The Midrash on Bamidbar says,” Bring me into the house of wine.” What is the house of wine? Har Sinai. The Torah is called wine . As it says, “A person is drunk, and not from wine .” The Torah can get you intoxicated. When God appeared at Har Sinai, He came down with angels that were formed like flags. When the Jewish people saw that, they wanted flags too, so God gave them flags. That’s why it says, “ And the flags are a sign of love.” What was it about the flags that were so impressive to the Jewish people? Later in Bamidbar, the midrash says that the angels give respect to each other, as it says , Oseh Shalom Bimromav/God makes peace in the heavens above .” There is an angel of fire, and an angel of water, but they get along. So too, the Sadikim get along. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky explains that flags are really dangerous. Every flag is a sign of the individuality of that tribe, and if every tribe has an individual flag, there is room for dissension. It’s my team against your team. So flags aren’t necessarily the best thing. But at Har Sinai, when the Jewish people saw the angels come down as flags of peacefulness , they realized that you can have an identity and still have harmony. If that is what the Torah gives you, they said, we want it. That is why Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky says that the flags only show up around the Mishkan , which symbolizes God’s dwelling among the Jewish people; specifically in the Torah, which rests there. The Torah is the unifying force that allows us to have our individuality, yet at the same time be together as one unit. That is why, when we walk back our three steps in the Amida, we say Oseh Shalom Bimromav,” Throughout the Amida, our feet are together like angels; we become angelic when we pray. And when we walk back our three steps, we are saying we want to keep that angelic approach of Oseh Shalom Bimromav. Furthermore, there is a custom in the Syrian community, where before you walk back your original three steps to start the Amida, you wave to the person behind you. The Ben Ish Chai explains that this is because we want to be like the angels, who ask permission from each other. They are not, so to say, arrogant, in their serving of God. It’s like, as we say before any Mitzvah, “ Birshutchem/With your permission. That act of respect shows unity, and that’s the goal of kabbalat HaTorah . On one hand, everyone has their individual approach…Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Hasidim, etc. but we are all camped around one center spot, which is the Mishkan. That is what the angels showed us on Har Sinai, and that is one of the lessons of Shavuot, which we try to keep alive the entire year, three times a day, when we pray, before and after. Have a wonderful day.