Why did Moshe abstain from eating and drinking throughout his forty-day stay atop Mount Sinai?
We cannot work to acquire Torah before we work to acquire derekh eretz, basic manners and decency. This is why the Yalkut Shimoni extracts such a basic, “pedestrian” message – “If you come to a city, follow its rules of etiquette” – from Moshe’s superhuman conditions atop Mount Sinai. The greatness of Moshe during this period lay in not only his remarkable self-denial, but also his basic manners and etiquette Chazal thus teach that one cannot try to be great before making sure he is good.