GEN572 He brings joy to the Omnipresent God, and joy to mankind. Pirkei Avot VI:1 The Almighty’s is a beautiful and useful world, where humanity can benefit. But only the Torah brings harmony with His world and His plans.  When man veers fro the path of righteousness, he upsets the Divine plan.  How does the Almighty react? When sin once filled the world, “the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart.” [this verse] The language is of course analogical, not literal; but if we live as children in the world of our Creator, the deepest truths of His relationship to humankind can be described through human imagery, as it might apply to a father an children.  Think, if you will, of a mother who spends hours over a hot stove preparing a wholesome meal for a child.  If the child spoils his appetite by eating candy, and at the table finds he cannot eat, the mother is justifiably irritated.  But if the child rather enjoys what mother has prepared, she is happy. So, when a man learns the Torah for its own sake, instills in his children a loyalty to it, until for him the Torah is a living entity, he makes the Almighty rejoice: he fulfills the purpose of creation and earns the Almighty’s store of blessings.  But not only the Creator will be happy (so to speak).  The joy will overflow to others, as he brings them a palpable awareness of the Divine Presence, and sows how true lasting joy may be found.  For the pleasures of the mind in spiritual quest and growth are the purest and most enduring.  In physical pleasures, as a rule, Shakespeare was only too right when he wrote, “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour”; and more: “The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours / even in the moment that we call them ours.” Richard II (1595), I, 3, 236; The rape of Lucrece (1594), line 867. Such joys do not make us really or lastingly happy; before them there is usually a hunger and after them a surfeit bordering on disgust. The pleasures of Torah bring a genuine satisfaction and a lasting happiness. SINAI3 270