Our Gemara on Amud Aleph references the halacha whereby if one dedicates a limb of an animal to be an olah, the sanctification spreads and the entire animal becomes an olah.

The idea that sanctification can spread automatically from one limb to the whole entity is understood to be true in a larger sense as well, that a spiritual awakening can take root in a small way and then expand. The Chasam Sofer (V’zos Haberacha 3) uses this to explain a well known but difficult aggadah. The Gemara (Bava Metzia 85b) states that the Temple was destroyed because “they did not recite a blessing on the Torah prior to its study.” This is difficult to accept at face value. Could it really be, after the exhortations and railings of all the prophets regarding murder and promiscuity (such as in the beginning of Yeshaiyahu), the main problem was that they did not recite the blessing before studying Torah? And could it be that this is such a grave sin that it warranted exile and destruction of a civilization?

Chasam Sofer explains each mitzvah in the Torah is like a limb of a body, distinct but interconnected. When we recite a blessing on a mitzvah, the nusach is “that He sanctified us with His mitzvos and He commanded…” Each blessing on a single mitzvah references the entirety. Why? Because any one mitzvah performed with the proper sanctification, to accept the whole Torah, will cause the holiness to spread to the entirety of the Torah, as with the limb that was made into an olah. What the Aggadah means, when it said that they did not recite the blessing before studying Torah, is that they did not see the mitzvos as integrated and part of a totality. When they performed the mitzvos it was not to engage with the system, but only that mitzvah.

The Torah works best as a system. The catastrophic moral and societal failures were about much more than a missed blessing, but they came from not engaging and immersing in the Torah as a total system. This is a lesson for us too. Performance of Torah obligations is not always easy, and there may be some who do not fulfill all of them. Yet, even in such cases, the mitzvos that are performed can be part of a dedication and sanctification of the whole Torah, and may one day spread to all of the mitzvos. That can happen if the engagement and emotional connection to the Torah is with the whole system.

You might ask, how can a person be emotionally connected to the whole Torah if he is not feeling able to fulfill a part of it, or at least has difficulty accepting a part of it? This is similar to a marriage. When you love someone, even when they have flaws, even when you have difficulty with those flaws, you accept them in their totality because of who they are. There might be parts of the Torah that are difficult to understand, difficult to do, or difficult to accept on an emotional level, and sometimes philosophical level to our limited understanding. Even so, we can accept it in its totality because of what it is, and what it represents as a whole system. When we do that, and even when we do one mitzvah, then it could eventually spread to its entirety. 

The society that existed around the time of the destruction of the Temple might also have had difficulty with certain aspects of the Torah. Had they approached it from a point of view of acceptance of its totality, this hurdle would have eventually been overcome. However, since they only focused on one mitzvah and not accepting the entire system, it eventually crumbled under its own moral inconsistencies.