Kintsugi Judaism: Honoring the Breaks, Celebrating the Repair
This morning, I ran into a friend who is a collector of fine art. He mentioned his interest in Kintsugi, the Japanese art of reassembling broken ceramic vessels and sealing the cracks with gold. Two central ideas emerge from this: don’t discard something just because it’s broken, and don’t cover up the cracks—highlight them.
After he spoke, I told him it was no coincidence that he happened to mention this to me on the eve of Passover. On Sunday and Monday nights, we will be sitting at the Seder, telling the story of a broken people, persecuted by the most powerful nation of its time, and how G-d saved us. The story begins with us as slaves and ends with us leaving Egypt and ultimately becoming a nation chosen to light up the world.
We don’t hide the fact that our nation was once enslaved—we highlight it. And we’ve been doing so every year on Passover for almost 3,400 years.
In Hebrew, the word Mitzrayim (Egypt) shares a root with meitzar, meaning narrowness or constriction. Egypt was a place that crushed the spirit of the Jewish people. The Midrash describes how the bondage was not only physical but also emotional and spiritual—backbreaking labor designed to destroy their inner world and lead to despair.
We were shattered in Egypt. But the Almighty didn’t simply lift us out and pretend the cracks weren’t there—He told us to remember them forever. “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt.” The cracks are part of our identity. Rather than being a source of shame, they have become a source of memory, strength, and distinction.
There are three matzos on the Seder plate. We take the middle matzah and break it—a sort of Kintsugi moment. We don’t hide the brokenness; we lift it up and say Ha Lachma Anya—”this is the bread of affliction”—and that broken piece becomes central to the telling of the story. The take-home core lesson of the Seder is that broken parts are not discarded—they are transformed. The story of pain becomes the story of freedom.
What is the gold that seals our cracks? It is the same gold that has kept us together during the darkest chapters of our history—from the destruction of the Temple, to the Crusades, to the Expulsion from Spain, to the Holocaust, and beyond. Our emunah (faith), chesed (lovingkindness), and memory have been passed down from generation to generation. We are not whole despite our past—we are whole because of it.
On an individual level, each of us comes to the Seder with our own cracks. For some, it’s the loss of a loved one, for others, its disappointment, a fractured relationship, a personal struggle, or anxiety about the future. The message of Passover is this: We as a people—and you as an individual—are not broken beyond repair.
October 7th was the most tragic day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Evil people tried to break us. But we quickly grabbed hold of gold—emunah (faith), chesed (kindness), and memory—and began again. All over the globe, moral monsters condemned Israel, and all over the globe, Jews united, with renewed faith, kindness, and a deep, unshakable memory. This too became part of our story.
And what’s true for Klal Yisrael, the Jewish people, is true for each of us. You are not broken beyond repair. The very cracks you bear can become the path to your greatest beauty.
The Slonimer Rebbe in Nesivos Shalom teaches that the broken matzah is a metaphor for the broken heart of Am Yisrael, the Jewish nation. The breaking is not accidental—it is intentional. G-d desires a broken heart—not as a punishment, but as an invitation. As King David wrote: “G-d is close to the broken-hearted.” (Tehillim 34:19) When a person is whole in their own eyes, there’s no room for G-d to enter. But when we are broken, we become vessels—not despite the cracks, but because of them.
When G-d took us out of Egypt, He didn’t wait until we were perfect. The Talmud teaches that we were on the 49th level of spiritual impurity—almost completely lost—and yet He reached in and pulled us out. Why? Because He saw the gold hidden in our brokenness.
Each of us is a vessel—perhaps cracked or chipped by life’s challenges—but we are held in the hands of a Divine Artist who never discards us. He mends us with the gold of light and with love.
Kintsugi artists don’t erase the past—they honor it. And so do we. We end the Seder with the timeless words:L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim — Next year in Jerusalem.
We carry the story with us. We are not yet whole, but we walk forward with hope.