“Why does Judaism have such an insistence on legalism…on the [details] of the Torah? …[Firstly], it reflects God realistically understanding human nature… He made us, He knows exactly what we are. Human beings are creatures…of infinite rationalization in the name of self-interest.

If God were to simply tell us, ‘Be a good person, be a nice person’ and leave it to us to figure out the details, we would tend to interpret what it means to ‘be good’ with whatever it is that is convenient to us… We can define whatever is convenient to us, whatever makes us feel good as being what is morally and ethically right. As a result, therefore, the concept of Divine Revelation is God’s statement that we are not capable on our own of defining what is good and moral. God has to give us specific directions.

Reason number two is that… God [believes] we can and must perfect ourselves. God does not give us holiness for free. He gives us a way to achieve it through effort, commitment, and work. In many ways, the very details of Judaism are an expression of God’s hope and confidence in man, that we are able to perfect ourselves…

A third idea… is that Judaism teaches that there need not be a dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. One serves God not merely by meditation and spiritual exercises, but by confronting… the realities of day-to-day physical life… Don’t be holy in the abstract, be holy in the concretization of the material…sanctify the mundane and the material.”