Thoughts on Tammuz and the Broken Tablets

The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar adjusted to the seasons of the solar year. Since the moon circles the earth once every 29 ½ days, each month on the calendar has either 29 or 30 days alternating to avoid half-days. Whenever a month has 30 days, the thirtieth day of the outgoing month and the first day of the incoming month are both designated as Rosh Chodesh, the quasi-holiday marking the new moon. This week, on Thursday and Friday, we observe Rosh Chodesh Tammuz. During the outgoing month of Sivan we celebrated Shavuot, the season of the giving of the Torah. That season, beginning on Sivan 6, continues as we recall Moses returning to Mount Sinai where he communed with God for forty days and nights. If we do the calculations, we see that it is on the seventeenth day of Tammuz that Moses comes down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of stone carved out by God and inscribed by the Almighty with the Ten Commandments. At what should have been a time of great joy and celebration, Moses descended into a camp that had become unruly, worshipping a Golden Calf. In anger, Moses casts the tablets from his hands and they shatter at the base of the mountain.

The Jewish calendar is not merely a cycle of dates and rituals—it is a spiritual narrative, mapping the soul’s journey through time. One of its most poignant arcs begins with this moment of brokenness on the seventeenth of Tammuz, Shiva Asar b’Tammuz, peaks in the desolation of Av with the events we mark on Tisha B’Av, and culminates in the renewal of Elul and Tishrei, during the high holidays. At the heart of this journey is a stunning paradox: that wholeness is often only found through brokenness. This paradox is embodied in the story of Moses on Mount Sinai, the shattering of the first tablets on the 17th of Tammuz, and the giving of the second tablets on Yom Kippur.

The Mishnah in Ta’anit records five calamities that befell the Jewish people on the 17th of Tammuz, inaugurating a period of mourning known as the “Three Weeks,” in Yiddish, drei vokken, also known as bein hametzarim, the period between the straits. Foremost among these calamities is the breaking of the tablets. Also on this date, the tamid, the twice daily sacrifices in the Temple, were stopped in Roman times. This is the date when the walls of Jerusalem were breached prior to the ultimate destruction on Tisha B’av. The rabbis also record two other tragic events on this date, the burning of a Torah scroll by an otherwise unknown general named Apostomos and the erecting of an idol in the Temple by the King of Judah, Menasseh, a century prior to the destruction of the first Temple.

This moment then is not just the destruction of sacred objects—it is the fracturing of a covenant. The tablets were not merely stone; they were vessels of divine speech, carved by the “finger of God.” Their shattering reflects a rupture in the divine-human relationship, a betrayal that reverberates through Jewish memory and sets the pattern for the events which followed over the next millennium.

Yet the Torah also subtly indicates that even this act of breaking had divine sanction. In Deuteronomy God commands Moses to place “the tablets that you broke” in the Ark, alongside the second set. The Talmud affirms this choice, saying, “Both the whole tablets and the broken tablets were placed in the Ark.” The broken are not discarded. They are preserved, honored, and even sanctified.

The midrashic and mystical traditions deepen this moment, viewing the shattered tablets not as the failure of revelation, but as part of its unfolding. The midrash in Exodus Rabbah offers a divine voice assuring Moses that the second tablets will contain not only the Ten Commandments, but also the halachot, midrash, and aggadot—law, interpretation, and narrative. The second giving is not a lesser revelation but a broader one, made possible only through the crisis of the first. One might conceive of a similar development arising from the other calamities as well. One thinks in particular of the daily sacrifices giving way to daily prayer and the Temple being replaced by a worldwide network of synagogues and study halls.

In Kabbalistic thought, this breaking of the tablets mirrors the cosmic shattering of the vessels in the mystical teachings of Isaac Luria. Just as the vessels of divine light broke shortly after Creation because they could not contain the Infinite, so too did the people’s spiritual vessels rupture under the weight of unmediated holiness. Though Shiva Asar b’Tammuz is a fast day marking tragedy, in fact the task that it inspires is not simply to regret the shattering of ancient symbols, but to engage in tikkun—the repair of the broken world, one shard, one spark, one moment at a time. It is an opportunity to build a new, more enduring world upon the brokenness of the past.

The presence of both sets of tablets in the Ark—the broken and the whole—becomes the Ark’s defining symbolism. It is not a container of perfection, but a sanctuary of memory and mercy, law and love, failure and forgiveness. It teaches that all parts of the journey - especially the broken ones - are holy, because they inspire us to work toward tikkun, the ultimate repair of a broken world.

Following the breaking of the tablets, the Torah recounts a slow, painful journey toward reconciliation. Moses re-ascends Sinai, pleads for forgiveness, and is ultimately commanded to carve a new set of tablets with his own hands. He again spends forty days on the mountain, this time drawing down a revelation that is shaped by human action - divine words etched into human stone. This is not simply divine fiat, it is the establishment of a partnership between God and humankind.

According to rabbinic tradition, this second forty-day period begins on the first of Elul and culminates on Yom Kippur, when Moses descends with the second tablets and the people are fully forgiven. Yom Kippur, then, is not just a day of personal atonement—it is the anniversary of a repaired relationship between God and Israel, an opportunity to set forth together into a new year and to bring blessing and accomplishment into the months that follow.

The entire penitential arc, from the 17th of Tammuz through Tisha B’Av and into Elul and Tishrei, is shadowed by the story of the tablets. Our calendar doesn’t skip over the shattering; it starts there. It insists that every act of renewal must first pass through the fire of brokenness. That’s why the fast of the 17th of Tammuz is not merely mournful, it is preparatory. It marks the beginning of a spiritual movement toward restoration.

In Kabbalah, every soul is seen as a vessel, and every life a site of both breaking and repair. The Ark holding the tablets becomes the human heart: carrying joy and sorrow, wholeness and yearning. Spiritual maturity, then, is not the absence of fracture, but the ability to hold it with wisdom.

We live in a world that prizes completion, strength, and clarity. But the Torah’s deepest truths often live in contradiction—in the tension between broken and whole, judgment and mercy, distance and intimacy. The story of the tablets doesn’t resolve that tension; it enshrines it.

Each year, the cycle of Tammuz to Tishri invites us to walk this path again: to remember the breaking, to sit with the shards, and to ready ourselves to climb back up the mountain. And when we do, we do not return alone. Like Moses, we ascend carrying with us the scars of the past—and the hope that what comes next will not erase the brokenness but transform it into something enduring.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Edward Friedman