As Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav saw it: The whole of Torah and mitzvot may be apprehended as a new arrangement of the world, making the world into a means of communication between God and man.
And it is one's task in the world to make the necessary changes that are integral to this new arrangement, changes that transform a disorderly world into an orderly one.
This can be illustrated in various other realms of existence where human intervention is crucial—like in the magnetization of iron—all man does is place a particular substance in certain positions and thereby he induces movement.
And the innate force in the substance, the atoms and the molecular structure of its reality, arrange themselves in a new order, augmenting the nature of the substance and transforming it.
It is a process of creating some order out of the ordinary lack of order which is chance.
As it is described by the modern science of communications:
The world is full of sounds and all we have to do is put these sounds together in some coherent fashion.
What does God say?
What does the Divine want to communicate by this or that "noise?"
When we sort out the sounds, we can begin to understand and eventually to respond.
The basic element of experience, which is made up of matter and the combinations of matter, is not a fundamental creation.
It only points to something else that is not apparent to us, which, with the proper grasp, can become an instrument for our own use.
It is like a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be clearly worked out; the change one introduces makes it into a vessel for something that is needed.
In this respect, Torah can be conceived of as that which changes the world by means of wisdom, speech, and actions.
It enables life to achieve a higher level of communication, thereby allowing light to enter.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Long Shorter Way, chapter 36, by Rabbi Ad9in Steinsaltz