In the Morning Service each day, we declare that God “renews in His goodness every day perpetually, the Act of Creation.” Kabbalah and Chasidut teach that creation is renewed not just every day but at every moment. Likewise, new insights into Torah are constantly being revealed as well. One of the sources for the Torah’s constant renewal is found in the description of the Israelites arriving at Sinai. The Torah states that, “On the [first day of the] third month from when the Children of Israel left Egypt, on this day they came to the desert of Sinai.”
Noting that it would have been more appropriate grammatically for the verse to read “on that day,” Rashi comments that “on this day” teaches us that the Torah’s words should always be experienced anew as if they were just given today.
When contemplating the above sources, a potent underlying theme emerges. By connecting to God, Torah, and mitzvot, we essentially plug ourselves into the very act of constant re-creation. This realization alone (along with its integration) should suffuse our lives with an abiding newness. However, even more profoundly, this connection to God, Torah, and mitzvot promotes renewal and rejuvenation because it provides human beings with something they often lack: purpose. The overall lack of purpose in life is one of the greatest contributors to boredom and destructive behavior. When human beings have purpose and direction in life, every moment is a unique opportunity to fulfill those aspirations. This then is the Jewish people’s mission in the world—to receive, act upon, and ultimately reveal this message contained in the Torah to the world so that the world continues to be worthy of existing.
As mentioned above, both the Ten Commandments and Creation were predicated on God contracting His infinite being in order to first create a finite reality (the act of Creation) and to then reveal His will to mankind (the Giving of the Torah).
A deeper understanding of the parallels between the two is arrived at by comparing the ways in which various commentaries explain how this process of contraction manifests itself.
