August 31, 2024
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Re’eh
How Do We Keep Clean and Pristine Things, Clean and Pristine?
August 31, 2024 — 27 Av 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I have a question for you this morning. How do we keep clean and pristine things clean and pristine?
Imagine that in your home, in your living room, you have a sofa. The sofa is clean and pristine. The sofa is white. How do you keep your white sofa white? How do you think about inviting a family for dinner that has, say, a four-child old child? Let’s further stipulate that that four-year old child loves chocolate and has chocolaty fingers. How do you think about the prospect of those chocolaty fingers encountering your formerly clean and pristine white sofa?
This is not only a practical question. It is also very much a philosophical question. How we think about keeping the white sofa white is prismatic of how we live our lives, and how we think about mess in our lives. There are basically two schools of thought.
How many of you grew up in homes, your parents’ or grandparents’ or great grandparents’ home, where there was a white sofa that was strictly off limits? You just didn’t sit on it. My Bubbe, may she rest in peace, was that way. In fact, my Bubbe offered two levels of protection to keep her white sofa white. One, no one was allowed in the living room. The living room was not for living. The living room was a museum to be seen but not entered. Two, just in case, my Bubbe put thick, crinkly, uncomfortable plastic all over sofas and chairs in the living room in the unlikely event that a human being, with their chocolaty fingers, would try to sit on said furniture. That is one move—white sofa off limits.
The other move is best illustrated by a museum in Haifa called the Hecht Museum which houses truly priceless historical relics, and which has a very definite philosophy. These relics are not placed behind glass or cordoned off behind barriers. Rather, the Director of the Museum, Dr. Inbal Rivlin, asserts that there is a “special charm” to placing irreplaceable historical objects in spaces that allow today’s visitors to be as close to these objects as people were in ancient times. But what about the four-year old child?
Well, this past Thursday, an ancient relic and a four-year old child had an interesting encounter. The relic was an earthenware jar that was 3,500 years old. Experts date the jar to 2200 to 1500 before the common era. King David reigned about the year 1000 before the common era. In other words, this jar was hundreds of years older than King David. Anyway, when you walk into the Hecht Museum in Haifa, there it is, this ancient jar, right inside the entrance to the museum, resting on a thin metal stand, totally exposed, totally unprotected.
That is when the four-year old and his parents walked in. This four-year old did not have chocolaty fingers. Rather, this four-year old had curiosity—splendid curiosity. This four-year old wondered: what is inside this cool jar? And since the jar was not behind a case, this four-year old was able to give expression to his curiosity, indeed to satisfy his curiosity, by putting his hands on the 3,500 year old jar that was hundreds of years older than King David, and seeing if anything was inside. As you might imagine, the jar tipped, it fell, it broke into shattered pieces—which became an immediate, international news story.
Imagine if you were this four-year old’s parents. Even worse, if you were this four-year old’s grandparents. How do you even begin to process this shattering event?
His father Alex gave an interview that was reported in many newspapers.
My initial reaction was denial. I couldn’t believe it was my son who did it.
At first I was in shock. Then I felt a bit angry with him.
Their son began to cry. And the parents went to security, owned up to what they had done, and asked museum personnel to come and inspect the damage.
So how do we keep clean and pristine things clean and pristine? Our tradition has a definite point of view on this question. It turns out that the Hecht Museum in Haifa is not only deeply Israeli. It is also deeply Jewish. Deeply connected to Jewish values.
The most sacred thing ever was the Ten Commandments. God created it. It contained God’s words. But life is a contact sport. To live is to encounter mess. When Moses comes down the mountain with these clean and pristine Ten Commandments written by God, he sees the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf. He famously hurls the tablets, and they shatter.
Two things happen next. The Torah reports that Moses creates a second set of tablets. And the Talmud reports that the shattered pieces of the first tablets were gathered together, and that both the whole set of the second tablets, and the shattered pieces of the first tablets, were stored together in the aron kodesh, the ark of the covenant, and both sets accompanied the Israelites through their wilderness wanderings.
The lesson here is just so important. What is most prized, what is most holy, is not a thing. What is most prized, what is most holy, is a quality. The quality of resilience. The quality of learning from what broke and not doing it again. The quality of keeping on keeping on when things are broken.
When I was at the Seminary in the 90s, my professor of theology, Neil Gillman, used just this teaching about the shattered Ten Commandments to name his big book on Jewish philosophy. He called it Sacred Fragments. It wasn’t just the tablets that broke and had to be reconstituted, Rabbi Gillman argued. It was Judaism as a whole, after the trauma of the Holocaust, after the miracle of Israel’s creation, Judaism itself went through a shattering and now needs to be mended and repaired. And of course, in our own time, Israel itself after October 7 is likely in need of another mending and repair.
Which leads back to the Hecht Museum. In the wake of the shattering of this 3,500-year-old jar, the museum’s Director, Inbal Rivlin, said this:
The museum is not a mausoleum but a living place, open to families and
accessible. We are appealing to parents. Don’t be afraid. Things like this
happen. We will fix the jar and put it back.
In fact, the museum specially invited the parents and the four-year old back to the museum to, in Dr. Rivlin’s words, “sweeten” their museum experience, so that their lasting memory will not be that the child broke the jar. Their lasting memory will be that parents and the child came back after he broke the jar to see the jar restored, and to enjoy the many other ancient delights in the museum.
How do we keep clean and pristine things clean and pristine? The answer is we can’t. The answer is we don’t. The answer is we don’t get thrown off by the fact that we can’t and that we don’t.
That’s why the museum will continue to keep their ancient relics available for close inspection.
That’s why the family will come back to see the jar restored.
That’s why the first and second set of tablets were carried in the ark of the covenant.
That’s why the end of every Jewish wedding is the groom shattering the glass, and the couple, in the wake of that shattering, kissing, hugging, and moving forward together.
When the glass shatters—and it does, and it will—when the white sofa gets stained—and it does, and it will—we fix it. We mend it. We pick up. We move on. Life is a contact sport. Shabbat shalom.