Shabbat Prayers: Iyun Tefillah: Yismach Moshe
The 4th of Nisan is the Yahrtzeit of Rav Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenberg, author of HaKesav Vehakabala and Iyun Tefillah (1785-1865). “He brought down two stone tablets in his hand.” Why do we so often focus on the fact that the To Tablets were made of stone? Does the material matter? Was not the significance in what was written on them, not whether they were made of stone or wood?
We must understand that if they were just 10 Commandments. The Children of Israel would not have needed all that preparation to stand at Sinai. They are not 10 Commandments, but 10 Statements that include all of Torah. They were just a few statements that incorporated the infinite wisdom and secrets of all of Torah.
When Moshe shattered the Luchot, he was showing the people that all of the millions of broken pieces of the Tablets symbolized all of the bits and pieces of Infinite Wisdom that were held in that giant block of stone. He was telling them that in order to understand what they had received at Sinai, they had to appreciate that just as on you which block of stone could be shattered and broken into countless pieces, so to the fuel words they had heard at Sinai, could be explored and examined in an infinite number of ways.
It was not the stone that mattered, but the lesson that one thing could contain an infinite number of pieces. (Iyun Tefillah)