An excerpt from the festival prayers.

Our sages relate that when the people of Israel stood at Sinai and G-d spoke the Ten Commandments, so overwhelming was the experience that "with each and every utterance, their souls flew from their bodies."

We can perhaps envision "being blown" away by an utterance such as "I am the L-rd your G-d."  But what of such pedestrian commandments as "Honor your father and your mother" and "Do not steal"?  Other than the fact that they were spoken by G-d, there seems nothing divine or transcendent about them.  Indeed, need G-d descend upon a mountaintop for us to appreciate the necessity of these laws?

Choice

The day we stood at Sinai (the 6th of Sivan, marked each year by the festival of Shavuot) is more than the day we received the Torah from G-d.  This was also the occasion on which the Almighty chose us as His people.

What was the significance of this choice?  While still in Egypt, G-d already referred to us as "My firstborn child, Israel."  More than 400 years earlier, G-d had "found [Abraham’s] heart faithful before [Him], and entered with him into the covenant"which deeded the Holy Land to his descendants and established them as the bearers of G-d's word to humanity.  What new degree of chosenness did we gain at Sinai?

"Choice" exists on many levels.  A person might choose something because of its positive qualities -- because it is the most tasty dish on the menu, the most attractive suit of clothes on the rack or the most lucrative job offer.  But these are "compelled" choices -- the positive qualities of these things have dictated that they be chosen.  A true choice is a free choice -- a choice that is not influenced by anything, a choice that is a pure expression of the chooser's quintessential desire.

When G-d chose Abraham because "He found his heart faithful before Him," this was not a choice in the ultimate sense of the word.  Here was a man who, alone in a pagan world, had discovered the One G-d, and had devoted his life to bringing a monotheistic faith and ethos to mankind.  Whom else would G-d choose when selecting a man to father a nation that will serve as the harbingers of His truth to the world?

In Egypt, too, we were chosen for our qualities.  True, two centuries of subjugation to the most debased society on earth had taken their toll -- we had sunk into "the forty-nine gates of impurity," assuming the pagan mores of our enslavers.  But throughout it all, we clung to our identity as Jews and our faith in G-d.  Most importantly, we never forgot our promised destiny as G-d's people, and yearned for the promised redemption with every fiber of our being.  Indeed, those who did not wish to be redeemed were not included in the divine choice.  The Midrash tells us that only 20% of the Jewish people were taken out of Egypt; the rest, who preferred slavery in a hedonist land to a covenant with G-d in the desert, perished in the three days of darkness prior to the Exodus.

But at Sinai we were truly chosen, in a choice free of all reasons and conditions.  At Sinai was established that "A Jew, although he has sinned, is a Jew," simply because he is the object of G-d's quintessential choice.