20 Aug EIKEV: NEVER BROKEN HOW A REBBE HELPED A SURVIVOR EMBRACE HIS FRAGMENTS

The Jewish
Perspective
Ammunition had
run out for a unit in
the Russian army, but
it was still under
fierce attack. “Take
out your bayonets,” said the corporal, “we

are going to engage the enemy in hand-to-
hand combat.”

“Please sir,” said Pvt. Finkelstein. “Show
me my man. Maybe he and I can reach some
kind of agreement.”
The Survivor
Let me share a story:
After the war, a Holocaust survivor came to
visit his one-time spiritual master, the famed
Rebbe of the Chassidic dynasty of Ger, Rabbi
Avraham Mordechai Alter. This broken Jew
had been deported to the death camps
together with his wife, children, relatives,
and the entire community. The man’s wife
and children were gassed, his relatives
exterminated and his entire community
wiped out. He emerged from the ashes a
lonely man in a vast world that had silently
swallowed the blood of six million Jews.
This Jew lost one more thing in the camps:
his G-d. After what he experienced in the
Nazi death camps, he could not continue

believing in a G-d who allowed Auschwitz.
Although after the war he made aliyah to
Eretz Yisroel (then known as Palestine), he
completely abandoned Jewish practice and
observance. Yet he missed his old Rebbe and
went to visit him in Tel Aviv. The Gerer
Rebbe himself lost many grandchildren and
relatives in the Holocaust. In addition, nearly
all of his 200,000 followers were wiped out
by the Germans. The Rebbe of Ger and his
immediate children managed to escape
Warsaw in 1940 and arrived in Eretz Yisroel
soon after.
Upon hearing the story of his disciple, the
Rebbe of Ger broke into tears. The man and
his Rebbe sat together mourning what they
had lost. After a long period of weeping, the
Gerer Rebbe wiped his tears and
communicated—in Yiddish—the following
idea.
“Before Your Eyes”
In his farewell address to his people, in
Parshat Eikev, Moshe recounts the moment
when he descended from Har Sinai with the
Luchos to present to the Jewish people:
“I descended from the mountain,” Moshe
recalls, “the mountain was still burning with
fire and the Shnei Luchot Habrit were in my
two hands. I immediately saw that you had
sinned to G-d, making a calf. You were so

quick to turn from the path that G-d had
prescribed. “I grasped the two tablets, and
threw them down from my two hands, and I
smashed them before your eyes.”
Moshe proceeds to relate how after much
toil he succeeded in “convincing” G-d to
forgive the Jewish people for their sin. He
then, as mentioned above, carved out a
second pair of Luchot to replace the first
ones. Though the two sets were identical in
content, containing the
Aseret Hadibrot, the second pair did not
possess the same Divine quality as the first
Luchot, which were “G-d’s handiwork and
G-d’s script.” The second tablets were
Moshe’s creation, endorsed by G-d, but not
G-d’s own creation.
Now, considering the well-known
meticulousness of each word in the Torah,
Moshe’s words “I smashed them before your
eyes” seem superfluous. Suppose Moshe had
turned around and broken the Luchot out of
view; would that in any way have lessened
the tragedy? Why did Moshe find it important
to emphasize that the breaking of the Luchot
occurred “before your eyes”?
Two Worlds
What Moshe was saying, explained the
Rebbe of Ger, was that “I smashed the tablets
only before your eyes.” The shattering of the
tablets occurred only before your eyes and
from your perception. In reality, though,
there exists a world in which the tablets
have never been broken.
What Moshe was attempting to
communicate, the Rebbe of Ger explained is
that what may seem to us as utter destruction
and chaos, does not always capture the
complete story. “I smashed them before
your eyes.” Before your eyes, there is
nothing but devastation. Yet, what in our
world bespeaks total disaster may, in a
different world, be wholesome.
“As difficult as it is to digest, the Gerer
Rebbe went on to say, “there is meaning in
the absurdness of history; there is dignity in
the valley of tears. G-d—the G-d who
transcends all human logic, understanding,
and imagination—was present in our broken
pieces.”
“As difficult as it is for you and me to
believe,” the Rebbe concluded, “I want you
to know that the extermination of our
families, our communities, and our people
occurred only ‘before our eyes.’ There
remains a world in which the Jewish people
are wholesome. Beneath the surface of our
perception, there exists a reality in which
every single Jew from Avraham till our
present day is alive, his or her soul absolutely
intact.”
“The day will come,” said the Rebbe of
Ger, “when that world will be exposed. G-d
will transform our perceptions and
paradigms. He will mend our broken tablets
and our broken nation. We will discover
how the tablets were really never broken
and the Jewish people were always

complete.”
These are words that could be effective only
when communicated by a man who
experienced the suffering of the war on his
own flesh. Pain is not an intellectual subject;
it is raw, personal, and real. When the Rebbe
of Ger spoke these words, he spoke them
with tears, with grief. He was not an objective
preacher of religion; together with the
Holocaust survivor, he walked through his
tunnel of darkness. Thus, his words gave
back to this broken Jew his soul, his faith,
and his courage.
Shattered Dreams
Notwithstanding the grand distinctions, the
above message applies to our lives as well.
Many of us once owned a set of sacred tablets
that at some point in our lives were destroyed.
It may have been the death of a mother or
father at a young age, bringing to an abrupt
end the nurturing and security a child so
desperately needs from parents. It may have
been any other form of pain, abuse, or loss
that you experienced during your life that
denied you the love, confidence, joy, and
optimism you once called your own. It may
be profound fear, shame, insecurity, guilt,
disappointment, mistrust, or other forms of
emotional trauma that afflict you, shattering
your inner sacred and Divine “tablets.”
Many of us create for ourselves a second
pair of “tablets” in order to substitute for the
first ones that were lost. But they are not
quite the same. The second set of “tablets”
lacks the magic and the innocence of the
original “tablets” that no longer exist. In the
depth of our hearts, we crave to reclaim
something of the wonder of the old tablets.
But it is to no avail: The clock of life never
turns back. Here lay the empowering
message of Moshe to his beloved people
before his own demise: There is a secret
world in which your first tablets were never
broken. Notwithstanding the abuse and pain
you experienced, each of you possesses a
core self that forever remains invincible,
pure, and sacred.
What is more, when your perception
expands, you might discover how your
shattered dreams may be part of your
individual path to wholesomeness.
Wholesomeness does not come in one shape;
for some, it comes in the form of a broken
heart. What is broken in one level of
perception may be wholesome in another.