the law of broken things

A few years ago, on a sunny Fall morning in the midst of the pandemic, we gathered in the empty lot on 50th Street for a B’nei Mitzvah in the KT Sukkah. It was on that auspicious day that one of my greatest fears came true. At the end of the Torah service, the B’nei Mitzvah kid placed the Torah back in the ark and stepped away. I turned to face the kahal and had not noticed it was not fully secure. The Torah tipped forward and in seemingly slow motion fell to the ground and the wooden handles shattered. Everyone joining on Zoom had a close up shot of the Torah lying broken on the cement ground. My jaw dropped and I froze. A member gently approached and invited me to pick up the Torah. Which we did. We then invited the community to a collective 30 day fast, in which 30 of us each fasted for a day, as is the custom when the Torah touches the ground. 

First let me say, it was completely my fault. It is entirely my responsibility to spot a B’nei Mitzvah and ensure the Torah is put away properly. I do it every week and this is their first rodeo. It was a very intense, memorable and hopefully not too traumatic experience. 

For the past few years I have been living with the broken Torah in a portable ark in my office and using it for educational purposes. It has come with me to Torah School and protests in Washington D.C. I even carried this Torah for an entire day on the Pilgrimage for Peace. 

Recently I reached out to a Torah scribe to inquire about repairing this Torah. With a shameful tone I explained what had happened. To my surprise she responded rather light-heartedly, assuring me this happens all the time! Why else would we have a set of customs for how to respond and repair it?! 

Yesterday, a package arrived at the office. It was a new set of eitzim, wooden Torah rollers. We are preparing this spring to replace the broken eitzim with this new set. After years of planning, measuring and shopping for just the right replacement, how fitting that the second set of rollers would arrive this week, when we read Parasha Ki Tisa. The week in which we read about the two sets of tablets Moses brings down from Sinai. Infamously smashing the first set, only to journey back up the mountain for a second, whole set. 

A beloved midrash explains that the broken tablets journeyed in the mishkan along with the whole tablets. How else could it be? The first set was broken but it still had the teachings of the Holy Blessed One engraved upon them. They couldn’t be left behind. Even in our most ancient text, ritual objects are smashed to pieces, and the pieces are gathered up and carried forward. Apparently it happens all the time. Ki Tisa is not a story about what happened. It is a story about what always happens.

In the words of Roger Kamenetz, 
“The broken tablets were also carried in the ark. Insofar as they represented everything shattered, everything lost, they were the law of broken things…” 

As I contemplate the process of unstitching the parchment from the broken eitzim and rethreading the parchment to the new (very beautiful) eitzim, I am struck by how long it has taken me to do this. Healing and repair take time. It took us years to get the new eitzim, and in the meantime, we honored and continued to care for and use the broken ones (though not during services!).

I am also so grateful for the scribe’s reminder that things breaking are not a mistake or a problem. We need not fear it. It's inevitable. Our spiritual practices and sacred stories are meant to cultivate in us an ability to bear rupture and be with that which is broken. If it’s true for the Torah and the tablets, our tradition’s most sacred objects, then certainly it’s true for just about every aspect of our lives. We are broken and whole all at once. 

The truth is that I should have known this. Every time something breaks, my father is the first to shout, Mazal Tov! And my mother-in-law is always looking to make beautiful mosaics out of broken plates. But somehow it is this specific Torah that has taught me this lesson fully. For which I am so grateful to my B’nei Mitzvah student. Lest you hold this story with shame, know that you have been my teacher as much as my student. I hope we as a community will continue to carry the broken parts along with the whole in our ark, and our hearts. ​