A person should take his difficult moments and build them so that they will be the ladder on which he will climb and rise/ShutterStock
"And they made an ark of dead maple, half its length, half its breadth, and half its height" (Ka, 10).
We find in the Holy Torah that the High Priest entered on Yom Kippur to serve and work in the Holy of Holies in white clothes and not gold clothes.
Sages teach us in Rosh Hashanah tractate (20:1) that the reason for this is because gold reminds us of the sin of the calf and it is forbidden for a cat to be an advocate - to mention the sin of the calf on Yom Kippur. That is why we hide the gold and do not use it, but only in white clothes that are a kind of symbol of Our surrender before the Creator. Just as, unlike in war, a person surrenders and raises a white flag that shows surrender, so on Yom Kippur we wear white clothes. In doing so, we look like the dead, who are clothed in white shrouds. We express our submission through the white clothes and avoid the use of gold that evokes cattery and reminds of The sin of the golden calf.
And here our holy sages tell us in tractate Baba Batra (10:2) that in the Tabernacle and in the Temple, for in the Holy of Holies was the ark containing the Tablets of the Covenant and next to it were also the fragments of the first tablets - which were broken by Moses on his way down from the mountain, after he saw the sin of the calf. We are told that when the Israelites went to war, they would take the ark containing the fragments of the tablets with them to the war, so that it would serve as a kind of amulet for protection.
Since this is how we had a very strong problem. If we said that the high priest wears white clothes on Yom Kippur and not gold clothes, so as not to arouse Katrog about the sin of the calf using the gold that reminds of the golden calf, how is it possible that the fragments of the tablets are taken to war?!
Aren't the first tablets broken because of the sin of the calf, we do take that to war, after all, war is a time of judgment, a time of danger, you can lose and die, disasters can happen, so why do you take broken tablets to war, you have to hide them because the fragments remind you of the sin of the calf .
If on Yom Kippur the gold is hidden so as not to provoke Katrog following the sin of the calf, it is even easier to hide the Tablets of the Covenant - the symbol of the breaking of the great sin of the calf at a time when we need an awakening of mercy.
How is it possible that it was precisely the broken tablets that inspired pity for the people of Israel in times of trouble?
And from this we must learn a great principle: even the difficult moments, the low and low moments of a person, he should take and remember them.
Elevate and strengthen them so that they will be the building for his soul to rise, rise and ascend.
The fragments of the tablets show us that we did not behave well, we fell and deteriorated, the tablets were broken and we suffered great destruction, a deep and great spiritual damage.
And so during the war, at a time when we need to reflect on repentance, at a time when we need to be close to God, this is the time when we take the fragments of the tablets to remind us of the glory we were in when giving the Torah at the time when "my soul went forth in his word" (Song of Songs 5:6) - when we arrived to the greatest things and we have lost the greatest virtues because of the stupidity that entered the people of Israel following the wickedness of the Arab Rav that swept some of them away after the calf in the 19th century. That is why we take the fragments of tablets that will remind us in the critical moments of the war, how much devotion, how holy and how high a Jew should be as a people God
A person has to take his difficult moments, his low moments, the moments of which he has hard and bitter memories, and build them so that they will be the ladder on which he will climb and ascend.
to rise from the difficult moments to great things and sublime things.
That is why we take to war the fragments of the tablets that came from the sin of the calf - that we remember the great moments from which we fell and deteriorated.
The moments when the Tablets of the Covenant were broken and G-d was angry with the people of Israel at that time and we were in a difficult time. The broken tablets remind us to take this lesson with us everywhere. In the difficult moments we will remember the lowly moments, from which we will learn to become stronger and rise to the great ranks.
Rabbi Pinto at the largest forgiveness event in the Jewish world that took place at Menorah Motvethim Hall/Shlomi Cohen
A person should remember the difficult moments, King David says (Psalms 9:9) "Dry my tears in your face" - he asks the Holy One, blessed be He: take my tear, the difficult moments that passed me by and keep them.
It is of great significance that the difficult moments will always remain in a person's heart and go with him everywhere, because they help him to remember to get closer to the Creator of the world, to become stronger and learn from them to do the opposite - to learn from bad to good to rise and ascend to holy and exalted degrees.
This is how God will help us.
David Berger, in collaboration with Shuba Israel
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