According to the sages, when God gave the Jewish people the Torah at Sinai—the event we commemorate this week on Shavuot—it was like a marriage. God is likened to a groom who had been seeking a prospective match for himself, and the Torah is a written manifestation, a material representation, of him. “Do you want my Torah?” the Holy One, blessed be he, asked each of the nations and tribes of the world, according to Midrash. “Do you?”
“What is in the Torah?” they are each said to have asked in return. God replied: “Do not steal. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife. Do not murder.” And each group of people the creator of Heaven and Earth approached turned him down, until he came to the Jews, who said, “We will do and we will listen.” At Sinai, God and his people, the Jews, got married, and we’ve been doing and listening—and studying the Torah—ever since.
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From Tablet Magazine
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