Every Jew, whether righteous or wicked, has two souls. . . . One soul . . . clothes itself in the person's blood to animate the body [and is the source of its egocentric drives and desires] . . . and the second soul of a Jew is literally a part of G‑d above [and is the source of the person's striving to unite with G‑d] . . .
The body is called a "small city": as two kings wage war over a city, each wishing to capture it and rule over it—that is to say, to govern its inhabitants according to his will, so that they obey him in all that he decrees for them—so do the two souls (the G‑dly [soul] and the vitalizing animal [soul] that derives from kelipah) wage war against each other over the body and all its organs and limbs.
The desire and will of the G‑dly soul is that it alone should rule over the person and direct him, and that all his limbs should obey it and surrender themselves completely to it and become a vehicle for it, and serve as a vehicle for its ten faculties [of intellect and emotion] and three "garments" [thought, speech and action] . . . and the entire body should be permeated with them alone, to the exclusion of any alien influence, G‑d forbid. . . . While the animal soul desires the very opposite . . .
(Tanya)
G‑d spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai (Numbers 1:1)
The Torah was given to the people of Israel in the ownerless desert. For if it were given in the Land of Israel, the residents of the Land of Israel would say, "It is ours"; and if it were given in some other place, the residents of that place would say, "It is ours." Therefore it was given in the wilderness, so that anyone who wishes to acquire it may acquire it.
(Mechilta d'Rashbi)
The Talmud relates that when G-d came to give the Torah to the People of Israel in the early morning of Sivan 6 (see "Today in Jewish History" for tomorrow), He found them sleeping. (The Chassidic masters explain that this was an attempt to connect to their subconscious, transcendent self in preparation for their reception of the divine wisdom.) To rectify this lapse, we spend the entire first night of Shavuot (which begins at nightfall tonight) studying Torah. The traditional Tikkun Leil Shavout ("Rectification for Shavuot Night") study program includes the opening and closing verses of each book of the Written Torah (Tanach), as well as of each Parshah; the entire Book of Ruth (see "Laws and Customs" for tomorrow); the opening and closing sections of each tractate of the Talmud; a list of the 613 mitzvot; and selected readings from the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works.
In the third month... that same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai (19:1)
On the first of the month [of Sivan] they arrived in the Sinai... and on that day Moses did not say anything at all to them, on account of their exhaustion from the journey.
On the second day, he said to them, "And you shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests..."
On the third day, he informed them of G‑d's command to set boundaries [around Mount Sinai]...
On the fourth day, he commanded them to "Sanctify [yourselves today and tomorrow" (Exodus 19:10); following which the Torah was given on the sixth day of Sivan].
Rabbi Jose says that the Torah was given on the seventh day of the month... Moses having added a third day of sanctification out of his own understanding.
All agree that the Torah was given on Shabbat. They differ only in that Rabbi Jose says that the first of the month was a Sunday, while the other rabbis hold that the first of the month was a Monday.
(Talmud, Shabbat 86b)
A most puzzling thing in the Talmud's account is the fact that on the first day of Sivan—the day on which the people of Israel arrived at the place where they would receive the Torah--"Moses did not say anything at all to them, on account of their exhaustion from the journey." For six weeks the children of Israel had been eagerly awaiting the most important event in their history—their receiving of the Torah from G‑d. Our sages tell us that they literally counted the days (hence our annual practice of "counting the omer" during the weeks that connect Passover to Shavuot). Does it make sense that on the very day they arrived at Mount Sinai they would do nothing at all in preparation for the great day?
At Sinai, the divine wisdom was revealed to man. Obviously, the human mind cannot attain the divine wisdom on its own---it that must be given to it by G‑d Himself. So although G‑d instructed us to study His Torah, desiring that human intellect should serve as the vehicle by which we apprehend His truth, a crucial prerequisite to Torah study is the mind's total abnegation of its ego. Only after it has voided itself of all pretension that it is capable of attaining the truth of truths on its own, can the mind become a "fit vessel" to receive it. In the words of the Sages, "An empty vessel can receive; a full vessel cannot receive."
So the day on which "Moses did not say anything at all to them" was an integral part of their preparations for receiving the Torah. This was the day on which they undertook the most "exhausting journey" of emptying their souls of intellectual vanity and make themselves fit receptacles of the divine truth.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
