Before Moses went back up the mountain, he had been angry, really angry and he smashed the first set of tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Ten Sayings. There are many interpretations of why he does this. Some say that Moses lost all patience with the Israelites who had demonstrated by dancing around the Golden Calf that they are unworthy of God’s covenant. Or, just as the tablets are broken, so too is Moses, a broken, discouraged and angry man. He is all alone, cut off from the people he is leading. Others say he protected the people. By smashing the tablets before the people heard the commandments, they could not be responsible. Despite his visible anger, and G-d’s anger, the most amazing thing happened. Moses got to experience the Divine Presence and understand G-d’s attributes. He could understand who G-d is:
The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon children and children’s children upon the third and fourth generation.
How wonderful and how hard to understand the depth of this. How do you count to 13. The rabbis, in fact puzzle over it. I am not sure that ultimately it matters. What does matter is that G-d IS compassionate and gracious, abounding in love. G-d is also slow to anger. What does that mean? What does that mean in terms of how we as individual people handle our own anger? Moses got angry. So angry he smashed the tablets. G-d got angry and flooded the world, destroyed Sodom and Gemorah and is threatening to cut of the Israelites right there. Moses, despite his anger, pleads for them.
Our first guest blogger, Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum teaches us:
However you count these 13 attributes, you’re helping God to count to 10. There are certainly times during the 40 years wandering that some of the traits seem to be in eclipse from the point of view of the Children of Israel. Of course, there are at least as many times when they (we!) were rather provoking. There is a tradition (reported in Rosh haShanah 17b) that if ever we should need forgiveness, we should recite these traits in order before God and God will forgive. Well, not “recite,” but rather “do” them in order.
Here’s how I understand this tradition. When I, wearying of the stubbornness that keeps me from admitting that I’ve slipped from the path I’d hoped to be following by this time of life, finally need motivation to drop the pretenses and get on with finding the wherewithal with which to turn, I read these attributes to remind myself of how I’d like to be. Of course a mere human cannot “do” all these things. But, oh! I really do want to be merciful–not filled with harshness and suspicion. It galls me that I haven’t remembered to thank all the people who have been kind, or picked up the phone to say how much I enjoyed the party you invited me to. I used to think of myself as patient, but there’s no self-deception that can disguise the fact that I’m on a much shorter fuse than I used to be. Abundant in goodness? There are days that I’ve settled for not actively nasty! And there have been times when truth was more of a bludgeon than the delicate instrument it should be.
Recently, after being plagued by neighborhood woes, I suddenly got very tired of being angry, outraged and insulted. Like Beruriah, I counseled myself to pray for my antagonists to change (rather than go up in smoke liberally scored with stick-pins!) I was quite surprised when I began to see them as fellow humans who were just missing the mark, not thorns in my side. As I calmed down and began to think of them almost fondly again, I think I even felt some of the other traits give themselves a shake. Getting those vexing thoughts out of my head and heart and mouth felt good! Now, if I could start at the beginning of the list (following one line of interpretation) I might give some of the people a “pass” before they start in on me again, and I could let go of the insults after they’ve been flung. You get the picture.
So, if I say these attributes aloud, I buy myself some time to calm down, to reflect on actions that I’m not proud of and to remind myself of my better nature. Perhaps in awakening those regrets and motivating myself to change I also call on God to help get me the rest of the way.
Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Harim in the Pocanos. She also is linguist and a classics major working on a dictionary of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, with my thesis advisor, Rabbi Bernard M. Zlotowitz. At Rabbi Zlotowitz’s request she helped edit and proofread my thesis on the 13 Attributes. She was my presenter at ordination and is a signer on my smicha document.