Blessing of the Broken - Midrash/Sources/Poetry Ex. 34:1-4

התחיל מצטער על שבור הלוחות. ואמר לו הקב"ה: אל תצטער בלוחות הראשונות, שלא היו אלא עשרת הדברות לבד, ובלוחות השניים אני נותן לך, שיהא בהם הלכות מדרש ואגדות, הה"ד (איוב יא): ויגד לך תעלומות חכמה כי כפלים לתושיה....

Moses started feeling sorry that he broken the tablets, God told him: Do not feel sorry about the first tablets, for they only contained the ten commandments, however in the second tablets I will give you, will also be included the laws, legends and stories - Halacha Midrash and Agadah, as it is written: (Job 11): ‘I will tell you hidden wisdom for it shall be double comforting’.

Midrash Shemot Rabbah 46:1

(דברים י, ב) אשר שברת ושמתם בארון תני רב יוסף מלמד שהלוחות ושברי לוחות מונחין בארון מכאן לתלמיד חכם ששכח תלמודו מחמת אונסו שאין נוהגין בו מנהג בזיון. אמר ריש לקיש פעמים שביטולה של תורה זהו יסודה דכתיב (שמות לד, א) אשר שברת אמר לו הקב"ה למשה יישר כחך ששברת.

“At that time God said to me: Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first…And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you shall put them in the Ark” (Deuteronomy 10:1–2)

Rav Yosef teaches: This verse teaches that both the tablets of the Covenant and the broken tablets are placed in the Ark.

One should learn from here that with regard to a Torah scholar who has forgotten their Torah knowledge due to circumstances beyond his control, one may not behave toward them in a degrading manner.

Resh Lakish taught: Sometimes, the destruction of Torah is its foundation.

as it is written: “which you broke” - the Holy One, Blessed be, said to Moses: Your strength is true [yishar koḥakha] for breaking the tablets

Babylonian Talmud Tractate Menachot 99B

בְשִׁבְעָה עָשָׂר בְּתַמּוּז נִשְׁתַּבְּרוּ הַלּוּחוֹת, וּבְי"ח שָׂרַף אֶת הָעֵגֶל וְדָן אֶת הַחוֹטְאִים, וּבְי"ט עָלָה שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר וַיְהִי מִמָּחֳרָת וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל הָעָם וְגוֹ' (שמות ל"ב), וְעָשָׂה שָׁם אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם וּבִקֵּשׁ רַחֲמִים, שֶׁנֶּ' וָאֶתְנַפַּל לִפְנֵי ה' וְגוֹ' (דברים ט'), וּבְרֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ אֱלוּל נֶאֱמַר לוֹ וְעָלִיתָ בַבֹּקֶר אֶל הַר סִינַי (שמות ל"ד), לְקַבֵּל לוּחוֹת הָאַחֲרוֹנוֹת – וְעָשָׂה שָׁם מ' יוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר בָּהֶם וְאָנֹכִי עָמַדְתִּי בָהָר כַּיָּמִים הָרִאשׁוֹנִים וְגוֹ' – מָה הָרִאשׁוֹנִים בְּרָצוֹן אַף הָאַחֲרוֹנִים בְּרָצוֹן, אֱמֹר מֵעַתָּה אֶמְצָעִיִּים הָיוּ בְכַעַס – בְּעֲשָׂרָה בְּתִשְׁרֵי נִתְרַצָּה הַקָּבָּ"ה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְלֵב שָׁלֵם, וְאָמַר לוֹ לְמֹשֶׁה סָלַחְתִּי, וּמָסַר לוֹ לוּחוֹת אַחֲרוֹנוֹת

On 7 Sivan, Moses went up onto the mountain . . . On 17 Tammuz, the tablets were broken. On the 18th, he burned the [Golden] Calf and judged the transgressors. On the 19th, he went up for forty days and pleaded for mercy. On 1 Elul, he went up to receive the second tablets, and was there for forty days. On 10 Tishrei, G‑d restored His goodwill with the Jewish people gladly and wholeheartedly, saying to Moses, “I have forgiven, as you ask,” and gave him the Second Tablets.

Rashi, Exodus 32:1 and 33:11

In Exodus, the first set of ten commandments (broken by Moses) is not buried but placed in the Aron Hakodesh (the holy ark) beside the new, unbroken tablets, which the Jews carry through the wilderness for forty years. I imagine the broken tablets leaning against the unbroken ones telling them secrets only broken things know. I imagine the weight of the broken tablets, and the heat, and the thirst, and the frustration. Why didn’t we just leave the broken tablets behind? What good is all this carrying?
To know your history is to carry all your pieces, whole and shattered, through the wilderness. And feel their weight.
Sabrina Orah Mark

The Zohar teaches that the human heart is the Ark. And it is known that in the Ark were stored both the Tablets and the Broken Tablets. Similarly, a person’s heart must be full of Torah… and similarly, a person’s heart must be a broken heart, a beaten heart, so that it can serve as a home for the Shekhina - the Divine Presence. For the Shekhina only dwells in broken vessels, which are the poor, whose heart is a broken and beaten heart. And whoever has a haughty heart propels the Shekhina from him, as it says “God detests those of haughty hearts”.
Reshit Hokhma, R. Eliyahu deVidash, Gate of Holiness 7; 16th C Kabbalistic Ethics

The broken tablets were also carried in an Ark.
In so far as they represented everything shattered
everything lost. They were the law of broken things.
The leaf torn from the stem in a storm. A cheek touched
in fondness once but now the name forgotten.
How they must have rumbled. Clattered on the way
even carried so carefully through the waste land.
How they must have rattled around until the pieces
broke into pieces. The edges softened
crumbling. Dust collected at the bottom of the ark
Ghosts of old letters. Old laws. In so far
as a law broken is still remembered.
These laws were obeyed.
And in so far as memory preserves the pattern of broken things
these bits of stone were preserved
through many journeys and ruined days
even, they say, into the promised land.

“The Broken Tablets” by Rodger Kamenetz

In the Jewish tradition there is a sense that everything gets moving as a result of a problem, a question. That’s how, if you talk about arousal, then that’s what arouses. As soon as you’ve got — even if you want to call it a complaint, even if it’s a rather querulous question, it’s still better than no question, because it pushes at the limits of the sort of silent conspiracy of the way things have to be. It forces some kind of attempt to make sense of things…And then there is all the amazing cargo of hidden stories that emerges in the midrashic traditions, and then there is the invitation to the participants to tell their own stories and to ask their own questions and to elaborate further. So there is this sense of infinite elaboration.
Aviva Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture