Why Moshe Broke the Tablets and the Shofar of Elul

"Carve for yourself" (Exodus 34:1). This was on Rosh Chodesh Elul, for on the seventeenth of Tammuz the tablets were broken, and for forty days Moshe our teacher, peace be upon him, cast himself down in prayer over the forgiveness of the deed of the calf, and for forty days he labored at the receiving of the last tablets. We find that on Yom Kippur the last tablets were given, and the Holy One, blessed be He, established it as a day of pardon and forgiveness in every single year. Therefore they have practiced to sound the shofar on Rosh Chodesh Elul, on account of the beginning of the last tablets, for Moshe our teacher proclaimed, when he went up upon Mount Sinai, that Israel should not return to their corruption as at the first. "And I will write upon the tablets the words" (Exodus 34:1). Because on the first tablets the letter tet was not written in them, until tet was written in the last tablets. "Which you broke." The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: "May your strength be firm, that you broke them; for had they not been broken, the enemies of Israel would have been condemned to destruction."