Imagine a world with a fully laid-out plan for universal and human perfection that had somehow never been put in writing and which no one could access. Well, that’s what the world would be like if the Torah hadn’t been granted us. For without the Torah we simply wouldn’t know what to do to be the best we could be, or how to draw close to G-d Almighty (the plan’s Author).
(After all, doesn’t a great deal of the thrust of modern science lie in unearthing the underlying principles of reality and setting them down? So imagine if that were already done, and all we had to do was to read it and follow through on it — and we didn’t! Could there be a greater loss to humankind?)
As such, the revelation of the Torah was a historic phenomenon of the highest order, and our drawing upon it daily is a high personal calling. For when we do that by delving into the Torah daily, we not only recapture the moment of revelation, we actually fulfill G-d’s wishes that we study His “manual” and be able to follow through on its counsel.
For as we indicated above (1:4:9), G-d wants us to know His wishes for us and to be able to go back to the statement of them again and again. That’s the essence of Torah study, and it’s thus one of the most vitally important mitzvot of all.
Text Copyright © 2004 by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org.