Now take one more step and picture that moment shatter before your very eyes...

 

What do you do the second after that?       

Welcome to our parsha

After Moshe receives and breaks the luchot habrit, the tablets of our covenant, Moshe has a very strange request from G-d. 'Hareni Na Et Kvodecha', Please Show Me Your Honor'. So many of our sages have trouble with this request. You might think that Moshe could have chosen a better time to ask this question, and not ask this at one of the lowest points in our heritage's history. And further, could it be that Moshe Rabbeinu, the one who spoke to G-d ‘panim el panim’, face to face could really be asking such a question?

To answer both questions, leave it to the Netivot Shalom, The Heilige Slonimer Rebbe. What was Moshe really asking? The Slonimer brings down that Moshe couldn't understand what kind of G-dly glory and honor could have possibly come out from the whole incident of the golden calf. After the amazing revelation we experienced at Mount Sinai, where heaven and earth began to harmonize like never before, and all were able to see that G-d is so ONE and so infinite...to immediately fall so low with the calf.... what kind of kvod shamayim came out from all of this?

In one of his most beautiful and life-giving Torahs, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches that sometimes it's all about the question. Moshe Rabbeinu didn't necessarily need to hear an answer from G-d. It might be that all G-d wanted was to hear this question. It might be that this is what G-d was waiting to hear since the creation of the world.

I'm not sure what our generation’s golden calf has been, but after every tear that that is shed, after every heart that breaks, after any painful moment one goes through and after any let down, there is only one thing to ask.

 

Ribbono Shel Olam, I might be able to accept this, but please, show me how your name has become greater from all of this.

 

Har’eni Na Et Kvodecha