01 Aug EIKEV: THE CHIPS OF YOUR LIFE WILL MAKE YOU RICH WHY WOULD MOSHE MAKE MONEY FROM CARVING THE SECOND TABLETS

Moshe’s Wealth
In this week’s parsha,
Eikev, Moshe recounts
the dramatic tale of
how, following the
Revelation at Sinai,
G-d carved out Two
Luchot, engraved them with the Ten
Commandments, and presented them to
Moshe on Har Sinai. When Moshe descended
the mountain, however, he observed that
Bnei Yisroel had created a Golden Calf as an
idol. Moshe seized the Luchot and smashed
them before their eyes.
After a confrontation with G-d, Moshe
persuades Him, as it were, to forgive the
Jewish people for their betrayal. G-d instructs
Moshe to carve out a second pair of Luchot,
to replace the first smashed ones.
In Moshe’s own words:
At that time, the Lord said to me, “Hew for
yourself two stone tablets like the first ones
and come up to Me onto the mountain…”
The Sages, always sensitive to nuance,
focus on the word “for yourself” (“lecha”),
which seems superfluous and even
misleading, as though these Luchot were
being carved for Moshe himself. The verse
could have stated, “Carve two stone Luchot.”

What does it mean “Carve for yourself?”
The Talmud deduces from this that Moshe
was permitted to keep the chips of the second
Luchot, hewed from sapphire. As Moshe
hewed the stone into Two Luchot, all the left
over chips became his. Indeed, the word in
Hebrew for “hew,” pesal, also means the
leftover chips, the refuse (pesoles). This, says
the Talmud, transformed Moshe into a very
wealthy man.
Nedarim 38a: Moses became wealthy only
from the waste remaining from hewing the
Tablets of the Covenant, as it is stated: “Hew
for you two tablets of stone like the
first” (Shemos 34:1). “Hew for you” means
that their waste shall be yours. (As the tablets
were crafted from valuable gems, their
remnants were similarly valuable.)
Rashi: G-d showed Moshe a sapphire mine
from within his tent, and He said to him,
“The [sapphire] chips shall be yours,” and
from there Moshe became very wealthy.
This is a strange commentary. What is this,
a business deal? Moshe, you carve out the
second Luchot, and you get a cut! It seems
distasteful that Moshe is making money from
the sacred Luchot containing the Ten
Commandments! If G-d wanted Moshe to be
wealthy, He could have found many a way.

Besides, why did Moshe need the
money anyway? Living in the desert
for his entire life, receiving all of his
needs directly from G-d, did he really
need savings for a rainy day?
I will present two insights, from two
great spiritual masters. (The first
comes from the third Rebbe of Chabad,
the Tzemach Tzedek, Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson of
Lubavitch (1789-1866); the second—
from his grandson, the fifth
Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dov Ber
Schneerson (1860-1920), known as the
Rebbe Rashab.)
The Refuse, Not the Essence
Torah confers upon a human being a
richness and royalty. Some 3,400 years ago,
at the foot of a lone mountain, the Jewish
people received a gift that transformed their
life and destiny for eternity. The Torah
imbued Jewish life with the dignity of
purpose and the grandeur of the infinite. The
Torah saturates every moment with ultimate
meaning; it grants the Jewish heart, the
Jewish home, and the Jewish community —
rich and poor alike — a taste of heaven.
Yet the richness of Torah, the wealth that
comes along with a Torah life, is merely the
“pesoles,” the “refuse” of Torah, the
leftover “chips.” It does not capture the
essence of Torah. What is the essence of
Torah and its Mitzvos? They are the
expression of the Divine, the voice of
ultimate truth, transcending all material
and spiritual benefits of this world or next
world, for G-d transcends and precedes
all benefits. Torah is our opportunity to
touch the Divine in His essence, to reach
beyond all our limitations and unite with
G-d. What value is there to the richness
that Torah confers upon my life—
stability, meaning, purpose, consistency,
focus, inspiration, discipline, depth,
passion, family, faith, conviction, love,
etc.—to the truth that Torah allows me to
go beyond all of existence and touch the
Creator Himself?
The richness of Torah pales in
comparison the core truth of Torah itself.
The richness of Torah is how it benefits
me, in this world, or in the next. But what
value does that have relative to Torah
itself—the ultimate truth which
transcends even the highest actualization
and fulfillment of “I.”
The Chips of Your Life
We now come to the powerful insight by
the Rebbe Rashab.
The second Luchot differed drastically
from the first. As the Torah relates, the
first Luchot were created by G-d himself,
while the second were hewed by a human
being—Moshe. He is the one who carved
out the stone into Luchot; only then did
G-d inscribe on them the Ten

Commandments.
This reflected the difference within the
Jewish people before and after the creation
and worship of the Golden Calf: Initially,
Bnei Yisroel were heavenly, pristine, and
sacred, hence they were capable of receiving
Heavenly Tablets, crafted in Heaven. After
they tasted sin and endured spiritual failure,
they could only receive the second set of
Luchot which were man-made, and were
inferior to the first. In the process of failure
and rehabilitation, we confront our darkness,
weakness and vulnerability. We are not any
longer a clean slate of heaven; instead, we
have much “pesoles,” refuse, sediments, and
filth to deal with.
Comes the Torah and teaches us a powerful
lesson in life: It is from the “chips” of the
second Luchot that Moshe acquired his
greatest wealth. The first Luchot had no
“chips,” no refuse and waste. Heaven knows
not the pain of failure, filth of promiscuity,
the abyss of addiction. The Second Luchot, in
contrast, had many a chip. They represented
our confrontation with addiction, shame and
deception.
Moshe was a “wealthy” man. But his true
wealth came only from the second Luchot—
from the light and truth that is generated
when we confront our darkness and we
transform it into light. When we gaze at our
“chips” and we turn them into Divine Tablets.
It is from the confrontation with our inner
gravel and trauma, that we discover our
profoundest richness and our deepest truths.
It is when we can look at our proclivity to
depression, despair, and capitulation, and use
it as a springboard for awareness, that we
grow to discover an inner wealth not available
in the heavenly, pure and holy first Luchot
given by G-d himself to pure and innocent
people.
Despite the unparalleled richness of
Moshe’s soul, his deepest richness came from
dealing with the “pesoles,” with the refuse,
sediments and gravel of his people. This is
the wisdom and depth that emerges from
life’s “dirt” and grime, from amid struggle
and inner strife.
As growing human beings, we must never
run from our inner refuse, and from the refuse
we see in others. Like Moshe, our truest
wealth will come when we discover and
extract the sparks hidden in the “chips” of the
human.