We all have a certain episode in the Torah we struggle to understand, perhaps even to the extent that we just don’t get how it possibly occurred. For me, that is the story of the sin of the Golden Calf, the חטא העגל. The Jewish people had just witnessed the 10 plagues of Egypt with only the righteous proceeding to leave Egypt. Then those righteous witness the splitting of the sea, perhaps the greatest miracle where nature was totally overthrown. They are taken to the desert where Mon falls and all of their needs are taken care of. I am thinking that these people must have been closer to Hashem than any Jews in all of time. They then proceed to worship the Gold Calf? Really? I would like to think if I were there, that wouldn’t have happened to me; but it did happen to them. It happened to every Jewish male. How could it be?
I hate to keep you hanging, but I am going to delay sharing my approach to answering this until the week before Purim, where we can find a hint to understand this. For this week, I ask a different question about this episode. I understand that Moshe was angry with the Jewish people and that he would want to teach them a lesson, but why smash the luchot only to have to return to Har Sinai to get a second set? Why not just make this a positive teachable moment? Why not explain to the Jews where they went wrong?
The sefer Shaarei Yosher answers this based on a passage in the Gemara, that says there was a special quality in the first luchot; that had someone learned the words of those first luchot, he would remember it forever. There was no such thing as forgetting the Torah of the first luchot. When Moshe saw the Jews worshipping the calf, he understood that although it seemed great to be able to learn and remember the Torah forever, there was a very dangerous aspect to this as well. He understood it would be possible for a person to know the entire Torah by heart and yet be infused with evil. It would have been possible to be a perfect Torah scholar and yet not follow the ways of the Torah.
It is for this reason Moshe decided it was better to destroy the 1st luchot entirely and work to create a 2nd set that would be different. The original luchot were made by Hashem and thus had a potentially everlasting quality. But the 2nd luchot were made by Moshe in a way that could only last if certain conditions were met. We see the Torah describes Moshe creating the 2nd luchot as פסל לך שני לוחות אבנים, meaning Moshe had to make them himself. This is a message to each of us: We have to create our own Torah. We have to make our Torah and write Hashem’s name on it, meaning that learning Torah and accepting the Torah are one; both require accepting to do the mitzvoth unconditionally. In other words, if we do not accept to keep the torah and mitzvoth, then even our learning of the Torah will not last. Unlike the first luchot that had this eternal ability for a person to learn it and remember it forever, even if he didn’t keep the mitzvot, our second luchot require us to do both: learn Torah and accept to do all of the mitzvot as best as we can.
I believe this message is important for all of us. Unfortunately, there are many people who separate the learning of Torah from the observance of Torah. Moshe Rabeinu is teaching us that learning without doing is not only wrong, but it is better to smash that idea into pieces so we learn the correct Torah outlook of ללמוד ולעשות, learn to do.
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