The patriarchs kept the commandments, but the full impact of mitzvah observance was felt only after the Torah was given.

In our prayers we describe Shavuos as “the season of the giving of our Torah.” Yet our Sages teach that Abraham, who lived well before the Lawgiving, fulfilled the entire Torah (Yoma 28b). Moreover, he communicated it to his descendants; even throughout their servitude in Egypt, the Jews studied Torah. What, then, changed at Mount Sinai?

This question can be resolved by reference to our Sages’ statement (Kiddushin 31a) that one who observes a mitzvah because he is commanded to do so is greater than one who observes it without having been commanded. Why should this be the case? If a deed is a good deed, why is it optimally performed only once G-d has commanded it?

Intellect is the most refined of human potentials, yet under natural circumstances the finite mind cannot leap across the chasm to G-d’s infinity. However, by giving man the Torah and its mitzvos, G-d built a bridge that enables man to establish a bond with his Maker.

The Hebrew word mitzvah and the Aramaic word tzavta, meaning “together,” have a common root. When a person fulfills a mitzvah because he has been commanded to do so, the act brings him together with G-d in all His infinity. If he performs the same deed without being commanded, the act, meritorious as it may be, cannot establish this connection.

Before the Torah was given, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were able to perceive its spiritual truths through prophetic vision. Realizing the inherent value of a life governed by these truths, they structured their lives accordingly, observing even the minutest details of Torah law. However, since the Torah had not yet been given by G-d and they had not been commanded to accept it, this observance did not lead to the same spiritual bond that is effected by post-Sinai observance of the commandments. [A small number of mitzvos were given before the Revelation at Sinai; the subject of discussion here is the large majority of mitzvos, which were not commanded until the Torah was given.]

Spiritual, Material Effects

We can extend this difference further: a deed performed as a mitzvah and a deed performed in absence of an obligation produce different effects not only in the spiritual realm but in the material world as well.

For example, the Zohar states that when Jacob laid out staves of poplar, almond, and chestnut trees before Laban’s flocks, his actions evoked the same spiritual energies as are drawn down to this world through our performance of the mitzvah of donning tefillin. However, after the spiritual service associated with these staves was completed, they remained ordinary pieces of wood. The spiritual influences they evoked left no lasting imprint upon them. In contrast, when a Jew puts on tefillin in fulfillment of the commandment, the tefillin become sacred objects; their holiness has an impact upon their physical being.

Jacob’s actions were not in fulfillment of a mitzvah and therefore lacked the infinite component that flows from G-d’s essence. For this reason, the influence of his actions remained on the spiritual plane and did not affect the physical nature of the staves. By contrast, the mitzvos we perform connect us to G-d in an infinite bond. They thus infuse spirituality even into the material substance of this world.

This difference is reflected in the Midrash on Shir HaShirim: “All the mitzvos that the patriarchs fulfilled before You were vaporous, whereas to us may be applied the phrase ‘Your name is like flowing oil’ ” (Shir HaShirim 1:3). The mitzvos fulfilled by the patriarchs were ethereal, while the mitzvos that we fulfill manifest a tangible outpouring of the Divine Presence into our material world. (Note the commentary of Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf Einhorn.)

The above contrast is mirrored in another teaching. The Midrash (Shmos Rabbah 12:3) relates that King David said: The Holy One, blessed be He, decreed, “The heavens are the heavens of G-d and the earth He gave to men” (Tehillim 115:16). Nevertheless, when He desired to give the Torah, He nullified that original decree and said, “The lower realms shall ascend to the higher realms and the higher realms shall descend to the lower. And I shall take the initiative.” As it is written (Shmos 19:20): “G-d descended on Mount Sinai,” and “To Moses He said, ‘Ascend to G-d’ ” (Ibid., 24:1).

According to the original pattern of creation, the material and the spiritual were confined to separate realms of existence. The ultimate divine intent, however, was to fuse the two, so that the creation’s underlying G-dliness would surface within our material world. Because G-d’s essence is unlimited, the spiritual can descend to our world, and our worldly experience can be elevated beyond the material to become an expression of spiritual truth.

This fusion cannot be accomplished through human enterprise alone: it is possible only because G-d takes the initiative. This is what is unique about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The divine revelations before Sinai had not been intended to resolve the fundamental conflict between the spiritual and the material; the revelation at Sinai, by contrast, was meant to permeate the totality of existence. And this it did. The Midrash says that at Mount Sinai, “No bird chirped, no fowl took flight” (Shmos Rabbah 29:9) — the entire natural order came to a standstill. The Midrash continues that G-d’s voice did not have an echo. Instead of rebounding, it permeated the material substance of the world. From that moment onward, the Torah became part and parcel of the environment in which we live.

Bringing G-dliness down to earth was only the beginning of the process. The ultimate purpose of eliminating the gap between spirituality and material existence was the second phase: Moses’ ascension to G-d, that is, man’s elevation of the environment in which he lives.

As long as the connection between man, the world, and G-d is dependent on G-d alone, the fusion is incomplete. If G-dliness permeates the world only as a result of a revelation from above, the world remains — at least from its own earthbound perspective — separate from G-d. This may be understood by comparing the world to a student who arrives at a concept only when nurtured by his teacher’s explanations. The student’s thought processes are not mature until he can conceive ideas on his own. The service of G-d epitomized in Moses’ ascension to G-d demonstrates just such a process of maturation within man and within the world at large.

The consummation of our efforts to refine the world will come in the Era of the Redemption, when we will merit the fulfillment of the prophecy (Isaiah 40:5): “All flesh will together see that the mouth of G-d has spoken” — not that the revelation from above will be so intense as to reach down to our material realm, but that material flesh, reaching upward, will have an independent appreciation of G-dliness.

Courtesy of Sichos in English; adapted from Likkutei Sichos