When Moses breaks the first tablets, G-d commands: "Carve for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones." Moses carves, Moses brings — but who writes?

Yet later it says: "He was there with G-d forty days… and he wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant." Many wrongly conclude Moses wrote.

The verse must be split in two: "He was there with G-d forty days… without eating or drinking" — that is Moses. "And He wrote upon the tablets" — that is G-d. Moses himself confirms it in Deuteronomy, in direct speech: "and I Myself will write" (Devarim 10:1–2), then "He wrote upon the tablets like the first writing" (Devarim 10:4) — the same Author.

So what was Moses doing all forty days and nights, both times? He was writing the whole Torah, dictated by G-d from Bereshit, and from that point on according to what unfolded around him.

At the end of the parasha, as Moses descends Sinai with the tablets, it is written:

Michelangelo — following early translations — rendered karan as "horns," and sculpted Moses horned like a beast. This is a fundamental error: karan comes from Karnei Hod — radiance, a halo, divine light. Not horns.

But where did that leftover ink come from, since G-d had given him exactly the amount needed? Here lies the secret.

He finished speaking to them, then put on the veil. So while he spoke to the people: no veil.

Why? Out of humility. The divine light was not his own: it was a tool to transmit the Torah. The moment teaching ended, he covered it.

After the sin of the Golden Calf, Israel had fallen; they could not bear even the reflected light of Moses' face. When he taught, he removed the veil so they might receive the light of Sinai, and through it Torah and awe of Heaven. For thirty-eight years Moses walked among them veiled — a class began, he uncovered; it ended, he covered again.

On the last day of his life — age 120 — Moses entered every tent to bid farewell: "See you soon, I am leaving today," says the Midrash.

But this time, unveiled. Every child, every mother, every father saw the full divine light he had received at Sinai.

Every Jew who returns to G-d is kindled by that very spark his soul once perceived in Moses' soul. The light received at Sinai lives on — in every Jewish neshamah. May we merit the complete redemption, speedily in our days — amen.