Israeli society is currently in a great crisis vis-à-vis the Torah. We see a growing alienation from Jewish sources, and anger at anything that even smells of Judaism that is intensifying.
Tomorrow we will celebrate Shavuot, the holiday of giving the Torah. According to tradition, Shavuot represents the day on which Mount Sinai took place. The day the Ten Commandments were given.
The story of giving the Torah is a broken one. After 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain, Moses descends to the people, and at the greatest and most significant moment, breaks the Tablets of the Law. Maybe he's breaking them out of anger, maybe he's out of despair, maybe he doesn't think this revolution will succeed and that a nation of slaves will turn its skin. But what is certain is that precisely at this moment, for which he had been preparing for so long, everything was destroyed and shattered.
Jewish culture also sanctifies broken moments. The ones where we are not perfect, the ones where there is something that needs to be corrected. Those that still require quite a bit of work. From every such broken moment great growth eventually occurs.
According to Kabbalah, the process of creating the world began at the moment of breaking vessels, in great chaos. Thus the Midrash tells of the beginnings of Abraham, who broke his father's idols in order to establish a new faith. And so it is in the great moment of giving the Torah, when Moses breaks the tablets. Israeli society is now in a broken moment, a moment in which there is a sense of great chaos. A moment when great forces collide with each other and reality seems to be breaking.
And perhaps it is precisely now that we need and need this understanding, that it is precisely the moments of crisis and crisis that will emerge from which the new reality will emerge.
After the breaking, Moses goes to the repair work and sculpts the second panels. He puts a lot of effort into it. He writes letter after letter with his powers alone, carving them in stone. Step by step he manages to fix. And in the Ark of the Covenant that is placed in the Holy of Holies, according to tradition, are placed the two pairs of tablets - both broken and intact.
I think it's time to reorganize the holy of holies of Israeli society. Sit together and dare to sculpt and write the second panels, which will be the correction of the current fracture we find ourselves in. These boards will require hard work, but they are really ours.
In 20, Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote that in his opinion the Jewish community in Israel should rewrite the Ten Commandments. It will not be an action out of nothing, but an action based on the existing Ten Commandments. But along with connecting to the existing tradition, he explained, it's time to add a stature and write ten more commandments. He calls to "utter to the world again ten new commandments, based on the foundation of the old." Bialik doesn't give up on tradition, but he understands that it needs to step into the <>th century, change and shape itself with the reality that is happening around it.
As citizens of the State of Israel, we have become accustomed to Judaism being forced upon us, chosen for us. That there are those who hold it and keep it for us. Maybe it's time to decide what we choose to adopt from our Torah.
In order to prepare for receiving the Torah, there is a custom of repairing Shavuot night on the eve of the holiday. The origin of the custom is in the Book of Zohar. "Tikun" in Aramaic means "decoration", and on the night before receiving the Torah it is customary to sit and study the Torah, discover the ideas hidden within it and thus decorate and beautify it.
In the Shavuot correction of the year at the secular yeshiva of BINA, we will discover what we choose and choose to write in the new tables of Israeli society. We will ask ourselves, especially now, this year, what we choose to take from the Torah to the State of Israel today. What are the Ten Commandments that we choose and choose to write?
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