A vort from the Rebbe on this week's parshah, פרשת כי תשא. In פרשת כי תשא we learn about the שבירת הלוחות. Moshe came down from Har Sinai with the luchos that Hashem gave him to bring to the Yidden, and he saw that they made the egel, he broke the luchos. Then the Torah says he went back, and later on Hashem gave him another set of luchos. And the Gemara says in Bava Batra and in Menachot that לוחות ושברי לוחות מונחים בארון, that the luchos and the broken luchos were in the ארון. Now, everything that we learn in Torah is a lesson in a Yid's's spiritual service of Hashem. So this idea that the luchos, the whole luchos, and the broken luchos were in the ארון teaches us a very important lesson.

The luchos is Torah, and the fact that we have the luchos teaches us how to learn Torah. The words in the luchos were carved out. The difference between words being carved and words being written on a piece of paper on parchment is that when you write with ink words on a piece of paper or parchment, the ink which are the words, and the paper are two separate things. They get very close, the words are on the paper, but nevertheless, they're two separate things that get connected, so much so that if you want you could erase the words because it's not part of the place where it's written on. While if words are carved out in stone, the words are part of the stone. And that's the lesson that we have here, that the way we learn Torah has to be that it has to be carved out in us, it has to be part of us. You can't learn and remain who you are and then you are just learning a Torah. The Torah has to become you, you have to become one with it. And this is the reason why the Alter Rebbe says why in פרשת בחוקותי when it starts, אם בחוקותי תלכו ונתתי גשמיכם בעתם, if you go in My chukim I'll give you rain, etc., all the rewards, and Rashi says it means you should be learning Torah. So the question is, if it means learning Torah, why does the Torah refer to it with the word בחוקותי? Chukim are a name to a certain category of mitzvot, mitzvot that don't have a reason. But we're talking here about learning Torah, so why does it use the word Bechukotai? And the Alter Rebbe explains because the word חוקותי has another meaning, the word chakikah, which means carved out, that when you learn Torah, it has to be carved out within you, has to be part of you. So when you learn Torah, it has to be your mahut, it has to become you, part of you.

But that's not enough. As much as the Torah you learn could become part of you, but in Torah there is more than just the Torah. The Torah has godliness in it, the Torah has the Eibershter in it. So you have to become one not only with the sechel of the Torah, you have to become one with the godliness that's in the Torah, the holiness that's in the Torah. And for that, you have to have a broken heart. When you learn Torah and you become one, you could use your sechel and your sechel become one to the Torah. But using your sechel still is your metziut, it's you, your sechel. But if you use your metziut and remain in your metziut, in who you are, with your limitations, you are not a vessel to receive and hold and contain godliness, which is beyond any limitations that we have. So with our limitations, we can't grasp and contain the godliness. The only way is if we mevatel our metziut, we nullify our metziut, or we use the other words, we break our own personal metziut and we give it over completely to Hashem, then, since we're not limited with our metziut, we could contain the infinite godliness of Hashem. And that is the hint in the שברי לוחות, the broken luchot. And that tells us, we have to have the luchot, but at the same time we have to have the שברי לוחות. There has to be, in the luchot itself, you have to feel that we are broken, our metziut is broken, and it's not us, and it's not that we're taking it with our sechel because it's a nice, interesting subject, the Torah, but it is because it's godly. And that's the remez in the fact that the לוחות ושברי לוחות מונחים בארון, the fact that they were laying in the aron means this is what the Torah is. So the Torah, and to accomplish learning Torah, has to be through both: you have to have the luchot, which means it has to be in a form that it becomes part of you, and at the same time, you have to feel שברי לוחות, you have to have, like the pasuk says, לב נשבר ונדכה אלקים לא תבזה, you have a broken heart and you're mevatel your מציאות, so then you're a keli for the true learning Torah and a keli to be connected not only to the sechel of the Torah, but to the godliness of the Torah. And that's the deeper meaning in the luchot and the broken luchot are laying in the aron.