What could be more ubiquitous in the course of history than broken things? And what could be more relatable to our imperfect lives than something with jagged edges? Thrown away by every generation, dug up by anthropologists, shards are all over. Perhaps that’s why pottery shards play such an important role in Jewish legend and Jewish magic. Everywhere and more or less without value, shards nevertheless turn out to matter.
Consider the story of how King David digs the foundations for the Temple. The Talmud relates in tractate Sanhedrin that when the king himself is digging the understory for the Temple that will later be built by his son Solomon, he disturbs the deep, primordial waters. In some versions of the story, David dislodges the foundation stone. Although the stone warns him not to move it, the king does so anyway. The waters rise, flooding the world.
David does not know what to do, but has an inkling that if he writes God’s name on a pottery shard and throws it into the rising waters, the waters will subside. Yet he’s afraid to write down God’s name in a situation where it might be erased. He calls out for help, and one of his sages confirms that it is permitted to do this in order to save the world. So David inscribes the shard and throws it into the water, and the waters subside. The last 15 psalms of the Book of Psalms — called psalms of ascent — are said to commemorate this tale.
I have been thinking about this story for a long time. On one hand, it feels ecological, warning us of what can happen if we disregard the boundaries of creation. On the other hand, it is a story about the mysterious power of the shard. Of course, it is the divine name itself that affects the waters, but that name must be inscribed, and a shard, the ancient version of a scrap of paper, is the vehicle for inscription. In the context of the ancient world, shards are blank pages. Even with their sharp edges, they are still useful and can be repurposed into something meaningful.
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Other talmudic texts relate the magic of the shard: For example, in tractate Shabbat, a sorceress sitting in a boat with a group of sages implies she can do harmful magic with a shard that’s been in contact with a person’s body. Midrash Tanhuma, a collection of midrash on the Torah from antiquity, tells a legend of how, at the time of the Exodus, Moses recovers the bones of Joseph. Though Joseph’s coffin is sunk at the bottom of the Nile, Moses writes the words “arise o bull” on a shard and throws the shard into the river. Joseph’s coffin floats to the surface.
Yet the shard is also reminiscent of fragility and impermanence. The Yom Kippur liturgy compares the human being to a “kheres nishbar,” a broken shard. In talmudic language, regarding someone as “like a shard” means treating them with disregard and disrespect. The shard is both a vehicle of mysterious power and a symbol of insignificance.
Shards even play a role in the world’s creation. One of the most famous Jewish cosmologies, Lurianic kabbalah, describes an incident known as shevirat hakeilim, the breaking of the vessels. This story suggests that at the beginning of things, God created vessels to hold the primordial light. Yet the vessels were not strong enough to hold the light, and so they broke, scattering light and shards (kelipot, or husks) everywhere. We, humans, are still picking up the pieces and restoring the scattered light to its original state of wholeness so that redemption can one day come.
Perhaps all these stories are the reason why my favorite angel is Yazriel, whose task (according to Louis Ginzburg’s Legends of the Jews) is to reinscribe, on all the shards of the world, the divine name that has been erased. In my most recent book, The Field Guide to the Jewish Otherworld (due to be published by Ayin Press in 2027), Yazriel is the reader’s guide on a journey to meet angels, demons, house spirits and mythological creatures. Yazriel is an ideal guide, intimate with our brokenness, and also with our potential for reinscription and renewal.
In my cabinet of precious things, I have a few shards: a shard of glass that I picked up in the cemetery at Safed, and seashell shards, which I gathered from a beach the evening after my divorce ritual. And somewhere in my apartment, I have a broken mug, an old favorite, with its shards still inside, waiting to be repaired. Shards are things we throw away, and yet they may point us toward what might be repurposed and redeemed. May the power of the shard inspire us to acknowledge our brokenness and piece our world back together.
This essay initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on May 16, 2026. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
