Parshat Nitzavim
by Rabbi Avi Billet
One of the reasons we read Parshat Nitzavim immediately before Rosh Hashana is because of its emphasis on the concept of Teshuvah (repentance).
In the context of telling us about the aftermath of the blessings and curses that have been raised up until now, Moshe reminds the people that “you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day…”
God will, in turn, bring you to the land, where He “will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, [so that you may] love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, for the sake of your life.” (30:6)
The image of a circumcised heart invokes images from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1 min mark – so laughably edited), because how else could one remove the heart’s foreskin? Obviously it is meant to be a metaphor to the covering of the heart that makes the stone-cold-heart impenetrable to change and repentance. (In case you thought it was to be literal, Ibn Ezra says the “milah” here is not like the physical one we are familiar with from your typical “bris milah.”)
But the verse in question (30:6) is much more famous than it lets on in our parsha, because the phrase in Hebrew which is translated as “your heart and the heart of” is one of the phrases quoted in all the sources about the repentance period leading up to Rosh Hashana because the words “Et Levavkha V’et L’vav” begin with the letters which spell the word Elul. [אלול = את לבבך ואת לבב]
As one would expect, there are a number of interpretations as to what exactly God will remove from the hearts of you and your children in this Teshuvah process.
Ramban explains it as referring to a future time, when the heart will no longer have desires for things which are inappropriate. Coveting and desiring are a “foreskin” to the heart, and these bad character traits need to be removed, so a person can return to the innocent status of Man before the sin in the Garden of Eden, when humans did what their simple tasks on Earth were.
Quoting Yirmiyahu 31:30-33, Ramban indicates that the excision of the heart’s “foreskin” is the nullification of the Yetzer Hara, the Evil Inclination. Similarly, in Yechezkel (36:26-27) we are given the indiction that a new heart will be granted (in Messianic times) to those who will only have the inclination to do what is instinctively right.
Seforno refers to this “foreskin removal” as a turning away from every error that confuses the mind away from knowing truth when one truly seeks it.
In a more poetic vein (though following the language of the verse), Kli Yakar draws attention to what the removal of the coat on the heart will do – open the heart to loving God. After all, as we read in the Tokhacha (Rebuke) of last week’s Torah portion, it is the inability to serve God with joy which would bring about the curses (28:47), and a circumcised heart would allow for love to creep its way into the special relationship we are meant to have with God.
The Baal Haturim parallels our verse to another verse that is oft-spoken these days, the second to last in Tehillim 27 (L’David Hashem Ori), which begins with the word “Lulay.” “Had I not believed in seeing the good of the Lord in the land of the living! Hope for the Lord, be strong and He will give your heart courage, and hope for the Lord.” Lulay also has the letters of the word Elul in it, suggesting that perhaps the circumcised heart opens the door to letting God in.
Finally, to round out our interpretations (though surely there are many more), we have the Targum Yonatan who is rather blunt in his pronouncement of what the “circumcision of the heart” is meant to remove. “God will remove the foolishness of your heart, and the foolishness of the heart of your children as He cancels the Yetzer Hara from functioning in the world, replacing him with the Yetzer Hatov.”
The message is clear. With the right attitude and outlook in the month of Elul, we have the chance to avoid the folly that comes from being slaves to our Yetzer Hara. Just look at the sins we all regret in our Viduy (confessions) on Yom Kippur. Sins with our eyes, sins with our mouths, sins against our parents and teachers, sins against people to whom we pretend we are their friends.
With the right attitude going into the final week pre-Rosh Hashana, hopefully we can see that the ways our Yetzer Hara veers us on the wrong path through ensnaring our hearts, is really a capitulation to foolish behavior we ought to be mature enough to avoid. Because when we look back at our flaws and honestly self-assess, what do we find? Important decisions behind our poor choices? Or, more likely, immature indulgence of things we didn’t really need to do.
Anyone who is on a diet knows that after the initial decision that the current trajectory is a poor one, the next step is to be careful about what one eats. A mature person should be able to stick with it. But anyone who has ever broken a diet knows that it’s usually “just one little nibble, just one little snack, I’ll cheat a tiny bit, etc” and the diet is over. Was the cheat enjoyable? In many cases, probably. Was it worth it? In most cases, probably not. Was it necessary? In every case, no.
So why do people do it? Because there is a foreskin on the brain which says “Don’t listen to your earlier decision to change. Indulge! Enjoy!” And an immature thought process justifies the poor decision.
The same holds true for the heart when it comes to Repentance. We know what we have to do. Let us find the inner strength to Repent with a complete, open, and exposed heart.
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