EXOD914 In the most important and most dramatic moment of our history, when our people stood at Mount Sinai and the Almighty offered them His Torah, they responded vibrantly, with one accord, "na'aseh v'nishma--we will do and we will understand' [this verse]. At that moment, says the Talmud, myriads of angels appeared and placed two crowns on every Israelites: one for na'aseh and one for nishma (T.B. Shabbath 88a). This is the two-fold program of Judaism: doing and learning, studying the precepts of Torah and then weaving them into our everyday lives, and our worldly pursuits. The two t'fillin, the phylacteries, that we put on every morning, symbolize this to connote na'aseh, our readiness to do an act; we put the other on our forehead, to symbolize nishma, our study, learning, understanding. Now, it is our practice to put on the t'fillin of the hand first and remove it last, so that the t'fillin of the head is never on alone without the other. The significance of this is clear and vital: Judaism rejects learning without doing. The shel rosh should never be on alone, without the shel yad. Judaism cannot live and grow in the mental hothouse of an ivory tower. The Torah insists on thought for action, study for observing the mitzvoth. Learning must always be accompanied by doing, by implementing, by carrying out the precepts in practice.