By Shlomo Riskin

“When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.” (Ex. 34:29)

What is the significance of the dazzling radiance of Moses’ face and why did it not attain this shining glow until he received the second tablets on Yom Kippur? And, perhaps the most difficult question of all, why did Moses break the first tablets? Yes, he was bitterly disappointed, perhaps even angry, at the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf only 40 days after God’s first revelation on Shavuot; however, these tablets were  “the work of God and they were the writing of God.” (Ex. 32:16) How could the holiest human being take the holiest object on earth and smash it to smithereens? Was he not adding to Israel’s sin?

My revered teacher, Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik ztz”l, taught that Moses emerges from our biblical portion of Ki Tisa not only as the greatest prophet of the generations but also as Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses the teacher and master of all the generations. This unique transformation took place on Yom Kippur; it is the sobriquet of Rebbe that occasions the rays of splendor which shone forth from his countenance (see Rabbi Avishai David, Darosh Darash Yosef, p. 188 ff).

The midrash on the first verse of the Book of Leviticus – “And (God) called out to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting” – provokes a remarkable insight. The biblical word for “called out” in this text is “vayiker,” a word which suggests a mere chance encounter rather than an actual summoning or calling out of the Divine (vayikra); indeed, our Masoretic text places a small aleph at the end of the word. The midrash explains that it was Moses’ modesty which insisted upon an almost accidental meeting rather than a direct summons. However, when God completed the writing down of the Five Books, there was a small amount of ink left over from that small letter aleph; the Almighty lovingly placed the overage of sacred ink on Moses’ forehead, which accounts for the glorious splendor which emanated from his face.

Allow me to add to this midrash on the basis of the teaching of Rabbi Soloveitchik. The essence of the second tablets included Torah She-be’al Peh, the Oral Law, the human input of the great Torah Sages throughout the generations that had been absent from the first tablets. Hence, chapter 34 of our biblical portion opens with God’s command to Moses, “Hew for yourself two stone tablets.” The first tablets were hewn by God and the commandments were engraved by God, whereas the second tablets were hewn by the human being Moses and the commands were engraved by him. The chapter concludes: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Write for yourself these words for on the basis of these words [the Oral Law, the hermeneutic principles and the interpretations of the rabbis of each generation] have I established an [eternal] covenant with Israel’” (Ex. 34:27).

Rabbi Soloveitchik maintains that during the 40 days from Rosh Hodesh Elul to Yom Kippur, Moses re-learned the 613 commandments with the many possibilities of the Oral Law. Moses’ active intellect became the “receiver” for the active intellect of the Divine, having received all of the manifold potential possibilities of the future developments of Torah throughout the generations. This is the meaning of the Talmudic adage that “Every authentic scholar (“talmid vatik”) who presents a novel teaching is merely recycling Torah from Sinai” (Midrash Vayikra Rabba 22.) In this manner, Moses’ personality became totally identified and intertwined with Torah, a sacred combination of the Divine words and the interpretations of Moses. Moses became a living Sefer Torah, a “ministering vessel” (kli sharet) which can never lose its sanctity.

The Beit Halevi (Rav Yosef Dov Baer Halevi Soloveitchik, the great grandfather of my teacher) maintains that the special radiance which emanated from Moses’ countenance originated from the concentrated sanctity of Moses’ identity with the many aspects of the Oral Torah which his own generation was not yet ready to hear, but which Moses kept within himself, for later generations. Whenever the inner world of the individual is more than it appears to be on the surface, that inner radiance becomes increasingly pronounced and externally manifest. Moses’ radiant glow was Oral Torah, something not at all germane to the First Tablets containing only the Written Law.

Why did Moses break the first tablets? Moses understood that there was a desperate need for a second set of tablets, born of God’s consummate love and unconditional forgiveness, with an Oral Law which would empower the nation to be God’s partners in the developing Torah. But God had threatened to destroy the nation! Moses breaks the first tablets as a message to God: just as the tablets are considered to be “ministering vessels” which never lose their sanctity, even if broken, so are the Jewish people, Knesset Yisrael, teachers and students of Torah, “ministering vessels,” which will never lose their sanctity, even if God attempts to break them! The Jewish nation, repositories of the oral teachings, are heirs to the eternal sanctity of Moses their rebbe.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone and chief rabbi of Efrat, Israel.