Let My People Know

"The word 'mitzvot' comes from the word 'tzavta' meaning 'togetherness' "


“The Revelation on Mount Sinai is much more than a set of directives, instructing us what to do and how to behave.


It is God’s will, as it is expressed through the Torah and its commandments.

It reveals to us the way to actually unite with God–namely, by fulfilling His commandments.

Indeed, the Hebrew word for “commandments”–Mitzvot–comes from the word tzavta, togetherness–being united with God.

By ‘descending,’ so to speak, on Mount Sinai, God ‘brought down’ His unlimited, indefinable essence into the definitions and limitations, fences and constraints of the Torah and the Commandments that He has given to us.

The Torah is the expression of the Divine.

It is God’s wisdom and will and is therefore much more than ‘a Torah from Heaven.’

It is Heaven itself.”

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz


From an essay, “The Significance of the Giving of the Torah,” by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz