The Torah was given in the wilderness - but not because it originated in the obscurity of a hermit's gloomy meditations. God did not appear to the Children of Israel on the outer fringes of life, removed from reality. Neither did He appear to them in nebulous illusions of death and darkness, or in moments of surrealistic ecstasy. God never said: "Escape from the world in order to find Me." On the contrary, He said: "I have not spoken in secret, in a place of a land of darkness..." (Isaiah 45:19)

God did not reveal supernatural secrets to be conjectured about, or lift the veil from otherworldly realms. He did not make mankind "believe in" something; rather, "...I, God, speak righteousness, I declare things that are right" (ibid.). What God revealed in the wilderness was His law!

True, God led His people into the desert. The desert was the ideal venue for the revelation of His Torah because it was virgin soil, unpolluted as yet by egotism and ambition, undefiled by the pursuit of vanity. He chose the desert, far from cities, far from society and inhabited lands, far from an already corrupt society, for whose regeneration the Divinely-inspired foundation needed first to be laid.

All that was to come about was new and unprejudiced. The desert held no preconditions, it contained no national-political boundaries, it was open and accessible to all. It was there that God led Israel. And there it was that He revealed His glory in all its majesty and dignity and in all its power and might. There He caused His Divine spirit to rest on man, destined to be redeemed by the light of His Torah, and there he caused heaven to touch the earth. The way to Sinai leads through the wilderness, but afterward it leads, by means of the Torah, to a land flowing with milk and honey. There the potential of the Torah was to achieve its fullest realization.

This is the road which God has shown to Israel, and that is why every year on the anniversary of the Giving of the Torah in the desert, all Israel proceed from every part of the Land of Israel to the Temple of His Torah bringing their first fruits with them. At the altar of God, they will express their thanksgiving, for He has made His word come true and all the promises made in His Torah have been fulfilled in the flourishing land.

Promises of eternal life after death can easily be made by any imposter wishing to found a religion of his own. No one will return from there to confirm his promise or call it a lie. But only God can say: "...if you will hearken diligently unto My commandments... then I will give the rain of your land in its due season, the early rain and the late rain that you may gather in your grain, your wine and your oil. And I will give grass on your field for your cattle, that you may eat and be satiated" (Deuteronomy 11:13-15).

...Only God can promise that compliance with His word will result in such a blessing. Only God, Whose word rules over heaven and earth at one and the same time, Who controls both the germ within the seed and the nucleus of history, Who alone triggers both the process of nature and the development of events in time. He alone can lift up His Hand and declare: I, the one "Who shapes heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them"; I am the One, "Who keeps faith forever" (Psalms 146:6).

Because He gave us His Law - not a "belief" to tide us over, sad and trembling, until we reach another world, but the Torah and mitzvahs to regulate life upon earth and convert its darkness into light - He can promise that if we keep His Law, He will come to join us in our world and dwell among us and give us blessing. The flourishing of our life on earth will make His Presence among us manifest, and the earth will once again become the joyous paradise He created it to be.

God's Torah will deliver man from the existence of evil in this world, and, precisely on this account, God's Torah is - first and foremost - Law. Faith may effect a change of the spirit and mind, but only deeds can effect the transformation of the world. Only a law-abiding life can surmount the thorns and thistles strewn by grievous mistakes. Belief paired with falsehood in deed will never dispel the darkness on earth. Neither will the darkness recede before arbitrary actions. It will give way only before men's deeds in the Name of God, carried out in keeping with His order in the world, in compliance with His will, and in His service. The key to mankind's redemption is: Mitzvah - Law.