Shattering and Wholeness: The Broken Tablets and the Days of Awe

First Tablets
Exodus 32:15-19 Now Moshe faced about to come down from the mountain, the two tablets of the Testimony
in his hand, tablets written on both their sides, on this-one, on that-one they were written;
16 and the tablets were God's making, and the writing was God's writing, engraved upon the tablets.
17 Now when Yehoshua heard the sound of the people as it shouted, he said to Moshe: The sound of war is in the camp!
18 But he said: Not the sound of the song of prevailing, not the sound of the song of failing, sound of choral-song is what I hear!
19 And it was, when he neared the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moshe's anger flared
up, he threw the tablets from his hands and smashed them beneath the mountain.
Second Tablets
Exodus 34:1 Then YHVH said to Moshe: Carve yourself two tablets of stone like the first-ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you smashed.
4 So he carved two tablets of stone like the first-ones.
to Mount Sinai, as YHVH had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.
Biblical Translations by Everett Fox-- The Schocken Bible
http://toby.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/4/8/2748917/everett_foxxstorah.pdf

On 7 Sivan, Moses went up onto the mountain . . . On 17 Tammuz, the tablets were broken. On the 18th, he burned the [Golden] Calf and judged the transgressors. On the 19th, he went up for forty days and pleaded for mercy. On 1 Elul, he went up to receive the second tablets, and was there for forty days. On 10 Tishrei, G‑d restored His goodwill with the Jewish people gladly and wholeheartedly, saying to Moses, “I have forgiven, as you ask,” and gave him the Second Tablets.
Rashi, Exodus 32:1 and 33:11

F. R. Yitzhak Arama, Akeidat Yitzhak, 15th century Spain
Why didn’t God sculpt the second tablets, the way He sculpted the first ones? Because that which is totally Divine is not sustainable in the hands of humans. Therefor the first tablets, which were “made by God and written by God”, were not sustainable. Therefore God told Moses “sculpt [the second Tablets] for yourself” – you make them and I will shape them, thus retaining both the shape and image of the first ones, but these will be sustainable.
Reshit Hokhma, R. Eliyahu deVidash, Gate of Holiness 7; 16th C Kabbalistic Moral tome
The Zohar teaches that the human heart is the Ark. And it is known that in the Ark were stored both the Tablets and the Broken Tablets. Similarly, a person’s heart must be full of Torah… and similarly, a person’s heart must be a broken heart, a beaten heart, so that it can serve as a home for the Shekhina. For the Shekhina [divine presence] only dwells in broken vessels, which are the poor, whose heart is a broken and beaten heart. And whoever has a haughty heart propels the Shekhina from him, as it says “God detests those of haughty hearts”.
For the Hasidic Reb Natan of Nemirov, the Broken Tablets are a necessary part of the process: “Through broken tablets, i.e. broken faith, by means of that brokenness itself the faith returns and amends itself, which is the second tablets.”
The First Tablets are broken, so broken. But that is not the end of the story.
They are a crucial part of the path towards the creation of Second Tablets, Second Naivete.
There is no such thing as unbroken faith, just as there is no such thing as unbroken love. By grasping the brokenness the new tablets can be achieved. Tikkun requires some breakage.
(courtesy of Broken Tablets: A Study Guide for Shavuot Rabbi Mishael Zion)