I would like to give over a vort of the רבי concerning Shavuos. The Gemara says in Pesachim דף ס״ח עמוד ב׳ that Shavuos is different than the other ימים טובים, because הכל מודים בעצרת דבעינן נמי לכם. מאי טעמא? יום שניתנה בו תורה הוא, which means like this: Every Yom Tov, there is an argument in Gemara. One opinion says that it has to be חצי להשם חצי לכם, half a day, part of the day we have to do things for Hashem, we daven, we learn, and part of the day we have to do things for ourselves, we have to eat, etc., etc. Other opinion says no, אי כולו להשם אי כולו לכם, or the day could be completely to Hashem, it means you could fast the whole day, but learn and daven the whole day, or if you want, you could have the whole day for yourself for eating. But Shavuos, everyone agrees that it has to be לכם, that means that part of the day you have to have a meal and you have to enjoy, and your body has to feel good about it. And the reason the Gemara gives is because it's יום שניתנה בו תורה הוא, because it's the day the Torah was given. Which means, as the Rashi explains and the Alter Rebbe says in Shulchan Aruch, that we have to enjoy the day and be happy with food and drink to show how we're so happy that the Eibershter gave us the Torah.

And the רבי asks a simple kashya: The greatness of Shavuos is that the Eibershter gave us the Torah, which is a spiritual thing. So l'chorah, to show that we enjoy and we're happy that He gave us the Torah, the din should be that for sure on Shavuos we have to learn, on Shavuos we have to do something ruchani because we got a ruchniyusdike present. The other ימים טובים we got physical presents: Pesach we were saved from we went out of Mitzrayim, Sukkot Hashem protected us in the desert, so these are things which are gashmiyus. There it would make sense to say that to show that you are thankful to Hashem, you have to do something in gashmiyus because He helped you in gashmiyus. But Shavuos, which is mainly a ruchniyusdike present, so to speak, a celebration of ruchniyut, why would the din be that the way to celebrate it and to show that נוח ומקובל and we really like it, everyone agrees that you have to have food and drink, and you have to enjoy it in that way when we're celebrating the thanking of to Hashem for giving us something that's ruchani, something so special about the Torah, which is a ruchniyusdike present?

So the Rebbe explains this based on the general difference between what happened before Matan Torah and after Matan Torah. Before Matan Torah, we also had the mitzvot. It says Avraham Avinu kept all the mitzvot before it was given, Yitzchak, Yaakov, they knew the mitzvot and they kept all the mitzvot. So what's so special about Matan Torah? We say Matan Torah Hashem gave us the mitzvot. He didn't give us the mitzvot, the mitzvot were there before. He commanded us to do it, and before they were not commanded, but that's not such a big deal. And Chasidut explains at length that this is something very special. Before Matan Torah, when a person did a mitzvah, and a mitzvah is done with a gashmiyusdike object, the gashmiyusdike object, the physical object did not become holy. There was no such thing as a physical object becoming holy. As the Midrash says a mashal from before Matan Torah and after Matan Torah, a mashal of a king who owned two countries, רומי and סוריא he calls it, and the king made a gezeirah, a decree, that the people from רומי cannot come down to סוריא, people from סוריא cannot go up to רומי. One day the king decided, he nullified the decree: from now on, people from up could come down, people from down could come up. And the same thing is with Matan Torah. Before Matan Torah, there was a kind of decree: gashmiyut is gashmiyut, ruchniyut is ruchniyut. Gashmiyut cannot absorb ruchniyut, ruchniyut cannot penetrate into גשמיות. As the pasuk says: השמים שמים להשם, the heaven is to Hashem, means heavenly things are to השם, והארץ נתן לבני אדם, and the aretz, the earth, earthly things, גשמיותדיקע thing were given to people. There are two separate worlds. And רוחניות, Godliness, could not penetrate into the גשמיות. So even though you did a mitzvah, Avraham Avinu did a mitzvah, the גשמיותדיקע object did not become holy. It couldn't become holy, because גשמיות and רוחניות could not mix.

By מתן תורה, the Eibershter took away that decree, so to speak, that difference, and He made it so He gave us the Torah, so when He gave us the mitzvot, and He said do the mitzvot with גשמיות, He gave us the ability that when we do a mitzvah, the רוחניות, the kedushah, the holiness is absorbed in the gashmi and the physical object becomes holy. That's why the Midrash says that the difference between the time of Avraham Avinu and the אבות and after מתן תורה, a mashal also: when you have a bottle of perfume, you could smell it, but when you smell it, smell is there for a second, then it goes away, doesn't stay. But imagine if someone gives you, pours a little bit of the perfume, the perfume itself into your bottle, so now you have it for the whole time. So the same thing here, before מתן תורה was like a smell. ריחות היו. The Midrash says, כל מה שעשו אבות לפניך, what the אבות did was like a smell. Smell means that the kedushah, they brought down kedushah by doing a mitzvah, but it didn't stay, it didn't go into the גשמיות. But anu, Midrash says, we, after מתן תורה, it's like כמוריק מכלי לכלי, it's like you take the perfume and you pour it into another כלי, then we have it, so now we have the perfume and it stays there. Now, according to that, it comes out that the whole chidush of מתן תורה is the fact that the kedushah, the holiness, the godliness, could penetrate into the גשמיות. And that's why the Gemara says that by שבועות, הכל מודים דבעינן נמי לכם, everyone agrees דבעינן נמי לכם, that we also, the words mean we also need לכם. לכם means to you, the גשמיות, and we celebrate it by eating גשמיותדיקע food as a celebration for the Torah, showing that we really understand what the Torah is. The Torah made that now the food that we eat could be holy. So it's not so much in that the Torah we learn, vadai that's the special by מתן תורה. The mitzvot, that the עצם מצוה that we do also special. But the main thing is that now the גשמיות could become holy. When we put on tefillin, it's not only we take an object, a piece of leather, and we put it on, and we do a mitzvah with it. The piece of leather, the tefillin, is now a holy object, a חפץ של קדושה. And we celebrate that, and we show that, by celebrating through eating food in a גשמיותדיקע way, so we realize, to show that we realize that the Torah, the kedushah of the Eibershter penetrates even in the גשמיות. And that is a hachana to מתן תורה, because by מתן תורה, this is going to happen: the whole world, the גשמיות of the world will feel Elokus, will feel godliness. Like the pasuk says, when Mashiach will come, ונגלה כבוד ה' וראו כל בשר יחדיו כי פי ה' דיבר, Hashem will be revealed, and the flesh, physical flesh will realize, recognize that Hashem spoke, it's Hashem. So this is a preparation to the coming of Mashiach. And it's connected, so it says in sefarim, the Rebbe uses the לשון, פוילישע ספרים, which is in a sefer called Maamar Mordechai from ר' Mordechai of Nadvorna, it says that the words נמי לכם, because the Gemara's expression is that everyone agrees that on שבועות בעינן, we need, נמי לכם, also לכם is בגימטריא קץ, it's גימטריא 190, which is קץ means the end, the coming of Mashiach. So through understanding this בנוגע מתן תורה, this will lead us that soon we will be mekayem the נמי לכם כפשוטו, we'll get the קץ, and the קץ is the geulah, that we'll see the coming of משיח בקרוב ממש.