The hero of the film has defeated the villain, saved the world, and rides off into the sunset with the beautiful woman. But the movie doesn’t end there. Instead, it shows the everyday life of the newly married couple: changing diapers, cleaning toilets, arguing, and clipping their toenails.

Pretty boring, but unfortunately realistic.

That’s roughly how it feels to read the current weekly portion “Mishpatim” after last week’s description of the most important event in human history—the encounter at Mount Sinai.

Suddenly the narrative shifts, and we read verses like: “If someone uncovers a pit or digs one and does not cover it, and an ox or donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit must compensate the owner of the animal with money, but the dead animal shall belong to him.”

There is no question that these laws are both logical and necessary for the functioning of the nation. What perhaps needs explanation is their context. Why this sudden switch from the spiritual climax at Sinai to the details of Mishpatim? Why the transition from religious law to customary law?

Rabbi Yisrael Salanter once aptly remarked that the physical needs of our fellow human beings are our own spiritual obligation. The weekly portion Mishpatim can be understood in a similar way: our financial obligations are in reality spiritual obligations. All our everyday interpersonal relationships are an essential part of our religious life. Even if we may be tempted to think that reducing the exalted divine law to daily life is degrading, the Torah seems to teach exactly the opposite: Had the Torah’s law dealt exclusively with openly supernatural, spiritual matters, it would not be the living Torah, the Torah of life, that it is. A Torah concerned solely with our relationship to God would be a Torah irrelevant to most of the realities of life and would offer no guidance for a good, right, and holy way of living.

We therefore understand that last week’s revelation is the foundation—and even the justification—for the laws that follow. The portion Mishpatim, with its seemingly banal and detailed social laws, is the content of that awe-inspiring and overwhelming revelation.

Some religions focus on the spiritual world, on aspects of holiness and spirituality detached from human experience and interaction. We might have imagined that the Torah too would deal only with this aspect of human capacity. But the unmistakable message of the laws that God taught Moses on Mount Sinai is that in Judaism there is no such separation. The Torah that comes from heaven is not in heaven, nor is it intended for heavenly beings. The Torah deals with the reality that unfolds on the lowly earth, not in a celestial world inhabited by beings that are entirely spiritual.

One might have expected that after the revelation at Sinai the Torah would concern itself exclusively with exalted spiritual themes. But that is precisely what does not happen. The revelation leads directly into everyday life—into questions of property, responsibility, and interpersonal justice.

The social obligations enumerated in Mishpatim are divine law. Good human interaction is likewise holy and no less a spiritual commandment than the laws that govern our service to God. Perhaps it is less spectacular than a Hollywood film.

But therein lies the greatness of the Torah: it brings heaven down to earth—and into everyday life.

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