Mitzvot that commemorate events that happened in the past. By celebrating the holidays, Shabbat, etc. we bring the memory of the fact that God is here with us, in this world, into our present. We elevate ourselves and the world in which we live when we relate to it as neither confining nor base, but as being full of spiritual potential. While many mitzvot belong to more than one group, what they share in common is that they affect the individual by using the real world as a medium. Feelings and thoughts are grounded and concretized.
Nothing is simultaneously more real and more ephemeral than our yearnings and strivings.
The message is that we must do something about it. We must concretely give voice to our deepest identity. We must not be afraid of seeking, but that must never be the end of our journey. The Maccabbes lit the menorah when they reentered the Temple after it had been defiled by the Greeks. The second Temple, which had been built with enormous spiritual fire under the aegis of the prophets Ezra and Nechemia had become a home to Greek idols.