To understand more about how JSP uses this source sheet, see The Jewish Studio Project's Approach to Text Study.
שָׁבַר אֶת הַלּוּחוֹת, ... וּמְנָלַן דְּהִסְכִּים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עַל יָדוֹ? — שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אֲשֶׁר שִׁבַּרְתָּ״, וְאָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: יִישַׁר כֹּחֲךָ** שֶׁשִּׁבַּרְתָּ.
And he broke the tablets following the sin of the Golden Calf. ... And from where do we derive that the Holy One, Blessed be, agreed with his reasoning? As it is stated: “The first tablets which you broke [asher shibarta]” (Exodus 34:1), and Reish Lakish said: The word asher is an allusion to the phrase: May your strength be true [yishar koḥakha]** due to the fact that you broke the tablets.
** This text plays off the Hebrew word “asher” that God uses in Exodus in speaking to Moses about shattering the tablets and because of their close Hebrew spelling and phonetic similarity connects it to the word “yishar” and therefore the phrase “yishar koach" which means nice work! Good job! Way to go!
Study Questions:
-
After all that went into creating the tablets (40 days and nights!), why do you think God agreed with Moses breaking them?
-
Why do you think the sages wrote this midrash? What might they have wanted to teach?
-
Rashi, medieval Torah commentator extraordinaire, concludes his commentary on the entire Torah with this particular midrash. What reasons can you imagine for why he would want this midrash to be the very last thing we encounter as we conclude our reading of the Torah?
-
What is the relationship between creation and destruction in this text?
שברי לוחות שמונחים בארון
the broken pieces of the first set of tablets, which were placed in the Ark.
Study Questions:
-
Why might the broken pieces of the first tablets have been kept? What else do you imagine the Israelites could have done with those broken pieces?
-
Why might these pieces have been kept inside the ark, next to the second (in-tact) set of tablets?
-
What can we learn from this about creation and destruction?
(1) The word which came to Jeremiah from ADONAI: (2) “Go down to the house of a potter, and there I will impart My words to you.” (3) So I went down to the house of a potter, and found him working at the wheel. (4) And if the vessel he was making was spoiled, as happens to clay in the potter’s hands, he would make it into another vessel, such as the potter saw fit to make. (5) Then the word of ADONAI came to me:
Note: The word “yotzer” (יוצר) is translated here as potter. The literal meaning of “yotzer” is “creator” or “form-er.”
-
Where does God instruct Jeremiah to go? Why might God have chosen this particular place to speak to Jeremiah?
-
As described here, what is the relationship between creation and destruction for a potter? How, if it all, does this add to your understanding of why God would speak to Jeremiah in this particular place?
Dorothy Walters, “No Matter What You Know”
(in Estelle Frankel, The Wisdom of Not Knowing)
Reality is always
Soft clay
Ever shifting and changing
Its shape
Fire it
Into form, and at
The very moment you are
Hailing its final truth
It will break in your hands.
Study Questions:
-
What is the relationship between creation and destruction in this text?
-
How does this text speak to the other texts on this source sheet?
“Burning the Old Year,” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Study Question:
- How does this poem speak to our theme of creation and destruction?