Yesterday's Tragedy in Pittsburgh

Yesterday's senseless tragedy reminds me that our Talmud tells us, “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said to his sons: Have care for an old person who has forgotten his/her learning. For we say: Both the whole tablets and the shattered tablets lie in the Ark. (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 8b)”

In the ark of the covenant, one of our holiest objects, we place right next to the second set of new, whole tablets that first set of tablets which are broken. Smashed to smithereens. The holy ark, itself kept inside the mishkan, the dwelling-place for G!d in the wilderness, carries both sets of tablets: a new, whole set and the original shattered set.

In our own lives, we carry within our hearts––which are not just the organs that move life-giving blood throughout our bodies, but the organ to which we have assigned our deepest emotions––both the wholeness of who we are and the brokenness of who we are, individually and communally. We carry the emotions of joy right beside our deepest moments of despair and loss of hope and our most profound disappointments.

This is what it means to be human, and Jewish. Our greatest hopes live right next to our darkest pain and grief. Every single one of us carries the whole right next to the shattered in our hearts.

We must be gentle with the times we are most whole, because this is not the entire story. The second set of whole tablets only came after the shattering.

And we must be gentle with the times we are fragmented and broken, for it is also not the entire story. After the shattering came the wholeness.

Today, we feel the shattered fragments bumping up against the beauty and wholeness and holiness of being Jews. Today, we feel that even more sharply than ever.

May we pray for and work for a world where differences are settled over a cup of coffee or tea, where firearms are not used for destruction, and where all people will be safe in their communities and houses of worship.

If there is anything I can do for anyone, I am only an email away.