50.0°,
Overcast I hadn’t planned on stopping to watch, but something about him caught my attention. Maybe it was his eyes, which was where his smile began; before it spread to the rest of his face; you could see it coming in the twinkle in his eyes. One of the reasons
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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 L-rd, your G-d, 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.”
G-d 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 L-rd your G-d 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 (laughably edited at the one minute mark: bit.ly/1uCJQLz), 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. The 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.
As one would expect, there are a number of interpretations as to what exactly G-d 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.
