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post-Shavuot thought

by Ozer Bergman
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Shavuos night our “Rabbi Nachman’s Thursday Night Chaburah” met, but instead of continuing in Sichos HaRan (aka “Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom”), we talked about the Luchot, the two tablets on which were engraved the Ten Commandments. We compared the opinions of the Midrash (Shir HaShirim Rabah 5:14:1) and the holy Zohar (2:84a) concerning:

the material from the Luchot were made (sanpironin/saphire, tal-elyon [supernal dew from the mind of Atika kadisha], The Firmament);

the nature of the engraving (black fire, black and white fire, through and through, etc.);

and the number of times the Commandments were engraved on the Luchot: one, two, four or eight times. There’s also an opinion that the entire Written and Oral Torah was engraved on the Luchot.

About the number (two) and size of the Luchot, there is no disagreement. (That might be another miracle!) They were 6×6 *tefachim* and one *tefach* thick (between 18 and 21 inches square, 3-3.5 inches thick/ approximately half a meter square, 0.83 meter thick).

On Shabbos, as I was engaged in hitbodedut, I recalled the verse in Mishlei: “Write them on the tablets of your heart” (Proverbs 3:3). Our hearts are no less precious, no less tenderly treated by God and no less receptive to the holiness and Divine wisdom that He wants to treat us to, than the Luchot that Moshe Rabbeinu received. What’s the way for us to write words of Torah on our inner “Luchot”? To speak to our hearts honest words of true fire, passion and love for God, in black&white, discipline and inspiration, every day.

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