The Time of Accepting Torah

            Our liturgy refers to the holiday of Shavuot as “the time of giving the Torah,” yet it seems to me that it more exact to refer to the holiday as “the time of accepting Torah.” Had Israel stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and chosen not to accept Torah, there would have been no one to whom to give the Torah, and the Divine revelation at Sinai would have been an orphaned act. It was Israel’s acceptance of Torah which endowed the experience at Sinai with eternal significance.

            This approach, that in essence, human action is necessary in order to complete God’s work, is consistently the approach of Torah.

            Giving/accepting the Torah was the continuation of the Exodus from Egypt, but rather than being the culmination it was a step in the process of bringing Israel into its Land. Perhaps surprisingly, nowhere does the Torah tell us that God took His people out of Egypt in order to present them with Torah. The verse, quoted in the Haggada, which explicitly states the purpose of the Exodus tells us that it was in order to bring Israel into its Land. However, this too is incomplete and merely a further stage in the process begun with the Exodus. The ultimate purpose of God’s bringing the Children of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land was that the Israelites fulfill His commandments within His Land, the place most suited for the mitzvot.