Nitzavim-Vayelekh | The Circumcision of the Heart

 

INTRODUCTION

 

All of you stand before God your Lord this day, your tribal leaders, elders and officers, all of the men of Israel; your children and wives, the convert who dwells in your camp, from the hewer of your wood until the drawer of your water.  In order that you might enter into God your Lord's covenant and His oath, that God your Lord seals with you this day.  In order that He might establish you this day to be His people and He will be your God as He spoke to you, and just as He pledged to your ancestors, to Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'akov…(Devarim 29:9-12).

 

The review of the commandments now completed, Moshe prepares for his final address to the people of Israel before his demise.  Soon, his words will turn from prose to poetry, as he traces the history of Israel, foresees their future failures, and proclaims in soaring verse their final restoration.  Though the people stand before God at Canaan's gates ready to enter into a covenant with Him, committed to uphold the terms of the Torah and keen to champion His presence in the world, Moshe knows that darker days lie ahead.  Israel will encounter many challenges on the other side of the Yarden, chief among them intimate cultural contact with value systems that are at direct odds with their own legacy, and many in their ranks will falter and fall.  In the end, exile will overtake them and, with it, the wretched vulnerability and weakness that interminable statelessness confers. 

 

THE PROMISE OF TESHUVA

 

But Israel will survive, sustained by a silent God who patiently awaits their return.  In his penultimate words, Moshe extends to his people the promise of their eventual Teshuva, of their heartfelt and sincere reconciliation with the destiny and the fate that had always been theirs.  And God will respond in kind:

 

When all of these things concerning you shall come to pass, the Blessing and the Curse that I have placed before you, then you shall take matters to heart among all of the nations into which God your Lord has driven you.  You shall return to God and hearken to His voice, according to all that I command you this day, both you and your children with all of your heart and with all of your soul. 

 

God in turn shall return your captivity and have compassion upon you.  He will once again gather you from among all of the nations into which He scattered you.  Though your expulsion may be at the ends of the heavens, from there God shall gather you and from there He shall take you.  God your Lord will bring you into the land that your ancestors once possessed, and you shall possess it, and you shall enjoy more goodness and increase than those ancestors.  God your Lord will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you love God your Lord with all of your heart and with all of your soul, so that you may live.

 

God your Lord will place all of these curses upon your enemies and foes that pursued you.  You will return and hearken to God's voice, to fulfill all of His commandments that I command you this day.  God your Lord will grant you increase in all of your endeavors, your children, animals and harvests, all for the good.  God will again rejoice over you for the good just as He rejoiced over your ancestors.  When you hearken to the voice of God your Lord, to observe His commandments and decrees that are written in this Book of the Torah, when you return to God your Lord with all of your heart and with all of your soul (Devarim 30:1-10).

 

A CURIOUS EXPRESSION AND IBN EZRA'S IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRETATION

 

The above passage, seemingly repetitive but actually emphatic, traces the mysterious trajectory of Israel's teshuva.  Incremental but sure, plagued by serious setbacks but never reversed, the process of return will steadily unfold.  Israel's initial spiritual stirrings, tentative and ephemeral, will ignite more profound yearnings for God's propinquity, and these in turn will spark His reciprocal and reassuring response.  Or as the Sages so eloquently put it when they discussed the topic of repentance, "he who comes to purify himself is Divinely assisted from Heaven above" (Talmud Bavli Shabbat 104a).  But while the general thrust of the passage is straightforward enough, there is a verse or two that require special elaboration:

 

God your Lord will bring you into the land that your ancestors once possessed, and you shall possess it, and you shall enjoy more goodness and increase than those ancestors.  God your Lord will CIRCUMCISE YOUR HEART AND THE HEART OF YOUR DESCENDENTS, so that you love God your Lord with all of your heart and with all of your soul, so that you may live (30:5-6).

 

What is the nature of this curious circumcision of the heart of which the text speaks?  Surely, a literal reading is not possible here, for even the rationalist Ibn Ezra (12^th century, Spain) points out in his lyrical introduction to the Torah, in which he rejects the allegorical (i.e. Christian) approach to the explication of the mitzvot, that:

 

Only if human reason cannot bear the matter or else if it is refuted by empirical evidence, then and only then must we search for a figurative meaning.  This is because the logical faculty is the foundation of all and the Torah was not given to beings that are bereft of reason.  The messenger that connects a man to his God is his intellect.  Therefore, any verse that is not denied by reason we shall explain according to the straightforward meaning.  We shall thus establish its import and believe that this is its true explanation, rather then stumbling blindly and providing self-serving interpretations that transform the obvious into the hidden!  There are of course situations in which the plain meaning also has an allegorical dimension so that both are independently correct.  For instance, a similar word may refer to both body as well as to soul, such as "flesh" or "the foreskin of the heart"…(Introduction of the Ibn Ezra to the Torah: Third Approach to Explication of the Text, written in the original as poetic meter but here translated as prose).

 

LITERALNESS AND ALLEGORY

 

In his comments above, Ibn Ezra alludes to our verse while also considering another well-known context.  Recall that in Bereishit 17:11, God established circumcision as the sign of His special covenant with Avraham.  Ibn Ezra indicates that this ritual act of removing the foreskin is to be understood literally, just as our tradition for thousands of years has maintained.  God is not allegorically asking Avraham in this passage (though He may elsewhere) to overcome spiritual insensitivity, defeat religious apathy or prevail against lukewarm commitment, as one may have erringly inferred from a more metaphorical interpretation of the circumcision rite.  Rather, He calls upon his loyal follower to demonstrate his devotion by indelibly marking himself and his descendents with a real and physical sign on the reproductive organ, to signify the eternity of the covenant between Himself and Avraham's descendents.  In other words, since reason does not militate against the straightforward reading of the circumcision decree, then we understand it literally: "Circumcise the foreskin of your flesh" (Bereishit 17:11) means just that.

 

On the other hand, applying a literal reading to our passage would yield irrational and unreasonable results: could one in fact undergo a literal circumcision of the "foreskin of the heart" without suffering fatal results?  Surely, God does not intend to kill His devoted people who have returned to Him in sincerity!  And how could the verse conclude with a pledge of life ("…so that you may live…") if such a Divine act would necessarily extinguish existence?  Rather, it is clear that our verse must therefore be interpreted as an allegory.  It means to say that after Israel has independently initiated the process of return and repentance, then God will assist them more by removing the impediments to their continued spiritual progress.  Inspired by His involvement, Israel will advance further, until complete reconciliation with God is within their reach.  Here, therefore, the "foreskin of the heart" cannot mean a tangible membrane that covers the cardiac muscle or else a congenital defect within its chambers that impedes its proper anatomical function, but rather a spiritual malaise, a metaphorical "hardening of the arteries" that creates distance between man and God.  And as any practitioner of teshuva knows, even if the attempt was ultimately less successful than anticipated, spiritual progress is a function not only of human effort but also of Divine assistance!

 

ANOTHER SIMILAR USAGE

 

The interpretive principle is reinforced by other comments of the Ibn Ezra on an earlier passage in Sefer Devarim, one that utilizes the same metaphor:

 

Now Israel, what is it that God your Lord asks of you?  Only that you revere God your Lord, walk in all of His ways and love Him, serving God your Lord with all of your heart and with all of your soul.  To observe the commandments of God and His statutes that I command you this day, for your own benefit.  Behold, the heavens and the highest heavens, the earth and all that it contains, belong to God.  But He has only desired to love your ancestors, and from among all of the nations He has chosen their descendents after them, He has chosen you, this very day.  Therefore, CIRCUMCISE THE FORESKIN OF YOUR HEART AND DO NOT CONTINUE TO STIFFEN YOUR NECK…(Devarim 10:12-16).

 

Once again, the Torah speaks of circumcision of the heart, but this time the matter depends upon the people of Israel.  Here, God calls upon THEM to respond to His magnanimous overture of choseness.  After all, the whole universe is His and the contents of the cosmos are the work of His hands, but He has only desired the people of Israel to be His own.  While the world is filled with many nations, God has selected Israel alone to be His special treasure.  Therefore, He calls upon them to revere and to love Him, to observe His mitzvot and to follow Him.  But in order to do so, they will need to first foreswear stubbornness and abandon apathy.  And thus it is that God calls upon them, utilizing bold metaphors, to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts and to stiffen their necks no more.  Ibn Ezra explains:

 

"Circumcise the foreskin of your heart" – this means to distance themselves from the desires that are as coarse and as dense as the foreskin.  Alternatively, it may also mean to purify the heart so that it may comprehend the truth…(commentary to 10:16).

 

Here, Ibn Ezra offers two possibilities: either God is calling upon Israel to overcome their instinctual desires (i.e. the baser inclinations of the heart), a prerequisite for any serious spiritual commitment and growth, or else He is asking them to make themselves receptive to His words (i.e. by opening their hearts) so that they might then come to be transformed by their life-giving truth.  In either case, the metaphor of the circumcision of the foreskin of the heart is meant to suggest the removal of psychological, emotional and spiritual obstructions that stand before a person and his or her progress towards enlightenment, renewal and reconciliation with God.

 

ANOTHER DIMENSION

 

But is there perhaps more to the provocative Biblical metaphor?  Why does the Torah choose just this image to drive home the lesson of surmounting spiritual indifference?  While Ibn Ezra's comments address the CONTENT of the allegory, namely that the "foreskin of the heart" is synonymous with man's innate propensity for moral coarseness and insensitivity that must be overcome, perhaps the metaphor relates to the PROCESS as well.  That is to say that it is not only the destination of self-transformation that the Torah highlights, whether it is God or else Israel that are responsible for ultimately getting there, but rather the journey also. 

 

Perhaps what the Torah means to indicate is that embarking on the odyssey of teshuva involves more than a cold intellectual decision and a stepped and detached implementation, as if removing the foreskin of the heart is a sterile and straightforward operation done under general anesthetic.  Teshuva is a dynamic process that comforts but also challenges, that inspires but also unnerves.  In sincere teshuva, basic assumptions about how we live our lives are questioned and the complacency borne out of rote is scrutinized and rejected.  That is to say that teshuva must therefore also involve emotional anxiety and be fraught with no small amount of existential dread.  Does one genuinely commit to change the direction of one's life, with all that such a momentous decision implies, with the same carefree joie de vivre as one would select chocolate ice cream over vanilla? 

 

Removal of the foreskin (whether of the heart or otherwise) is done while the "patient" is conscious and aware.  There is trauma and tears, as well as "post-operative" soreness, gradual healing and even a permanent mark involved.  In a similar way, then, teshuva requires not only determination to decide and tenacity to stay the course, but also intense courage and resolve from start to finish.  In short, he who chooses the path of teshuva must be prepared to ask unsettling questions, make painful choices, and to suffer misgivings and setbacks, even as he is buoyed by thoughts of his spiritual progress and vouchsafed God's assistance and support.   

 

As the year comes to a close and Rosh Hashana fast approaches, let us hope that all of us, individually and as a nation, merit to embark upon sincere teshuva and to enjoy only health, goodness and life.  Ketiva Ve-Chatima Tova.

 

Shabbat Shalom