day of Matan Torah. That's the day that Hashem came down and gave the Jews the Aseres Hadibros, spoke to them and told them the Ten Commandments. But the way it was originally, it didn't always come out on the sixth of Sivan, because as we know, Shavuos is the one holiday of the Torah that has no date. The only The only date for Shavuos is the 50th day from Pesach. Now, the way it's set up, that the month of Nisan has 30 days, and the month of Iyar has 29 days, so it always comes out that from the 16th day of Nisan, which is when we start counting Sefirah, the 50th day will always be the sixth of Sivan. Because counting the end of Nisan, and there are 30 days to Nisan, and counting 29 days of Iyar, and then five more days of Sivan, you will have the 50th day on the sixth of Sivan. But

when they used to establish the month, every month separately based on the witnesses, so sometimes it could come out that Nisan and Iyar were both 30 days. And if Nisan and Iyar would be both 30 days, the 50th day of Sefirah would be on the fifth day of Sivan. And if Nisan and Iyar were both 29 days, then the fifth the 50th day would be on the seventh of Sivan. It's only if one is 29 and one is 30, that's when it comes out on the sixth. So it could have been, there were times that Shavuos did not come out on the sixth day of Sivan. And it says in Shulchan Aruch that in a year like that, when they davent, and they would say in the שמונה עשרה, יום חג השבועות הזה, that this is the holiday of Shavuos, they would not add as we do, זמן מתן תורתנו, the time of the giving of the Torah, because it was not the day of the giving of the Torah. But since the Sanhedrin stopped, and we don't have this idea that every month the Beit Din has to re-decide, re-establish whether Rosh Chodesh is that day or a day before or a day later, so we have a set calendar, so it's set up for all generations that Nisan has 30 days, Iyar has 29, and always it comes out on the 30 on the sixth of Sivan. Which coincides with the day the Torah was given. But in truth, even though even those years that Shavuos did not come out on the sixth of Sivan, still we know that the reason for the holiday of Shavuos is because the Torah was given. So we know that when we come to Shavuos, we celebrate the giving of the Torah. And this is really

what we really have to discuss: What is the meaning of the giving of the Torah? Now, we know what the Torah is. We have a Torah and we know what mitzvot are, and that day we were given the commandments, we were told that we have to keep all these mitzvot, we were given the Torah to study. We all know that. Not much to discuss about that. What we do have to discuss is, what took place, what special thing took place at the time the Torah was given, knowing that before the Torah was given, they already knew the Torah? They already knew the Torah, they knew the mitzvot. It says in the Gemara that קיימו האבות כל התורה כולה עד שלא ניתנה. The Avot, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, kept all the mitzvot before it was given, so they knew the mitzvot. It says that the Avot learned the Torah. That even goes back earlier. It says Noach learned Torah. How did Noach know which animals were kasher and which were not when he had to take them into the תיבה? Kasher ones he had to take in seven, the non-kasher, two. How did he know? Because he learned Torah, Rashi says. Mesushelach, before Noach yet, learned Torah. You had Shem veEver who studied Torah. Avraham, the Gemara says, was a זקן ויושב בישיבה, he was a scholar, sat in yeshiva and learned. Yitzchak, it says, זקן ויושב בישיבה. Yaakov, זקן ויושב בישיבה. So they had yeshivot. Then the Gemara even adds: מעולם לא פסקה ישיבה מאבותינו במצרים. All throughout the 210 years when the Jews were in Mitzrayim, they studied the Torah. As a matter of fact, it says, it says in Chumash that before Yaakov came down to Mitzrayim, he sent Yehuda ahead: ואת יהודה שלח לפניו להורות לפניו גשנה, he sent him ahead to Goshen to prepare. So Rashi says, to prepare what? To establish a ישיבה, Rashi says, before Yaakov and his children would come. That when they come, there should be a yeshivah there already. So they had yeshivot. We even know who were the teachers in Mitzrayim: Shevet Levi. Shevet Levi did not work. They didn't work. They didn't have hard labor. Why? Because they were the teachers. So they always had the Torah, so really the Torah was not something new. They knew the mitzvot because many of them kept the mitzvot. So what's so special about the day of מתן תורה when we say that was a special day, Hashem came down and gave us the Torah, and Hashem made such a fuss over it? Kolot uvrakim, noises and thunder and lightning and fire and smoke and all the preparations they had to make. This was, as we know, the greatest event in history, in human history. The most important event in human history is the event of מתן תורה. To a certain degree, it's more important than the event of the coming of Mashiach, because it says that מתן תורה will not be again. This was a one-time thing. But Mashiach will come and he's going to teach us new thoughts, new ideas, deep ideas in Torah, but it says it all comes from what was given by מתן תורה. So מתן תורה is the most important event that was and will ever be in history of the creation. Why is it so special when this was something that they knew before, the Torah they knew before, the mitzvot they had before, so what's the big fuss? Well the answer is, obviously, that before the Torah was given, they were not commanded to study Torah, and they were not commanded to perform the mitzvot. Using the terminology of the Gemara, before מתן תורה, they were an אינו מצווה ועושה, like somebody who does, not being commanded, and after מתן תורה, after the Torah was given, they became מצווה ועושה, they became commanded to do it. And we know the Gemara says גדול המצווה ועושה יותר ממי שאינו מצווה ועושה. It's greater when a person does a mitzvah when he is commanded than a person who performs a mitzvah when he's not commanded. So there is a change between before מתן תורה and after מתן תורה. But is the change that great that we should make such a big fuss? It's a change, true. What the, what happened later was גדול, it's greater, it's more important, but is it such a great difference that we should consider this such an event that took place? We got the Torah, we had the Torah before. Obviously there was something very, very special that took place. A major, major change between before מתן תורה and after מתן תורה, and it's not whether we have more words of Torah, few more words, or we have, we know more of the mitzvot, because that's not the main thing, or even the fact that we were commanded or not commanded. This means something, but there is much more to it. It

says in a Midrash, a Midrash Shir HaShirim, it says a פסוק, it says, \"לריח שמניך טובים, שמן תורק שמך.\" I'll translate. The smell of your perfume is very good, but the perfume itself should be emptied into a vessel. And the מדרש says that here, the פסוק mentions two things: the smell of the perfume and taking the perfume and pouring it into another vessel. And that is the difference between what the אבות, אברהם, יצחק, and יעקב and all the Jews before the Torah was given had and what took place afterwards. And this is what it says in the מדרש: till the Torah was given, it was only like a smell of perfume. When the Torah was given, it's כמי שמריק מכלי אל כלי, it's like when you take the perfume and you pour it into another כלי. What is the difference? When you have the smell of perfume, all you have, number one, is the smell. And when the perfume is taken away, the smell leaves. You don't have the thing itself. But when someone takes some of the perfume and pours it into another bottle and gives it to you, then you don't only have the smell, now you have it, you have the perfume itself. And that is the difference between what happened before מתן תורה and after מתן תורה. What does that mean? This is just a mashal, but we have to have the explanation, the נמשל. This is a parable, but it doesn't, is, explain anything. This is just the idea, the point of what happened. And now I'll explain it now based on many other things. The מדרש says, another מדרש says, and the פסוק, the famous, famous פסוק, \"השמים שמים לה׳ והארץ נתן לבני אדם.\" The שמים, the heaven is for Hashem, and the earth is given to people. And the מדרש says that that פסוק is true before the Torah was given. Before the Torah was given, there was a separation between heaven and earth. After the Torah was given, the two combined. And it

gives a mashal, the מדרש gives a mashal. משל למלך, משל of a king who had two countries. One country was called, he says, רומי, guess Rome, and one of the country was called סוריא, Syria, that's the expression the מדרש says. And the king made a gezeirah, the king made a decree: בני רומי לא ירדו לסוריא, ובני סוריא לא יעלו לרומי. People from רומי should not be able to travel to סוריא, should not come down to סוריא, and the people from סוריא should not be able to go up to רומי. And they never met, they never traveled. One day the king woke up וביטל הגזירה, he nullified the decree, said no more. From now on, he said, בני רומי ירדו לסוריא, ובני סוריא יעלו לרומי, people from Rome could go down to Syria, people from Syria could go up to Rome. The same here, the Midrash says. Till Matan Torah there was a gezeirah, a decree: השמים שמים לה' והארץ נתן לבני אדם, the heaven is for Hashem, the earth is for people. And there is a a decree that they cannot mix. And the Midrash uses the expression, we have elyonim and we have tachtonim, we have above and we have below. And there was a gezeirah, a decree that התחתונים לא יעלו לעליונים ועליונים לא ירדו לתחתונים. From below you can't go up and from up you can't come down. There is no connection between above and below. And then it came מתן תורה, אמר הקב\"ה, השם said, from now on, I am mevatel the gezeirah, no more gezeirah, no more decree. And he said, העליונים ירדו לתחתונים, from above should come down, should be able to come down, and תחתונים יעלו לעליונים, and from below should be able to go up. And Hashem even added, ואני המתחיל, I'll start. I'll be the first one. Therefore, וירד ה' על הר סיני, השם from above came down to הר סיני, ואל משה אמר עלה אל האלקים, and to Moshe he said, you go up to Hashem. And now there was this combination between elyonim and tachtonim, the top and the below. What this really means is like this: these are just

words of the Midrash, and we know that without having the way Chassidus explains it, the midrashim are not really understood. And Chassidus explains this very well. From when the world was created, the way it it's set up according to nature, it's impossible for gashmiyut and ruchniyut to mix. You can't have spirituality and physicality mixing. You cannot have any spirituality in a physical thing. You can't bring down Elokut, godliness, spirituality, should penetrate into a physical thing. That's the meaning of השמים שמים לה' והארץ נתן לבני אדם. There is shamayim separately, which is ruchniyut, הארץ is separate, Eluko- Hashem is his ruchniyut and there are ruchniyusdike spiritual worlds, then you have the physical world. You can't mix the two. You can't bring kedushah, holiness into a physical object. It's an impossibility. And it's not because Hashem decided, you know, I'll make a decree, like the mashal of the king, he decided for some reason not to mix the two. The way the world is created from its beginning, the nature of the world itself is that it can't absorb ruchniyus. I'll explain it. The nature of the world is that it can't even a physical object can't even absorb an idea, let alone let it let let go of ruchniyus. For instance, if someone wants to explain an idea to the table, and they'll try to explain it with all kinds of explanations, it won't work. Why? Because the table is gashmiyus, seichel is in a different world, in a different level, and the two don't mix. They just don't mix. You can't penetrate seichel into a table. Into another human being, as he has a bad head, doesn't understand, so you explain it better, give another mashal, explain it better words, simpler, he could understand it. But as low as you'll go and as much as you'll try to explain a idea, a sevara, a thought, to the table, it'll never understand. Why? Because it's complete different level. They're they're different wavelengths, they they don't work, they don't they don't mix. Now if seichel doesn't mix with gashmiyus, and seichel is not godliness, seichel is not spirituality, it's part of this physical world, but within this physical world, it's a little bit higher, and still it doesn't mix. Now how in the world can we imagine that ruchniyus, spirituality, godliness, which is completely out of the framework of the creation, how can that mix with gashmiyus? So how is it possible that a physical object should absorb elokus, godliness? Impossible! And that's what the Midrash means. Before matan Torah, that's how it was. So when a person did a mitzvah, and they all did mitzvot, Avraham did mitzvot, and all the mitzvot, what happened was that physical object that they used for the mitzvah did not become holy, it couldn't have any kedushah in it. And that's the mashal of a smell: you have the smell, but you don't have the thing, and a smell doesn't last, it goes away, wears off. And the ruchniyus that they had when they brought did a mitzvah and they brought down all these spiritual levels, so to speak, but it didn't penetrate into the world, it didn't penetrate into the physical object. When Hashem gave us the Torah, the main thing that He did was He took away that decree, He changed the nature, and He made it possible that a physical object should absorb godliness. From the moment Hashem gave the Torah, when you take a pair of tefillin and you put it on, that pair of tefillin, which is a physical piece of leather, has elokus in it, has godliness in it, has kedushah, holiness, has spirituality in it, and it mixes, it's in there. Now how Hashem did it, that's His thing, but this is what Hashem did. And this is basically the difference between somebody who does a mitzvah being commanded by Hashem and a mitzvah not being commanded. If you do a mitzvah not being commanded, then you're doing it on your own, you're not commanded by Hashem, so Hashem did not give any special power into that mitzvah, because you're doing it from your side. Now we are all creatures, we are all part of the creation. The best we could do, the highest we could reach is as far as the creation could make, could take a person. The best we could do is the most a human being could do. So you could do a lot, because a human being could do very great, but that's as far as it goes. We don't have the power to do something which is beyond the creation. This idea of combining ruchniyus and gashmiyus is beyond creation. A human being on his own, being that he is part of the creation, could never do that. As the mashal I gave more than once in these classes, imagine if a person would try to pick himself up by pulling himself by his own ears, you'll never hoist yourself up. Why? Because you're doing it from yourself. The same thing here: whatever we'll be doing will be part of the creation, part of nature, because that's where we are. So whatever we do, we could never do something which will be beyond creation, beyond nature. So this idea of combining ruchniyus and gashmiyus, which is something has to come from beyond creation, we could never do. So if a person does a mitzvah without being commanded by God, that means he's doing it all with his own koach, he could do the best he could do. But the best in this case will not work, because he's only a human being. It's only Hashem, who is beyond creation, who is the Creator, He has the power of taking the gashmiyut and combining it with ruchniyut, because He is beyond all limitations. So He could do something which according to nature doesn't work. He made the nature, so He is not limited. So it's only His koach that could make it happen. And therefore, if He commanded us to do it, oh, then He said, \"I want you to do it and combine gashmiyut and ruchniyut,\" it will happen. So

before the Torah was given, you could have we had we learned Torah and we did mitzvot, but it was only like a smell. It was only something that they did on their own. And later it's something that the koach of Hashem is there. So it's not just a small change: \"Well, before it was like this, and now it's better, it's greater. גדול המצווה ועושה, to be commanded, it's better.\" It's not better, it's a complete different thing. It's almost like the difference between the Creator and the creation. The greatest difference that exists, the furthest extremes that we could imagine is not right and left, or south and north, or black and white; the two greatest extremes are Creator and the creation. And this is exactly here: what we do is part of the creation if we do on our own, and if Hashem gives it the koach, it's from the Creator. So that's a change that changed the whole system of the whole world. That's what took place at the time of Matan Torah, and that is Because Hashem commanded us.

It's interesting we see by Avraham Avinu, when Avraham Avinu wanted his servant Eliezer to swear, so he told him, \"שים נא ידך תחת ירכי, put your hand under my thigh.\" And the reason is because when you make a שבועה, when you swear, it says you should hold a חפצא של מצוה, you should hold an object of a mitzvah. Nowadays in a בית דין we don't make people swear, but when they used to, they used to take out a Sefer Torah, and you would have to hold the Sefer Torah to swear, or at least a pair of tefillin. To a talmid chacham you give him a pair of tefillin. Why? Because in order for the שבועה to have its validity, you have to hold an object of a mitzvah. Now, Avraham Avinu had tefillin; he kept all the mitzvot. So why did Avraham Avinu tell him, \"Hold your hand תחת ירכי\"? Why didn't he give him, which is not even so tzniusdik, why didn't he give him a pair of tefillin, \"Hold my tefillin\"? At the time of Avraham Avinu, there was only one mitzvah he was commanded. All other מצות he did was on his own. And therefore, the tefillin that Avraham Avinu had was not holy. He did the mitzvah with it, but the mitzvah did not absorb kedushah. It couldn't, because it's gashmiyut can't absorb ruchniyut. So he couldn't give him the tefillin to hold because the tefillin was not holy; it wasn't an object of a mitzvah. The only object of a mitzvah that he had was מצות מילה, and therefore he said, \"Hold, שים נא ידך תחת ירכי, hold there.\" And this is what the specialty of מתן תורה. Then by מילה it was one mitzvah, and the reason Hashem gave him at least one mitzvah is because we know that מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, that the power, the koach that we have, the strength has to come from our fathers, so Hashem at least gave one mitzvah to our father Avraham, where He commanded him to have that idea of penetrating into the gashmiyut, so later on he was able to give the children 613 mitzvot and the whole Torah, where it absorbs into the gashmiyut. But this is the whole oyf-tov, as we say, the chidush, the whole specialty of מתן תורה, the idea that from that moment on the gashmiyut of the world was able to absorb elokus, to absorb Godliness. And this was the purpose of creation, but in the beginning the way the creation was made with the nature as it was, it couldn't happen till after more than 2,000 years later, this was in the year 2448, when Hashem came down and gave the Torah, and gave the yidden the power of bringing elokus into the world, gave the world the koach that it should be able to absorb ruchniyut, and that then a yid is able to start working and fulfill Hashem's commandments. Now, this explains another interesting thing that we find by מתן תורה. At מתן תורה it

says that, actually not in Parashat Yitro, but in Parashat Vaetchanan where the Torah repeats the עשרת הדברות, so there it says that the voice of Hashem was a קול גדול ולא יסף. It was a very great voice of השם, קול גדול. What does קול גדול mean? Great voice, how loud? So there are different interpretations in the midrash what that means. One interpretation in the midrash is that it was a voice without an echo, that when Hashem spoke the Aseres HaDibros, there was no echo. I saw a movie, there was an echo. The movie was wrong. There was no echo. Now, the question is, what's the big deal? Who cares if there would be an echo? I mean, why do they make a whole fuss? The pasuk says there was no echo. And if there would have been an echo, I mean, why? Plus, if it naturally should have been an echo, obviously there should have been, that's why they showed it in the movie because they don't know about this Midrash, they imagined it was, and especially when the Midrash says that there wasn't, obviously that's something special, so there should have been, so there was a miracle that there was no echo. Why would Hashem make such a miracle? We have a rule: לא עביד קודשא בריך הוא ניסא למגנא. Hashem does not make a miracle in vain. He makes a miracle only when there's a need for it, when there's something to accomplish. Stam to make a miracle, Hashem doesn't do that. Hashem created the world with its laws of nature, and does not like to change the laws of nature. He only changes it out of necessity, so to speak, when it's needed. קריעת ים סוף, when the Yidden had to cross the sea, the גוים, the מצרים were behind them, they had no place to go, Hashem made a miracle. But just to make a miracle for no reason? There must have been a miracle here. Why did Hashem do that? The answer is there was no miracle. And this was the done naturally. Why? Where does an echo come from? What's the idea of an echo? Just like when you throw a ball at a wall, it bounces back, your voice bounces off the walls and it bounces back. That's where the echo comes from. By מתן תורה, the whole idea of מתן תורה was that kedushah should penetrate into the world. So that time, the world absorbed the words of Hashem. That's the whole idea of מתן תורה. And therefore, there was no echo. It wasn't a miracle that there was no echo. Hashem didn't do something against nature. Because of the nature of מתן תורה, naturally there shouldn't have been an echo. Because the whole idea was, at that moment, Hashem wanted to bring Elokus into the world, make the world full of Elokus, gave it that power that from now on every time a Yid does a mitzvah, the mitzvah brings Elokus, godliness into the world. So that's the nature of מתן תורה, and that's why it happened. In

truth, every time we learn Torah and we do a mitzvah, it's absorbed in the world. Because Hashem gave the world that power to absorb it. That's why it says when Mashiach will come, אבן מקיר תזעק וכפיס מעץ יעננה. What it means is the stones in the wall are going to scream out. When a person will come to that day of judgment and they'll ask him, \"Did you do this? Did you do that?\" And he'll say, \"No, I never did it.\" And there are no witnesses that ever saw him do it. The wall that he was in, the house is going to scream out and say, \"What do you mean? I saw.\" The kedushah that you did will come out from the wall. Why? Because when we learn Torah, we have that same power Hashem put into us because that's what he did with מתן תורה, that when we learn, the words are absorbed and stick inside the object which learned on. When we learn Torah over a table, that table absorbs kedushah. Why does it say we can't sit on a table? It's not kavod to sit on a table. So in a house, we know that a table that you eat on, you're not allowed to sit, table's like a mizbeach. So let's say a table we don't eat on, a table we learn on, we're not allowed to sit because that table has a kedushah.

There were tzadikim that wrote in their will that they want the aron, their casket to be made from the wood of the tables that they learned over. Why? Because they wanted those tables to testify that they studied Torah. Because the table absorbed the Torah that we learned. There's a story in Yerushalmi, an interesting story, that there was once it was a big shaila, no one knew how to pasken. היה שם גלילי אחד, there was one זקן, one talmid chacham, one elder scholar came from Galil. Listen to this: והיה לו מקלו של רבי מאיר. He had Rabbi Meir's stick. Rabbi Meir, the great Rabbi Meir. והיה מלמדו חכמה. He would learn from that stick. And because of that, he was the only one that was able to pasken that shaila and answer that question that was asked. How in the world do you learn from a stick? How does a stick teach? It was the stick of Rabbi Meir. When Rabbi Meir taught Torah, the stick was right next to him and absorbed the Torah, and it's there. We wouldn't be able to take it out from there because we don't really see the truth. Our eyes are not so clear, we need glasses. But this great person was able to take out from that stick, he was able to take out the Torah that was there, because the Torah is absorbed. But it all started from matan Torah. By matan Torah, Hashem brought the kedushah into the world and made it possible for the world to absorb the kedushah, which basically means that the whole idea of matan Torah is that we should take godliness, אלוקות, and bring it down into the world. That's what Hashem wants with matan Torah. That's why you find certain things in connection to matan Torah which fit along the same lines, the idea of taking the highest levels of kedushah and being able to bring it down into the lowest, which before that was not possible because you couldn't bring it down. One of the things we see is a little bit opposite, but it just shows, this is a famous sichah of the Rebbe, that the Rebbe explains: We all know that the reason why we stay up Shavuos night is because by matan Torah, the Jews went to sleep, and they overslept. Hashem said, \"Be ready for matan Torah.\" Matan Torah was supposed to take place early, early morning, and the Jews went to sleep, and they overslept, and Hashem had to come and wake them up. And says a pasuk, Hashem said, מדוע באתי ואין איש. Why did I come and there's nobody there? קראתי ואין עונה, I'm calling and no one's answering. What happened? So because of that mistake we made over 3,000 years ago, every year Shavuos night we have to stay up to make up. Now

let's understand, why did they go to sleep? And they over- How could that, how could we understand them oversleeping? To me, that's, anybody, it doesn't make any sense. This is an event that they've been waiting for for 50 days. When they went out of Mitzrayim, they counted the days. Where does the mitzvah of sefirah come? When we spoke about sefirah last time, where does the mitzvah of Sefirah come from? The Ran says the Midrash, that when they went out of Mitzrayim they were told you will receive the Torah. And they knew how important it is, they counted the days. They simply counted the days. Hashem said, \"So happy you counted the days for מתן תורה, I'll make it a mitzvah.\" And He made a mitzvah every year to count the days. So they counted the days. Now, finally came