Ki Taitzai 5771

The Second Luchot:

Rav Chaim Vital explains that everything in existence has a chiyut, meaning a physical part and a spiritual part. When a person eats the body gets pleasure from the from food and the neshama gets pleasure from the spiritual part of the food, the bracha. Just like everything else in the world, the luchot had/ have a chiyut as well. The physical part was the tablets and the spiritual part was the letters on the tablets.

When Hashem created the Luchot He places the Torah, the letters, onto the tablets. When Moshe came down with the luchot the letters flew back up to heaven. There is actually a midrash that says that on that day the angels were celebrating that they got the Torah back on that day. Then Moshe broke the luchot, the tablets with no letters on it.

But now all Moshe had to show was the broken shards of the tablets but since they were from Hashem Himself Moshe would not give them back. Now on Yom Kippur Moshe is told by Hashem that he must make the new set of luchot. But if Moshe designs it then it loses the very characteristics that made it so special, the fact the it was made by Hashem. Even though this set of luchot looked the same and in fact had the letters like the first luchot, allowing the Jews to get the Torah back, it still was not the same because it was designed by Moshe.

Even though if you were to put the two sets of luchot next to each other the two would look exactly the same the first set had a much a greater impact. There is a midrash that says that if someone learned Torah from the first set of luchot they would never forget it. But that was not true about the second set.

Now, remembering last week's dvar torah we remember that the Mishkan was supposed to be built by Hashem but was instead built by man. Now we can understand what the difference is. Even though both mishkans/ sets of luchot would look exactly the same the most important part is who built it. Something built by man can never last forever, but something built by Hashem can never truly be destroyed.

Good Shabbat and Happy Purim Katan!