It’s a familiar scene. Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments in his hands. “The Tablets were the work of God,” the Torah tells us, “the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the Tablets.”

But the tablets didn’t last. Moses came down from the mountain, saw the Golden Calf, and threw the tablets from his hand. The holiest objects in history were shattered.

At first, God was angry, but eventually He forgave. “Carve two tablets like the first ones” says God, “and I will write on them the words that were on the tablets you shattered.” The first tablets only lasted a moment. But the second tablets – the Torah that God and Moses created together – has lasted for millennia.

For thousands of years, Jews have been studyingTorah. And each time we study, we repeat that moment when God and Moses created Torah together. “When ten gather to study Torah,” the sages tell us, “God’s presence is among them.” And the Soloneme rebbe put it more dramatically:

Whenever we gather to study Torah, the Holy One sits opposite us. We quote a verse from the Torah, and we do our best to explain what it means to us. And then God quotes another verse and says, “This is what I think.”

This is God’s greatest gift. When we gather together and study Torah, the One who is beyond time and space sits with us, not as a ruler, not as a puppet master, but as a guide and a learner, gently helping us and offering one opinion among many.

The commandment to carve two stone tablets is given to everyone. Each of us must take the shards that lie before us – the rubble, perhaps, of past generations – and together with God, we must build something new. We must build the world as God would have it.

But we are never alone. Our communities are with us. And when we most need help, a still, small voice cries out from heaven, saying, “This is what I think.”

There are moments when we look at our lives and we ask, “How can I do this on my own? How can I build a better world?” But perhaps, wrote Rav Nachman, that very question is the beginning of wisdom:

We see the limits of our own knowledge, and we realize that the tablets were the work of Adonai. We look into the Torah, and we see our own limitations. And we begin to understand the wonder of God’s works. All of the insights and all of the understanding, and all of the interpretations, from the giving of the Torah until now are merely gifts from God.

. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה הַמְלַמֵּד תּוֹרָה לְעַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל

Blessed are You Adonai, sovereign of the universe, who teaches Torah
to His people Israel.