Some Implications of Shevirah:
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Beit Midrash: Brokenness and Wholeness
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What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?
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Tikkun Olam: Can We Repair a Broken World?
Talk It Out:
- What surprises you about this story?
- What are some of the things in this story that are broken?
- Is Moses caught by surprise when he sees the people worshipping the Golden Calf? Why do you think he reacts in this way?
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Rabbi Joseph learned: [The verse states: “the tablets] that you broke and put them” (Deuteronomy 10): [the juxtaposition of these words] teaches us that the tablets as well as the broken pieces of the tablets were placed in the Ark.” |
- Why were the broken tablets kept in the Ark?
- What was so valuable about them that required them to be kept in the Ark?
כדאמר להו ר' יהושע בן לוי לבניה...הזהרו בזקן ששכח תלמודו מחמת אונסו דאמרינן לוחות ושברי לוחות מונחות בארון
R. Joshua b. Levi said to his sons,...be careful [to honour] an old man, who has forgotten his learning involuntarily: for we say that both the whole tables of stone and the pieces of the broken tables were placed in the Ark."
Talk It Out
- How does the Talmud apply the case of the broken tablets to interpersonal relationships?
- How does it change your perspective when you look at someone as a “broken tablet” who still has an important place in the Ark? Why is that person worthy of honor?
- How can true inclusion of others who have different challenges, or appear different on the outside, enhance our campus, just as the inclusion of the broken tablets enhanced the Ark?
- What other important lessons can you draw from this piece of Talmud about inclusion?
Talk It Out:
- How can a broken heart be considered whole?
- How can something be “more whole” than another?
- Do you agree with the artist’s illustration of this idea? What do you think he meant to
convey? What would you do differently?
- How can embracing limitations help us?
- What are your "shakes"? How can you embrace your shakes/brokenness to become more whole, giving, creative and purposeful?
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
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.
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.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
Talk It Out
1. In the beginning of the song, Cohen sings of all the things that are wrong with the world, and the evil that people do to one another. But then he sings:
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
What does he mean by that? What can one person do about this broken world?
2. Cohen sings:
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.
What is important about the cracks in the world? What is the relationship between cracks and light?
3. Do you feel that there are things in the world that are seriously broken? What is your response to the cracks in everything?
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, 1772-1810
If you believe that it is possible to break, believe that it is possible to repair.
Talk It Out
- Do you agree with Rabbi Nachman? What is the relationship between breaking and repairing?
- Is it easier for you to believe that something can be broken, or that something can be repaired? Why do you think that is?
- Why does Rabbi Nachman use the word "believe"? Why doesn't he just say: if you can break, then you can repair? What is the role of belief in breaking, and repairing?
About Rebbe Nachman’s Chair, http://www.breslov.org/about-rebbe-nachmans-chair/
Shortly before Rosh Hashanah 1808, one of Rebbe Nachman’s followers, the shochet (ritual slaughterer) of Teplik, brought the Rebbe an exquisitely handcrafted chair. The Rebbe asked the shochet how long it had taken him to make the chair, and he replied that he had worked an hour a day for the previous six months. The Rebbe said, “Then for half a year, you spent an hour each day thinking of me.”
During the Cossack raids against the Jews in the Ukraine in the early 1920s, the chair was dismantled and cut into small pieces by Reb Tzvi Aryeh Lippel. He carried it from Tcherin to Kremenchug, some twenty miles (thirty-two kilometers) distant, running nearly the entire time. The chair was deposited with the Rosenfeld family of Kremenchug.
In 1936 Reb Moshe Ber Rosenfeld brought the chair to Jerusalem. In 1959 it was restored by craftsmen from the Israel Museum. In 1984 the chair was again refinished, by Katriel’s of Jerusalem, and placed on display in the Breslov synagogue in the Meah Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, where it can be seen today.
Talk It Out
- Why do you think it was so important to Rabbi Nachman's students to rebuild his chair? How does their rebuilding of his chair reflect Rabbi Nachman's philosophy?
- What are some broken things in the world around you that require repair?
- How can you take part in rebuilding those broken things?
- Have you ever thought about the social action work you do as holy repair work? If so, what is holy about it?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal A Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
“[T]he world is a broken place, literally a broken vessel, and our human task is to put those fragments together — to repair the brokenness.
There are certain questions that, once asked, seem obvious, yet it takes a special genius to formulate them for the first time. That was the case with Rabbi Luria [Rabbi Isaac ben Solomon Luria, 1534-72]. He posed a question, seemingly naïve in its simplicity, yet far-reaching in its consequences: If God exists, how does the world exist? If God is infinite, filling the world with his presence and every place with his glory, how is there room – physical or metaphysical – for anything else? Two things cannot coexist at a single time in a single space. Infinity must always crowd out finitude. How then is there a universe?
Luria’s radical answer was the doctrine known as tzimzum, a word that means contraction, self-effacement, withdrawal or concealment. God, he said, contracted into himself, to leave a space for the world. The universe that unfolded day by day during six phases of Genesis 1 was necessarily only the second stage of creation. The first was the act of divine self-effacement, a withdrawal into himself on the part of God. The Hebrew word for “universe”’ and “eternity”— olam— comes from the root l-m which also means “hiding” or “concealment”. Only when God is hidden can the universe exist.
To this must be added a second idea, shevirat ha-kelim (“breaking of the vessels”), a catastrophe theory of creation. God, in making the world, could not leave it void of His presence. He therefore sent forth rays of his light (strangely, this is not unlike the “background radiation” discovered by scientists in 1965 which eventually proved the Big Bang theory of the birth of the universe). The light was, however, too intense for its containers, which thereby broke, scattering fragments of light throughout the world. It is our task to gather up these fragments, wherever they are, and restore them to their proper place. Hence the third idea: tikkun, healing a fractured world. Each religious act we do has an effect on the ecology of creation. It restores something of lost harmony to the cosmos.”
Talk It Out
- According to this philosophy, what are we doing when we engage in actions that help repair the world?
- How is this idea of "tikkun olam" different from other contexts in which you have heard this phrase?
- How could thinking of yourself as restoring the light change the way you look at your acts of social justice and kindness? How could it impact how you respond in everyday situations?
My Friend Leonard Cohen: Darkness and Praise
by Leon Wieseltier (in the NYTimes)
“Dear Uncle Leonard,” the email from the boy began. “Did anything inspire you to create ‘Hallelujah’”? Later that same winter day the reply arrived: “I wanted to stand with those who clearly see G-d’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find the courage or the heart to praise it. You don’t always get what you want. You’re not always up for the challenge. But in this case — it was given to me. For which I am deeply grateful.”
...Leonard was, above all, in his music and in his poems and in his tone of life, the lyrical advocate of the finite and the flawed. As he wrote to my son, who was mercifully too young to understand, he was possessed by a lasting sensation of brokenness. He was broken, love was broken, the world was broken.
His work documents a long and successful war with despair. “I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair/ With a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.” The shattering of love has the effect of proliferating it...
He sought recognition for his fallenness, not rescue from it. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” He once told an interviewer that those words were the closest he came to a credo. The teaching could not be more plain: fix the crack, lose the light.
Leonard Cohen, whose lyrics are quoted above, passed away in the fall of 2016. This piece is a tribute by Leon Wieseltier, the American-Jewish writer, and speaks to the important role that brokenness played in inspiring Mr. Cohen's art. This dark side was core to who he was, but did not push him over the edge into despair. Have you ever experienced personal growth as a result of a moment of shevirah?
(א) וירא יעקב כי יש שבר במצרים - (תהלים קמו) אשרי שאל יעקב בעזרו שברו על ה' אלהיו וירא יעקב כי יש שבר במצרים (איוב יב) הן יהרוס ולא יבנה, משהרס הקדוש ברוך הוא עצתן של שבטים, עוד לא נבנה. (שם) יסגור על איש ולא יפתח, אלו עשרת השבטים, שהיו נכנסין ויוצאין למצרים, ולא היו יודעים שיוסף קיים, וליעקב נתגלה שיוסף קיים, שנאמר: וירא יעקב כי יש שבר במצרים. כי יש שבר, זה הרעב, כי יש סבר, זה השבע. כי יש שבר, ויוסף הורד מצרימה. כי יש סבר, ויוסף הוא השליט. כי יש שבר, ועבדום וענו. כי יש סבר, (בראשית טו): ואחרי כן יצאו ברכוש גדול:
Jacob saw that there were food rations (shever) to be had in Egpyt...But to Jacob it was revealed that Joseph was alive, as it is said: Jacob saw that there was shever in Egypt. There was shever (brokenness) - that is the famine; "there was sever (hope) - that is the plenty. "There was shever (brokenness) - "Joseph was taken down to Egypt"; there was sever (hope) - "Joseph became the ruler." There was shever (brokenness) - "They shall enslave and afflict them"; there was sever (hope) - "in the end they shall go free with great wealth.
(translation excerpted from Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg)
This Midrash, discussing the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, highlights the interplay between brokenness and hope that is a hallmark of this (and many other) Jewish stories. The Midrash plays on the words shever and sever (hope) to show that with each downfall, each blow to the Jewish people, something happened at the same time or shortly after to lift them up. This is essentially the story of the descent into Egypt and the exodus: The people were oppressed and enslaved, and only then could the full story of the Exodus occur. Where in life do you see this interplay between brokenness and hope? Where do you find glimmers of hope in the darkness?
באש ולא נבכה אמר להן לכך אני מצחק ומה לעוברי רצונו כך לעושי רצונו על אתת כמה וכמה שוב פעם אחת היו עולין לירושלים כיון שהגיעו להר הצופים קרעו בגדיהם כיון שהגיעו להר הבית ראו שועל שיצא מבית קדשי הקדשים התחילו הן בוכין ור"ע מצחק אמרו לו מפני מה אתה מצחק אמר להם מפני מה אתם בוכים אמרו לו מקום שכתוב בו (במדבר א, נא) והזר הקרב יומת ועכשיו שועלים הלכו בו ולא נבכה אמר להן לכך אני מצחק דכתיב (ישעיהו ח, ב) ואעידה לי עדים נאמנים את אוריה הכהן ואת זכריה בן יברכיהו וכי מה ענין אוריה אצל זכריה אוריה במקדש ראשון וזכריה במקדש שני אלא תלה הכתוב נבואתו של זכריה בנבואתו של אוריה באוריה כתיב (מיכה ג, יב) לכן בגללכם ציון שדה תחרש [וגו'] בזכריה כתיב (זכריה ח, ד) עוד ישבו זקנים וזקנות ברחובות ירושלם עד שלא נתקיימה נבואתו של אוריה הייתי מתיירא שלא תתקיים נבואתו של זכריה עכשיו שנתקיימה נבואתו של אוריה בידוע שנבואתו של זכריה מתקיימת בלשון הזה אמרו לו עקיבא ניחמתנו עקיבא ניחמתנו:
Another time, they (Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues) were ascending to Jerusalem. When they came to Mount Tzofim, they tore their clothes. When they reached the Temple Mount, they saw a fox emerging from the place of the Holy of Holies. They started to cry, but Rabbi Akiva was laughing. The other sages said to him, Why are you laughing? He said to them, Why do you weep? They replied: The place about which was written (Numbers 1,51) "and the non-priest that draws near shall be put to death", is now a den of foxes and we should not weep!?" He replied: "That is why I laugh...
It is written, (Micah 3,12) Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed down etc.". Regarding Zechariah it is written (Zechariah 8,4) "There shall yet old men and old women sit in the broad places of Jerusalem."
Until the prophecy of Uriah was fulfilled, I was afraid that the prophecy of Zechariah would likewise be unfulfilled. Now that the prophecy of Uriah was fulfilled, I know that the prophecy of Zechariah will be fulfilled. In this way they answered him: "Akiva, you have consoled us. Akiva, you have consoled us!
Rabbi Akiva and his friends are surveying the ruins of the Holy Temple, and whiel everyone else cries, Rabbi Akiva laughs. As the Talmud tells it, Akiva is a source of comfort for his peers because he can see signs of good things to come in the midst of the the ruins. While the others are distressed by so holy a site being ravaged, he reasons that since the prophecies of destruction came true, the prophecies about future rebuilding are also destined to be fulfilled. How might we incorporate into our lives the sense that when things go badly, it is a sign that new opportunities will follow? What practices might encourage us to think or act this way?
...דכתיב (במדבר כט, א) יום תרועה יהיה לכם ומתרגמינן יום יבבא יהא לכון וכתיב באימיה דסיסרא (שופטים ה, כח) בעד החלון נשקפה ותיבב אם סיסרא...
...As it is written (Numbers 29:1): "It shall be a day of teruah (shofar blowing) for you" and this is translated into Aramaic as "a day of wailing this shall be for you." And it is writte regarding the mother of Sisera (Judges 5:28): "The mother of Sisera looked out the window and wailed..."
We may think of the Shofar, the ram's horn blown on the High Holidays, as a symbol of strength or triumph. In fact, the Talmud reminds us that one of the sounds traditionally made with the Shofar is the t'ruah, a sound that is meant to resemble crying. The rabbis compare this crying to the sobbing of the mother of a man named Sisera, an army general who was killed in battle. In other words, the Shofar calls to God from a place of brokenness, of tears, as we move forward into the new year. Why do you think we include this kind of call in our High Holiday prayer services? Why is this kind of call powerful?
In this TEDx talk, teacher Ramy Mahmoud advocates for teaching students to move past fear and "fail forward" - that is, be willing and ready to fail, and able to go forward from there with a recognition of the challenges that need to be overcome to move forward. Allowing ourselves safe spaces in which to experience our imperfections can push us to use moments of failure to help us move on to success. Can you think of a powerful moment of failure that you've experienced in your own life? How might that moment have helped you to move on to what came next?