Dear Kehilá:
This Sunday night begins Shavuot, the festival of the Giving of the Torah.
Our sages tell us that the patriarchs and their ancestors also studied the Torah. If that's the case, why would we need God to give it to us? They already had it!.
The Midrash provides an analogy to help us understand this question: there was a decree that prohibited the inhabitants of Surya from traveling to Rome, and vice versa. When the king repealed the decree, the inhabitants of Surya mingled with those of Rome.
That is the meaning of the Giving of the Torah: before it, it was impossible to introduce spirituality into the world because the spiritual dimension had no relation to the material world. When the King of all Kings, God, annulled the decree, through the mitzvot of the Torah we are able to introduce spirituality into our lives.
In other words, we were previously incapable of altering the material world and elevating it to sanctity, of taking a cowhide and transforming it into a mezuzah. Now it is different.
After Shavuot 3317 years ago, and so also every year, when the 6th of Sivan arrives, we celebrate that we became Divine "thieves", that we have the strength to "steal" and "take away" from the materiality of the world and "take it" to the side of holiness.