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Our Torah portion this week (Nitzavim) says "the LORD your God will circumcise your heart (וּמָל יְהוָה אֱלהֶיךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ) and the heart of your offspring" (Deut. 30:6), and yet earlier Moses had admonished, "you shall circumcise the block of your heart" (Deut. 10:16). So which is it? Does God circumcise the heart or do we? The answer is of course both: you must make a beginning by opening your heart to God's word, though only God has the power to enable you to "love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live." When you turn to God and open your heart to Him, God will remove the blockage of your heart so that your other relationships might be healed as well. Therefore "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:12-13).
"It is enough to open your heart the smallest amount - even the width of a pin head - to repent, so that you feel a prick within your heart, like a piercing sting in living tissue, not like a needle thrust into dead flesh" (Menachem Mendel of Kotzk).
Hebrew Lesson
Ezekiel 36:26a Hebrew reading (click):
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