On today’s daf, following a discussion about the most pleasing size for a Torah scroll, the Gemara turns to the measurements for the ark in which those scrolls are typically placed. The rabbis use the Ark of the Covenant that the Israelites carried throughout the wilderness as a model. A beraita (early rabbinic text) gives the physical dimensions:
With regard to the Ark of the Covenant that Moses fashioned, its length was two and one-half cubits, its width was one and one-half cubits, and its height was one and one-half cubits (see Exodus 25:10), the cubit used for these measurements being six handbreadths.
Taking a handbreadth to be four inches, this translates to a box that is approximately five feet long and three feet wide and deep. The rabbis next take up three related matters: how large the tablets with the Ten Commandments were, the amount of leftover space in the Ark after the tablets were placed in there and what else might fit inside the Ark. After some calculations, the Gemara explains that in addition to the tablets, a Torah scroll written by Moses was placed in the Ark. There’s a problem, though, because this does not match the plain meaning of what we find in the Hebrew Bible:
As it is stated: “There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets of stone which Moses put there” (I Kings 8:9). What does “there was nothing in the Ark except” mean? This is an example of a restriction following a restriction, as both terms, “nothing” and “except,” indicate that the Ark was empty. And there is a hermeneutical principle that a restriction following a restriction serves only to amplify and include other matters. In this case, it serves to include a Torah scroll that lies in the Ark.
The rabbis read the combination of “nothing” and “except” as a sort of double negative, meaning that we can learn from the verse in the book of Kings that there was, in fact, something else — i.e., not nothing — inside the Ark. The rabbis assert that the Torah scroll Moses wrote is the other item that was placed in the Ark with the tablets.
Was there anything else in the Ark? Rabbi Yehuda notes:
It serves to include the broken pieces of the first set of tablets, which were also placed in the Ark.
At Sinai, when Moses discovered the golden calf that the Israelites constructed for worship during his absence, he was so incensed that he actually smashed the Ten Commandments at the foot of the mountain. He then had to go back up the mountain for a second set. According to this teaching, the Ark of the Covenant therefore housed not only that second, complete set (along with the Torah scroll Moses wrote), but also the original broken tablets.
Why would the Israelites schlep around the destroyed tablets? Why would they, and Moses, want to be reminded of the sin of the golden calf? In answer to this question, Reish Lakish explains:
What is the meaning of that which is stated: “The first tablets, which you broke?” (Deuteronomy 10:1–2) These words allude to the fact that God approved of Moses’ action, as if the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Moses: May your strength be straight because you broke them.
According to Reish Lakish, preserving the original, broken set of tablets in the Ark underscores God’s approval for Moses’ smashing of the tablets as an indication of Moses’ strength of character and leadership.
I think there is another reason. In his iconic song, “Anthem,” the late great Leonard Cohen crooned: “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
None of us, not even Moses, is perfect. Carrying the broken tablets along with the whole demonstrates that failure is sometimes inevitable. Perhaps the Israelites needed the reminder not just of what they did, but of how far they’d come.
What broken things do we carry, and how might we use them to reflect on how far we’ve come? Perhaps we can use the light that comes in through the cracks to see our way forward to a better future, too.
Read all of Bava Batra 14 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 9, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
