When you approach any human wisdom, you must first understand and discern. You must say, “This makes sense to me; I will follow this. This is a teacher with a good reputation; I will consider her lessons. This doesn’t fit for me; I will put this aside for now.”
Not so with learning Torah. We already know Who is behind this wisdom. We are not interested in the knowledge per se, but in Him. To make His thoughts our thoughts, His mind our minds. To achieve perfect oneness with the One Above.
At Sinai, we understood this well. When Moses asked us if we were ready to accept the Torah, we answered, “We will do, and we will understand.”
First, we said, “We will do.” Because we understood Who was asking us and we desired to connect with Him.
Then we said, “We will understand.” We would take upon ourselves a venture that should be entirely impossible, only now made available to us through divine intervention:
To know the divine. To bring His thoughts into our thoughts, His mind into our minds. To become one with Him.
