Reader Yitzhak Cohen from Alonei HaBashan in the Golan Heights sent me a beautiful and uplifting thought:
Last Shabbat, on Simchat Torah, we finished reading the Torah – and it ends by recalling an event that is far from positive: the breaking of the Tablets of the Covenant.
Our commentators remind us that at the close of the Torah, we return specifically to the most painful event of all: the people built the Golden Calf and danced around it.
Moshe came down from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Covenant, saw this celebration of idol worship, saw the grave mistake, and shattered the Tablets. But why end the Torah precisely with the terrible sin of the Children of Israel and the sad shattering of the Ten Commandments?
Well, the Torah wants to tell us: Remember out of what terrible crisis you grew. See how low it is possible to fall, and how from the depths it is possible to overcome, to keep going, and to renew yourselves. Because immediately after the breaking of the Tablets, we continue on to the Book of Genesis, to the creation of the world. "In the beginning God created" – this is what will be read on Shabbat morning in every synagogue around the world. We begin a new page.
In our private lives and in our national life, there are crises. This week, it hardly even needs to be said. But right afterward, we wipe away the tears, and out of the fragments and the shards – "In the beginning God created."
Shabbat Shalom.
