Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, the parsha podcast where we dive deep into the verses to share new and unexpected insights, illuminating the parsha like you’ve never seen before.

Welcome back to Into the Verse. This is Ari Levinsohn, joined today by my colleague Daniel Loewenstein. Great to have you on, Daniel.

Daniel Loewenstein: Great to be here.

Ari: So, Daniel, today I want to talk to you about some stuff that really blew my mind when I first found it.

First, a quick recap of the parsha. Yitro gets its name from Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law who joins the Israelite camp and rearranges their legal system, but the real highlight of this week's parsha is the Revelation at Sinai. After three days of preparation, God came, descended on Mount Sinai in a thundery, fiery spectacle, and finally gives Bnei Yisrael the Ten Commandments, the Aseret HaDibrot.

And those Ten Commandments, they're later written down on the two tablets, the Luchot, which become an extremely important symbol in Judaism. The synagogue I was davening at this morning had a huge depiction of the two tablets with the Ten Commandments, right above the ark in the synagogue, front and center. I imagine, Daniel, your shul probably has some depiction of them, too?

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, if not like seven of them. Sure, yeah.

Ari: Right, so when you have that depiction of the Ten Commandments and the tablets in your shul, what do those look like?

Daniel: What do they look like? They're usually either rectangular or…

Ari: Shape-wise, right, they are some kind of rectangle - maybe they're rounded at the top, maybe they're flat - and then what's written on them?

Daniel: Usually, like, the first two or three words of each of the Ten Commandments; you know, five on one side, five on the other.

What If We’ve Been Depicting the 10 Commandments All Wrong? 

Ari: Right, the first five on one side, the second five on the other side. So, okay, why am I asking you all this? Well, what if I told you that every depiction you have ever seen of the Ten Commandments on these two tablets is totally wrong?

Daniel: I'd say that's a pretty bold claim to make, given the weight of all the history and tradition behind it. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that's going to need a lot of backing up.

Ari: Certainly, right, and it'd probably get me in a lot of trouble, too. 

Well, the other day, I was looking for that pasuk that says that the Ten Commandments were divided five and five on each tablet - only, I couldn't find it. It turns out that pasuk doesn't exist. Daniel, are you familiar with the Mandela Effect?

Daniel: Oh, I've definitely heard of it. As soon as you say it, I'm going to be like, oh, I know what that is, but it's not coming to me right now.

Ari: So it’s named after the fact that, somehow, there became this widespread memory that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 80’s. Somehow, a bunch of people just became convinced that this is what happened and that they remember this happening. But of course, that just didn't happen. He lived until 2013, and yet somehow people just are sure that they remember this being the case, and this became known as the Mandela Effect.

So, a really great example is that line from Star Wars that we all remember so well, when Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, “Luke, I am your father.”

Daniel: Right. Well, he never says it. He says, “I am your father,” but he doesn't say, “Luke, I am your father.” Yeah.

Ari: Right. So it felt like what's going on here is like this Mandela Effect, that I was sure that there was a pasuk that says there was written five and five on each of the two tablets. But it's not there at all, which led me to look around and see, well, what's the source of this? Where did we get this idea that we all know, that's on every shul, this depiction of the two tablets with the Ten Commandments, five on each side?

The Sages’ Description of the Two Tablets

So, that brought me to the Mechilta D’Rabbi Shimon, which is a collection of midrashim, and a similar version of this is quoted in a few different places.

So, it starts off: אלו הן עשר הדברות — These are the Ten Commandments. Basically, we know there are Ten Commandments because it says there are ten of them, but it's not so obvious exactly how to divide them. So here it is, setting the facts right. This is how you divide them: אנכי — I am Hashem, your God; לא יהיה — You shouldn't have any other gods; לא תשא; ;זכור etc, etc.

So it lists all the Ten Commandments, and then, Daniel, can you read what it says next?

Daniel: Yeah, it says: חמשה על לוח זה וחמשה על לוח זה דברי ר' חנינה בן גמליאל. Interesting.

So it says, “Fve written on this tablet and five written on that tablet, according to the opinion of Rabbi Chanina ben Gamliel,” which implies there's another opinion, which is the next thing that it says: וחכמים אומרין עשרה על לוח זה ועשרה על לוח זה.

Huh. So, the opinion of the Chachamim (the Sages) is that all ten were on each of them. I've never heard this before (Mechilta D’Rabbi Shimon 20).

Ari: Isn't that shocking?

Daniel: Yeah.

Ari: Every depiction I've ever seen is five and five, and yet the opinion of the Sages, the majority opinion, is that it was ten and ten, that all ten of the commandments were written on each of the two tablets.

Daniel: I’ve got to say, I was not expecting to see that. Very, very interesting. Okay.

Ari: And, you know, okay, there is an opinion that it was five and five, right, according to one Rabbi Chanina. So, you know, yesh al mi l’smoch (“there is upon whom to rely”). We don't have to go remodeling all of the shuls. But I couldn't get over the fact that it seems like the majority opinion of the Sages is that that's not what they looked like.

A Whole Bunch of Questions Emerge

Daniel: Definitely sharing the same sentiment that you're expressing. I'm also thinking through a bunch of questions. I mean, like, I guess mainly they're historical questions. Like, what happened to this opinion, and how did it become so incredibly non-mainstream that I've never even heard of it?

But I guess, also, I'm interested, textually, if there's some sort of, you know, textual route to this debate. Are they reading a verse differently? Is there some source that they're understanding in different ways? Yeah, definitely a lot of questions.

Ari: Right. I'm sure some of our listeners are better historians than you or I, and maybe have some idea of how this minority opinion ended up becoming so widespread, but we also have to ask the question of, what are they basing this opinion on? Where do they get this from? Is there anything that they're reading that makes them say this?

And then, if all ten are written on each of the two tablets, then why do we have these two identical tablets? What's the point of that? It's redundant.

Daniel: Oh, that's a much better question than the one I had.

Ari: Well, let's deal with your question first, though, because that is really important.

Where Does This Idea Come From?

So this debate between Rabbi Chanina and the Sages is actually quoted in a few different places in rabbinic literature, and in most of the other places where it's quoted, the Sages bring the following verse as their proof for why they believe that the Ten Commandments were written all ten on each tablet, and the verse they quote is Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 13.

This is Moses retelling the story of the Revelation experience at Sinai, and he says: וַיַּגֵּד לָכֶם אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה אֶתְכֶם לַעֲשׂוֹת עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים — God told you this covenant which He commanded you to do these ten things, וַיִּכְתְּבֵם עַל־שְׁנֵי לֻחוֹת אֲבָנִים — and he wrote them on the two stone tablets.

Daniel: Yeah, so it seems to be that they're reading something like, you know, it says: עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים — That they're the ten things, and then it just says, וַיִּכְתְּבֵם — he wrote those ten things, עַל־שְׁנֵי לֻחוֹת אֲבָנִים — on these two tablets.

So I guess they're just inferring, like, he wrote this thing on each of the tablets. You know, I understand how that's a viable read of the verse.

Ari: Yeah, it certainly seems viable. Although, you know, it's somewhat ambiguous as to what it means, how those ten were written onto the two tablets. And in fact, Rabbi Chanina actually quotes the exact same verse to support his opinion.

Daniel: Yup, that's ambiguity for you.

Ari: So the commentators on these rabbinic sources try to figure out, when each of them are quoting this verse to support their opinion, what are they reading into it? What are they noticing that they're trying to use to actually prove their point? Because the way that these drashot, these exegesis of Chazal (the Sages) usually work is they find some nuance, some extra word that doesn't need to be there that allows them to say what they're saying.

Daniel: Did the commentators point out something specific here about what makes the Chachamim have their approach?

Ari: Yeah, so the commentators actually have a few different theories as to what it might be. One theory is it's the combination of talking about saying the Ten Commandments and writing the Ten Commandments. Just as they were said all ten together, so too they were written all ten together on each one of the two tablets.

There's a totally different explanation that it's actually the words עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, “these ten things,” because really you could read the whole verse without those words. So they're somewhat superfluous in this verse, and maybe the words “these ten things” are coming to say that it was all ten things that were written on each one of the tablets.

Daniel: Those all sound like very, like, kind of classic midrash-style ways of interpreting a pasuk. It's not like, you know, you read it and you kind of just intuit it from a literary sense; like, “This is what it means.”

But, you know, it's just, like, kind of very carefully paying attention to extra words and that kind of stuff, which makes sense, but obviously there's that ambiguity.

The Gunpowder and Trigger Metaphor

Ari: Right, and it also feels like there's got to be something more here, because these all say the “how” of how they make this read.

Daniel: Right, but it doesn't talk about the why.

Ari: Exactly. It doesn't talk about the “why,” and I think the best way to approach it is what Rabbi Fohrman calls his “Gunpowder and Trigger” theory. Are you familiar with this?

Daniel: I don't think I'm familiar with this analogy.

Ari: So rather than explain it myself, I'm actually just going to let Rabbi Fohrman explain it. Here's a recording of him explaining this metaphor on a podcast.

Rabbi David Fohrman: My “Trigger and Gunpowder” theory: If you’re going to fire a gun, you need two things. You need to pull a trigger, but you also need gunpowder in the chamber.

In order for a midrash to be a midrash, you’ve got to have a trigger and you’ve got to have gunpowder in the chamber.

The trigger is the nominal diyuk (inference) which is happening in the text, which is an anomaly which Rashi or the Midrash is picking up on and becomes the basis for a d’rash.

Chazal (the Sages) would never say what they were saying without gunpowder. Gunpowder is that Chazal had a larger, 50,000-foot view of what was going on, and they were bothered with larger themes within the story.

Daniel: Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess what Rabbi Fohrman seems to be saying or arguing is that Chazal (the Sages) don't just make drashas to make drashas. When a midrash makes a point, it always has some sort of basis in the text for making its point, but its point is actually something larger than just the textual nuance picking up on it and its explanation.

There's some sort of larger, you know, philosophical or metaphysical point that it's making, and we shouldn't just assume that midrashim are just there to like, make interesting, casual observations that have no meaning to our lives.

Which I think fits with Rabbi Fohrman's larger view, which I think is a, is a really important perspective on Torah in general. It's not a literary book and it's not a history book - it's a guidebook. And so everything in there actually has some sort of actual, meaningful substance and bearing on our lives.

Ari: Yeah, exactly. So whatever anomaly that the Sages noticed in this verse in Devarim (Deuteronomy), that was just the trigger, but there had to be some gunpowder there, some deeper reason why they're saying all Ten Commandments are written on each one of the tablets.

What Is The Sages’ Gunpowder? 

So what is that deeper reason? They don't say. It's left for us to try to look for it. What jumped out to me is actually a word in the verse that they quoted, which is the word brit, covenant. This verse, it's describing the Ten Commandments as a covenant, and that's not the way I'm used to thinking about the Ten Commandments. But the more I looked into it, I realized the Torah actually seems to be pretty clear that that's what the Ten Commandments are.

In Exodus, chapter 19, verse 5, this is in the preparation for the Revelation at Sinai. It says:  וְעַתָּה אִם־שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ בְּקֹלִי — And now, if you listen to My voice,  וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת־בְּרִיתִי — and if you keep My covenant, וִהְיִיתֶם לִי סְגֻלָּה מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים — then you will be, for Me, a treasured nation amongst all the nations.

And at this point, we haven't gotten the Ten Commandments yet, but that covenant appears to be the Ten Commandments.

Daniel: Right, and there are themes there about, you know, “We'll be God's holy nation, and He'll be our God.” There's definitely some sort of element of a “both sides” kind of event happening that's culminating at Sinai.

Ari: Yeah, and then when the Ten Commandments are actually written on the tablets in Exodus, chapter 34, verse 28, it says: וַיִּכְתֹּב עַל־הַלֻּחֹת אֵת דִּבְרֵי הַבְּרִית עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים — And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, these ten things.

Right, so I think it's pretty clear that what the Ten Commandments are is a covenant.

Daniel: Okay.

Ari: We keep the Ten Commandments, God will treat us as his treasure nation.

Daniel: Yes. I think you've proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that what was happening with the Ten Commandments was a brit. How does that help us figure out why we need two copies?

Ari: Right, so if the Ten Commandments are a covenant, a brit, and they are written on the Luchot, and the Luchot are described as Luchot HaBrit, the Tablets of the Covenant; or actually, earlier on, Luchot HaEidut, the Tablets of the Testimony.

If you're going to write down a covenant, why might you want two copies of it?

Daniel: I'm going to walk right into this one and I'm going to say you want one copy for each party.

Ari: Exactly. You want one copy for each party. It makes total sense.

Daniel: I mean, it almost makes total sense.

Ari: It almost makes total sense? Why?

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, so far, a lot of things are lining up really, really nicely here. You're pointing out this is a covenant, and that covenants have two parties. So if there's an opinion that's reading this verse and saying, “Oh, the luchot are actually two copies of the exact same thing,” then it would really make a lot of sense to say, “Okay, great, there's a copy for each party.”

If the two parties here - one party is God and one party is the Israelites - so then everyone knows these are the things that were established. Like, “Here's your copy, Israel, and here's Your copy, God.”

And that sounds like a totally viable explanation for why there would be two copies of the exact same thing, and it's also kind of a beautiful explanation, because it's sort of emphasizing the covenantal aspect of it; the two-sides aspect of it, that it was important for this thing to be established and kept as a record or testimony for both parties, right? There's an elegance to it.

Ari: And, you know, I was wondering, this actually makes sense according to our modern understanding of a covenant. You make two carbon copies of any contract that you're going to sign.

But I did a little historical research, and it turns out that we actually have evidence of a treaty signed between the Hittites and the Egyptians, actually in the reign of Ramses II, who, according to a lot of historians, was actually the pharaoh of the Exodus. These two nations fought for almost 20 years and then decided to make peace and they signed this covenant. They each have a written copy of this covenant, and we've discovered these nearly identical copies that are written in stone - one in Egypt and one with the Hittites.

Daniel: So you're saying it's not even anachronistic of us to say, “Oh, two parties, two copies.” That was practiced for a long time in history.

Ari: Yeah, and it's probably even more similar to the Hittite suzerain-vassal treaty, where you have kind of one power that's above and one that's below, and we won't go all into that now. We'll put a link to the description. It's really interesting if you want to look into that. 

Daniel: We're not going into the Hittite suzerain treaty now? Ari, such a tease.

Ari: Okay, fine, if you insist.

The Twist in Our New Understanding

Daniel: I guess the only thing that I'm a little hung up on or hesitant about - maybe not so little, unless I'm very much misremembering the way things unfolded - I think both copies stayed downstairs. You'd expect, you know, to have each party keep a copy. Then there'd be one for the Jewish people and one for God, and they'd be split up and separated and each person gets to keep his copy, so to speak.

That's the only thing that sort of strikes me as odd about it, but, you know, otherwise it's a really cool idea and it's intriguing. Does that question make sense?

Ari: Right, exactly. That's the question. If this is just this agreement between two parties and each of them are supposed to have a copy, why don't they each take their copy and split? 

But let's think about it for a second. If you're Bnei Yisrael and you have your copy of the treaty, this is the most important possession that you own. Where's the best place you could put that? It's the same place, by the way, that we keep the container of mann, which we're told to store as a memory. It's the same place that we keep the copy of the Sefer Torah that we're never supposed to forget.

Daniel: Right, it's not a Chase security deposit box. Yeah, right. I guess it would make sense that the most sacred, holy, secure, and appropriate site would probably be putting it in the Aron Kodesh, which is where indeed they were kept.

Ari: Yeah, it's at the center of the whole camp. It's the holiest place, the most secure, and in fact, in the suzerain-vassal treaties, that's exactly where they kept these stone tablets of their covenants.

Daniel: In the Aron Kodesh?

Ari: In the Aron Kodesh. It was just chock-full, overflowing.

Daniel: But actually, what do you mean?

Ari: In their own temples, that was the place that they would keep them. That's where archaeologists have discovered them.

But now think about it. If you're God, where's the most logical place to put your copy? If there's anywhere on Earth that would make sense to put your copy, where would it be?

Daniel: Yeah, probably in the holiest place; that is, the place that God is most manifest. Which, coincidentally, is the Aron Kodesh.

Ari: Right. It's exactly the same place, right?

What Is the Significance of Sages’ Depiction of the Tablets?

So in theory, you have these two copies - one for us and one for God - and in theory we could take them and go our own way, but the best place for each of us to put them happens to be the same place, which is at the center of this Mishkan.

Daniel: This is really interesting and really compelling. I'm kind of wondering, I'm thinking to myself about whether it's just a funny coincidence that the place to store the covenant for both parties happens to be the same place, or if there's kind of maybe something deeper to it.

I don't know, I think anything I would say would be speculative, but one thing I'm kind of thinking about is this custom that a lot of Jewish families have to hang up a ketubah (marriage contract) in their house, which is kind of like a really funny thing to do because a ketubah is a, you know, like a marriage contract. I think there's this kind of romantic quality attached to it by a lot of people, but it's, like, very technical and very monetary. And you know, it's kind of funny if you can actually read it and know what it's talking about. But people make it beautiful and they get it really nicely framed. They put it in their houses, you know, like on display.

And I'm thinking about that because I feel like in all of your, you know, ancient near-east Hittite examples of covenants, I think there were really two separate parties that lived in geographically distinct locations and had their own interests and wanted to form some sort of covenantal relationship to sort of guarantee, you know, “This is how I'll treat you, this is how you'll treat me,” but, like, essentially they're different, right?

What was kind of really interesting about, like,  a married couple with a contract…you know, they kind of only need one because they're a unit, even though it's representing two different interests there.

But the point is that the covenant is making them into kind of one unit, and it's not just like an alliance of convenience or some sort of formalization of rules between two distinct parties, but it's actually representing people's interests coming together in an incredibly deep way, so that even if there are technical, covenantal, legal aspects of it, the fact that that is a proxy or an outcome of the fact that there's this kind of beautiful thing that they've entered into - you don't need two copies of a ketubah. It can be something that you hang up in your house as a sign of what you have together.

And I guess, I'm just wondering if there's something similar going on. I mean, I know a lot of people like to talk, whether more literally or more allegorically, about a marriage happening with God at Har Sinai, but however you slice it, the fact that God asks for a Mishkan to be built as a dwelling place for Him to live among the people of Israel and bring Himself as close as possible to Earth and let us be as close as possible to Him in His Heavens by having this one central location that's in the middle of the Israelite camp, it's definitely more like the closeness of a marriage covenant than it is like the distance and distinctness of suzerain and the Hittites, or whatever the other example would be.

So maybe there is something that's kind of very apropos or symbolic of the fact that it's in the same place, because it's not a covenant that's establishing ground rules for separate parties, but it's actually establishing ground rules for parties that are kind of uniting.

Ari: Yeah, God's coming to them and saying, “I want to live with you. I want to move in. I want to join together in this really special, close, intimate relationship.”

And, you know, Daniel, you're talking about, you know, other brits maybe being two separate parties. I mean, just look at the examples that we have in the Torah of brits that people make with each other, right? Avraham makes a brit with Avimelech, Yitzchak makes a brit with Avimelech, and Yaakov makes a brit with Lavan.

In each one of these cases, it's two people who really don't get along with each other and they are basically making mutual non-aggression pacts. They're saying, “You're going to go one way, I'm going to go the other.” In each one of these cases, after they make this brit, they split and never see each other again. Like, that's the point of it. It's like, “We don't like each other. We don't really want to have anything to do with each other, so we're going to make this covenant so that we can split and never see each other.”

Daniel: That's really interesting, yeah.

Ari: And God's is the exact opposite. He's saying, “I'm introducing myself to you, and I want to have a lifelong relationship with you.” And so, it's going to be modeled after these other covenants, and it's going to start in the same way - we're each going to have our own copy of it, but instead of taking those copies and splitting, we're both going to put those copies in our shared home.

Daniel: Yeah, that definitely feels a little bit more than coincidental.

Ari: And you know, we kind of take for granted the fact that God wants to have this relationship with us, but I guess that's really not something so obvious, especially when you compare it to everything else that Bnei Yisrael, as a people, have experienced until this point in their history; all the encounters that they've had with other people who are just, you know, the best they can hope for is to coexist. This relationship that they're about to begin building with God is really something remarkable.

And here we have the two tablets as a symbol of that. And still, to this day, we put images of those tablets everywhere, whether we're holding like the minority opinion, or maybe they should all look a little bit different. Yeah, every time we see those, it's a reminder of God's desire for closeness.

Daniel: Yeah, you know, I'm actually thinking a little bit about your point because, you know, there is this whole…like, maybe we should hire new architects or new designers for our shuls and stuff. But I think kind of a weirdly maybe appropriate takeaway for me, thinking about the Chachamim's perspective on the luchos is, like, when I see a model of the Luchos in my shul and it only has one of them, there's kind of something appropriate about that; because we're supposed to have a Beis HaMikdash, a location that has both of those things, where God's home really is.

Ari: Yeah.

Daniel: So, you know, I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the Luchos models in shul and kind of being inspired by these guidelines that God gave us to live good, godly lives, and have a very positive feeling about it. But there's also kind of a somewhat sad and maybe somewhat, you know, longing or hopeful way of looking at it also, which is that we're looking forward to the time when we actually have both Luchos together. And it's not just, you know, us in our small houses of worship, you know, yearning for God, but God also in His house yearning for connection with us.

Credits

This episode was recorded by Ari Levisohn together with Daniel Loewenstein.

This episode was produced by Evan Weiner.

Audio editing was done by Shifra Jacobs.

Our production manager is Adina Blaustein.

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.