Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Nitzavim, here you stand. We’ll start with a brief recap:
Moshe, on the last day of his life, gathers the Israelites for one final, mega speech. Here you stand, he tells them, entering an eternal covenant with God- all of y’all, past, present and future. Don’t be tempted by other lifestyles, or there will be communal consequences for even individual actions. Well, actually, Moshe says, at some point you will be exiled from the land for your sins, which will suck, but then you will do teshuva, and God will bring you back, and your hearts will be circumcised and you will really love God with all your heart and all your soul, and anyone who harmed you will be cursed, and you will be blessed with abundance. Now, Moshe says, don’t stress about the mitzvot, for they are not far from you that you need someone like me to go get them for you- they are close to you, right in your hands and your mouths and your hearts for you to just do the right thing. The choice is yours, he says, between good and evil, life and death, so for the literal love of God, please choose life.
The line in this week’s parsha about circumcising our hearts probably caught some of you off guard- if so, you’re not alone. The commentators also have a moment of “Wait, what? Can you circumcise your heart?” The problem here is that when the Torah talks about circumcising penises as a sign of covenant with God, we take it literally and cut off the foreskin. But there are other places in the Torah where circumcision is referred to in a way that seems metaphorical, like when Moshe, standing in front of the burning bush, tells God he can’t be God’s messenger because his lips are uncircumcised.
So it makes sense that the commentators want to know if this is pointing towards an Aztec-style open heart ceremony, or if this is the metaphorical kind of circumcision. Well, it is the metaphorical kind, they decide, and the point of the metaphorical circumcision is to remove our inclination towards evil, lust, jealousy, etc. Don’t we have to do that when we do teshuva, before the metaphorical heart circumcision, they ask? Yes. But the point of this heart circumcision is to make a permanent change in the way we interact with the world. This is the messianic version of the world, one in which we will be permanently drawn towards righteousness and kindness, where our spiritual state will be one of constant readiness to be close to God.
As we approach the high holidays, this parsha is a reminder that we can do teshuva and we can try to change who we are for the better any time. We happen to read this parsha before the High Holidays, but its story took place in Adar, in early spring (or so say the rabbis, who believe that Moshe died on the 7th of Adar, so this speech took place on the 6th of Adar). In other words, the Israelites standing to hear this speech about changing ourselves 6 months before, or after, Tishrei. So I want to bless them for hearing that they will someday fundamentally change, and continuing to show up as their unchanged selves. And for each of you, I hope this season, and this year, helps you peel back the layers of your heart that you are not proud of, so that someday you find yourself permanently open to the good of the world.