Av. The next day is Rosh Chodesh Elul and this time Hashem tells him (10:1), “Pesal lechah shenei luchot avanim karishonim ve-aleh alai ha-harah ve-asitah lechah aron etz, engrave for yourself two tablets of stone just like the first ones and ascend to Me up the mountain and make for yourself an ark of wood.”
Again Moshe goes up and down the mountain but this time it is different. This time the forty days end on Yom Kippur and the Jewish people are forgiven for their sin, as Hashem says to Moshe, “salachti kidvarekhah, I have forgiven, according to your words.”
This is the chronology of the events as explained by Rashi. He writes that the first forty days were “beratzon” in a manner pleasing to Hashem, and the last forty days were also beratzon and with simcha, great joy. However, the middle forty days were “be-kaas”, in anger. Hashem did not even forgive the Jewish people until Moshe went up the mountain for the third time on Rosh Chodesh Elul.
Why is that the case? Why did Hashem keep Moshe up on the mountain for those middle forty days and not forgive the Jewish people?
It seems that the middle forty days was a necessary prelude to the final forgiveness of the last forty days. In the middle forty days, Hashem was still angry with the Jewish people. He had decided not to kill them, but still He had not yet decided to forgive them. It was only after He decided not to kill them that He could totally forgive them.
Before He could forgive, He had to decide not to kill.
Obviously, God could have forgiven instantly, but through His behavior He was teaching us a very important lesson; in order to develop a positive relationship one needs to work very hard over an extended period of time. We can’t just instantaneously expect a perfect relationship; it takes effort. Hashem wanted to teach us that we just can’t transition into a perfect relationship of joy with God –especially if we are coming from a place with Him of real anger and disappointment. A relationship of pure joy takes time and effort.
The Tanach uses different metaphors to help us understand our relationship with God. But perhaps the most powerful imagery in the Bible of an intimate relationship with God is the spousal relationship.
The metaphor of spousal love is often the imagery that the Tanach invokes in order to describe our passionate relationship with God.
I feel like I have some insight into spousal love since Rhanni and I just celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. For these fifteen years I am profoundly grateful to Hashem for this wonderful blessing.
The Torah way of life views marriage as something greater than a mere union of a man and a woman. Marriage is such an important relationship that it is understood as a shared spiritual destiny and is seen as the symbol of how God relates to the Jewish people. When we obey God and listen to him we are considered His beloved. And when we disobey Him we are considered harlots.
And a relationship in marriage is like a relationship with God in that we can’t just snap our fingers and achieve a beautiful relationship with God or with our spouse. It takes time and effort.
By Jewish law, marriage is intentionally divided into two ceremonies, which in the time of the Mishnah were often a year apart. First there was an erusin, a betrothal which bound the man and the woman to each other but did not permit them to live as husband and wife, and only after that was the nisuin, the marriage canopy, which permitted them to live together as husband and wife. Even today we retain both of these parts of the ceremony and we don’t go straight to the nissuin. There needs to be an erusin, followed by a formal break (usually the reading of the Ketubah), and only then the nisuin. This underscores the idea that spousal love requires time to develop and grow.
So our relationship with God is like a spousal relationship in this crucial aspect: it takes time to develop and grow; the more effort and time we put into it, the greater the relationship will be.
But there is another way in which our relationship with our spouse is like our relationship with God. This way is a little less cheerful.
First, let’s return to Parshat Ekev. Moshe is told when he goes up the mountain for the third time to bring him with tablets of stone for Hashem to engrave upon them the second set of Ten Commandments and he is also commanded to make an ark of wood, an aron etz.
This wooden ark requires an explanation. We know that ultimately the tablets would be housed in an ark, but that ark would be made of gold and wood, and not just wood. Furthermore, that ark would be made by Bezalel, the chief artisan of the Mishkan, and not by Moshe.
For this reason, Rashi adopts the interpretation that the wooden ark that Moshe made was in addition to a second ark that Bezalel would make which would ultimately hold the second set of luchot in the Holy of Holies in the Mishkan.
So if the second ark is the one that will eventually hold the luchot, what is going to happen with this ark? Rashi explains that this ark would be the ark that went into battle with the Jewish people when they fought their wars. And what would be contained in this ark? The answer is that it would hold the broken set of tablets, as the Midrash says, shivrei haluchot hayu sham. (Cited in Ramban, 10:1.)
What is the reason that the wooden ark—or this second ark—containing the broken tablets was the ark that was chosen to go into battle with the Jewish people?
The reason for this is that when we go into battle we are often confident and even over-confident. We think we are strong—stronger than our enemies; we think we are righteous, much more virtuous than our hated enemies. So we are being reminded as we march out to war that we are not as strong as we think we are and we are not as righteous as we think we are. We look at the broken tablets in the ark and we remember how we once sinned with the Golden Calf and how our entire people were almost wiped out on that one day on the seventeenth of Tamuz, and we remember our sins. And when we do that we remember not to be over-confident. We remember to serve God properly and to invest more time and effort in our battle and our mission.
The lesson of the broken tablets coming out to battle with us is that we live a fragile existence and we should not be overconfident.
Of course, this is not just true about going out to an actual battle but it is true for all the battles we face in our life. We must always have a picture of the broken tablets in mind.
And it is not just true of “battles” it is true really of missions that we have; things we work for our whole life can never be taken for granted. They are all fragile.
Here too we see the metaphor of a marriage. Marriage is an amazing relationship; it is so passionate and enriching and beautiful, but it is fragile.
It is fragile for two reasons.
First no matter how many years a couple is together a marriage can always be severed, and can end in divorce. A marriage by its very nature is fragile.
And second a marriage is naturally fragile. The normal order of the world is that a marriage relationship will end. When a spouse dies, the marriage is severed. Unlike other faiths, we don’t believe you remain married after a death.
A marriage is different than a sibling relationship or a parent-child relationship. Those relationships will always endure beyond fights or deaths. A parent who doesn’t talk with their child is still their parent. But a spousal relationship can be terminated. It is naturally fragile.
Indeed, the Midrash even compares the tablets that Moshe broke to the ripping up of a Ketubah in order to terminate a marriage. (Midrash Shemot Rabah 43:1.)
This is precisely why we always need to remember the broken set of tablets: to remind us to always work on our relationships, on improving them and strengthening them.
Our relationship with God is a metaphor for our relationship with our spouse and on a lesser level with all our significant inter-personal relationships. Our relationships are fragile and they need to be strengthened at all times. We must constantly work to improve them or else we run the risk of them disintegrating in a moment.
And while it is true it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to build a powerful and meaningful relationship, it is also true that they can end in a moment. Moshe spent forty days on the mountain, but it only took him a second to break the tablets.
This is the time of the year to start recognizing that we must improve our always fragile relationship with God. It can take an entire year to build up that relationship but we can destroy it in a second. So we must always be vigilant and guard the relationship closely.
Next Shabbat we will bench Rosh Chodesh Elul, which is the first step in marking our path towards Yom Kippur. Historically, Rosh Chodesh Elul was the first day of Moshe’s final forty days up the mountain. It was the final push towards atonement for our people by means of a pure cleaving to God.
Our rabbis tell us that the month of Elul is short for ani ledodi udodi li, I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. Elul is a time to remind ourselves to set aside time and improve all our relationships so that the broken pieces of fragility can become even stronger and stronger. This Elul let us improve all our relationships—our relationships with each other, our relationship with our spouse, and most importantly (for it is at the core of all our relationships) our relationship with God.
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