You might think I’m unrealistic but I don’t believe we’re here on Earth to commemorate the past. Rather, I trust that when we perform mitzvos we are attaching to something supernatural. Although I don’t see it or feel it, when I lay tefillin every morning I’m confident that by surrendering my mind and soul to my Creator, I’m opening up my head and my heart to His flow of purity that will protect me from filth and sin.
This week is Shvuos. Although it’s a very nice idea to commemorate that our nation received the Torah thousands of years ago from God, that’s not what’s happening! We, as a nation, are consecrating a new marriage to God and receiving the Torah anew as our ketuba. Here’s the crazier thing: The more we believe it, the more it affects us. But if we don’t believe it, it’s almost as if it doesn’t happen to us at all. God is hiding Himself. It’s up to us to reveal Him. If we don’t, then He remains invisible.
Rebbe Nachman says in Torah 49 that “serving God and creating the world is exactly the same thing”. He wasn’t speaking tongue-in-cheek. The world we know so intimately is overly convincing that nothing miraculous is ever happening. But it’s so pitiful to live in that reality. Having nothing to do with the next world, I rather die having believed in my ability to uplift and affect this world than to go about my daily life like an ant marching…
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