Beyond the power of the experience itself, the receiving of the Torah was also a crucial formative stage for the Jewish people, playing a central role in the very emergence of the Jewish people as a nation.  Moshe refers to the day of ma'amad Har Sinai as "Yom ha-kahal, the day of the assembly" (Devarim 9:10, 10:4, 18:16).  While this phrase could be taken to mean simply "a day on which the assembly was gathered together," it seems that in this context it means far more than that.  It was a day when the Jewish people grew into an assembly. 

 

Based on a sicha by Harav Aharon Lichtenstein (Adapted by Rabbi Dov Karoll)

Courtesy of the Virtual Beit Midrash, Yeshivat Har Etzion