Hi, and welcome back to The Daily Study. We're continuing with the Shabbat portion, the seventh reading of Parshat Mishpatim. So after concluding its account of how God taught Moses all the Torah's laws on Mount Sinai, the narrative returns to its account of the giving of the Torah. Right?
So this entire Parshat, we had God telling Moses to tell the people all the meticulous laws, and then at the end of the Parshat, it goes back to the giving of the Torah. And this time, it focuses on the covenant that God forged between himself and the Jewish people by giving them the Torah. The day before the giving of the Torah, Moshe, Moses, informed the people that receiving the Torah would involve two things. Number one, studying it, and number two, performing it, meaning performing God's commandments, doing the physical mitzvot.
So let's dive into the verse. And the people responded, we will do, and we will learn everything that God has spoken. This is not only referring to the Ten Commandments, but it's also referring to all the meticulous laws that were given to Moses at Sinai, that are in this Parshat. By saying we will do before we will learn, the Jewish people declared that they were prepared to fulfill God's will unconditionally, accepting his commandments even before they knew what they were.
It is still on the condition of this commitment that God continues to give us the Torah today, revealing himself and his will to us as we study the Torah and perform its commandments. Conventional thinking may deem it irrational to commit oneself to a contract before the terms of the contract are spelled out. And we can indeed connect to God as he reveals himself within the creation, without first committing ourselves to do whatever he wants. But the only way we can connect to God himself, meaning as he is beyond creation and rationality, is likewise by rising above the limits of rationality.
Therefore, nowadays, just as when the Torah was given, the way we connect with God himself is by devoting ourselves to his Torah unconditionally. And this unconditional commitment is what will create the eternal bond with ourselves and our creator and ourselves as a people. And this historical event is the event that made us a nation. When we responded together as one, na'aset benishma.
And that was it for today's daily study. We also concluded the very dense Parshat of Mishpatim. And we'll be moving on to the next weekly Torah portion next week discussing the tabernacle. I'm looking forward and Shabbat Shalom.