Whenever a couple comes to discuss their upcoming wedding, there is one ritual more important to them than any other. Anything else, they feel they can set aside, but this one action, they absolutely must do.
They insist on breaking the glass.
Smashing a glass under the chuppah is not a matter of halachah. In Jewish law, it makes no difference whether you do it or not.
It is also probably not the most visually popular image. If you picture a Hollywood Jewish wedding, the stock footage in your mind is the chair dancing, with couples thrust into the air, and holding on for dear life.
Why do couples want so much to smash the glass? When I ask them, they are not sure. It just feels right. It feels natural.
It is like they are remembering something. Something, a story; not just the stories of all the weddings of family members; not even another wedding in a mythic ancestral past. Something else. Something further back.
Perhaps, the Kabbalists suggest, what they have remembered is the very first smashed glass.
The very, very first crack.
Before there were weddings or people or creatures or planets or stars. Before there was anything at all.
Before there was anything, there was a crack.
In the beginning, there was a crack.
A crack in the Nothingness.
Before the crack, we can only talk about the Nothingness. We cannot even really talk about there being such a thing as before the crack, because, in the Nothingness, there was no time. The Nothingness was an absence. Lacking anything, it had no before, nor after, nor now.
When the first crack appeared in the nothingness, it created the first event. The first now.
Before long, the crack split. It broke further, like a chip in a windscreen that slowly breaks. Now there was a succession of events. A story in the cracking of the Nothingness. Now there was such a thing as now, and before, and after. There was time.
Then, the Nothingness could not bear the weight of the crack any more. It burst and shattered into an infinite myriad of broken fragments. Suddenly, there was time and there was space and it was filled up with the thousands of shattered splinters.
The Nothingness was broken. And there could never be another Nothingness again. It had ruptured and given birth to the Something: to all the imploded pieces of possibility.
And out of that possibility came yearning. The shards could see that they could form into combinations and make Somethings that were greater than just their fragmented pieces, but were the genesis of ideas.
So, they made wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. They made strength, love, and beauty. They created endurance and splendour.
From the broken bits of the Nothingness, they made the potential for Everything. And, with that, they made matter. They made the foundations of all existence.
Now, there could be galaxies and moons and oceans and forests and reptiles and insects and primates and civilisations and cities beings that could contemplate this entire mystery of existence and wonder how it all began.
This was how our world was made.
That is where we live: in the broken world.
We are the products of that initial shattering that yearned to be Something greater than Nothing. And we are able to see the world as it is: infinitely complete and completely broken.
We are those sentient beings who can witness this world and wonder how it all came to be, and wonder if it might ever be like that again. We are able to yearn with our whole souls to be reunited with the great forms that once birthed us. We long to feel again that splendour and majesty and wisdom that brought us into being.
Everything that exists is but a microcosm of the original system of shattered fragments that first delivered creation. We contain within us fractals of the understanding, beauty, and strength that initiated all being.
Those creative life forces exist within everything. They continually reach out to each other, interact with each other, and recreate each other, so that everything is one miraculous dance of metaphysical juices, bubbling beneath a mundane surface.
This means that, inside our own souls is the very first crack. We are the broken vessels that yearn for Something more than this. Out of our own breakages is the genesis of all creativity. It is as if the whole world was given order straight from our own souls.
We are perfect. We are broken. Our hearts were broken long before we were ever born. The Creator burst a puncture in our souls right from the outset. It was what would allow us to love and be loved.
And our hearts have been further broken by life. They get fractured every time we encounter something we do not understand. We can feel ourselves breaking every time we lose a loved one, and every time we see the beauty in a sunrise. Yes, our hearts break in sadness, but they also break in joy. It is our brokenness that brings us back to the very first creation.
So much in this society teaches us to scorn our own brokenness. We are encouraged to deny the parts of us that feel most acutely.
Instead, daily life makes us treat this world as if it is still nothing. As we work and pay bills and undertake routines, it can feel like there is no meaning to any of it.
But, deep down, all of us know that our existence is a miracle. We are divine shrapnel in a seemingly impossible universe.
So, when the couple comes under the chuppah, their first thought is: I want to smash the glass.
I want to see outside of me the brokenness that is within.
I want to remember how, once, in a past that never was, the very first crack made everything possible.
I want to be reminded that this brokenness inside of me is what allows me to connect with others. That fracture inside my heart is what makes me yearn for the love of another. It is what makes my being permeable enough that someone else can enter, and share in it their own broken lovingness.
Without this crack inside me, I would never be able to reach beyond myself. This brokenness is what connects me back to God.
We are broken people in a broken world.
Our brokenness is not a cause of shame. Our brokenness is what makes Anything possible.
I know I am broken when I feel grief and anger and jealousy and pain.
Because I am broken, I can feel love and wonderment and resilience and curiosity and awe.
Thank God I am so broken. I only wish to be moreso.
Dear God, let me be more broken.
Let my heart be more porous so that all its dreams may be freed into this world of infinite possibilities.
Puncture my soul and rip it open, so that I can truly feel the longing of all humanity. May I hear in the depths of my being the cries and joys of all that exists and could exist.
May I truly see this world, in all its diverse variance, and marvel at the infinite Nothingness from which we came.
May I fulfil the prophecy of Ezekiel:
“I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you. I will remove that heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you, so that you will walk in My ways and uphold My justice.”
Dear God, break me.
Break me, break me, and break me again.
Shabbat shalom.
Sim Lev 