Some of our Jewish sources get right into it. Moses says to the people in Deuteronomy 10:16: “circumcise the foreskin of your hearts, stiffen your necks no longer.” (Deuteronomy 10:16).
This always shocks me – how graphic it is. But that’s really how it feels – isn’t it? My friend Greg calls it scaffolding, Moshe calls it foreskin – but there is no denying something is in the way Something is causing an obstruction between us and being open to life. What’s fascinating, however, is that although Moses in these lines is telling us to take the action of circumcising ourselves – later on we’re given a different idea regarding who is doing the circumcising.
In Deuteronomy 30:6, Moshe says:
6 And the Lord, your God, 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.
In this verse, God, godself, the mysterious unfolding – will circumcise our hearts for us, will take down our scaffolding, will open us up to love.
So why does Moshe say earlier we have to do it? Perhaps it’s a partnership. Perhaps we partner with the divine to allow our hearts to crack open.
But what’s interesting about the language of “circumcising” if you really think about it, is that upon first hearing it, it sounds like it’s saying either we, or the Divine unfolding, will remove a layer of covering over the heart. Whoever is the Mohel or Mohelet in this case will take off a boundary between our hearts and the divine. Beautiful. BUT, a circumcision – the traditional kind- actually removes a piece of the body! Maybe an unnecessary piece, but it pierces the body and takes a piece. It creates a wound – again, perhaps a minor one – but it breaks us in order to bind us to the Divine. It causes us to open a part of ourselves to let holiness in.
If we take the same logic to the heart, when the heart is circumcised, we are not removing some extra piece of trash, we are piercing and removing something that was already there. The scaffolding itself is also a holy part of us – a part that thought it was trying to protect us. Perhaps our circumcision is just a re-orientation around the scaffolding – a growing trust that it doesn’t have to serve its function anymore. That the heart is strong enough to encounter love without the barrier.
And so we circumcise, Life circumcises, and this isn’t just because it’s nice to feel the love that comes flooding in when your heart is open. The verse is clear – this is happening SO THAT YOU MAY LIVE. FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR LIFE. Your heart has to break in some way – it has to be punctured – in order to really LIVE. Lm’aan chayechha. If we really think about that for a minute – your most brutal heart breaks, your most painful rejections and losses, that which makes your heart heavy, and swelling, and cracking and completely smashed open is that which brings you close to the Eternal. It’s for the sake of your life.
There is a scene from a movie Adaptation that stuck with me. There are two twins in the movie – Charlie and Donald:
Charlie says to Donald, “You know I admire you, Donald. I’ve spent my whole life worried about people not liking me, and you’re oblivious.”
And Donald says, “I’m not oblivious.”
And Charlie says, “No, I meant that as a compliment.” He goes on, “There was this time in high school I watched you flirting with Sarah Madison,”
Donald says, “Oh god, I was so in love with her”
Charlie says, “She was being really sweet to you. And when you walked away, she started to make fun of you. You didn’t even realize it.”
Donald says, “I knew. I heard them.”
Charlie says, “But you were so happy!”
Donald responds, “I loved Sarah Madison. That was mine.”
Charlie responds, “But she thought you were pathetic!”
Donald replies, “That’s her problem, not mine. You are what you love, not who loves you. ”
When I saw this, it really blew my mind. Being authentic and vulnerable – loving without clinging to the outcome, without any safety net, IS the kind of love I think we all want to feel. I think it's what our hearts do naturally when freed from the scaffolding, when naked, exposed.
When we return to our hearts over and over again in meditation when we drop out of our stories and protections and defenses and just see our natural state of vulnerability, the scaffolding is illuminated to be a paltry defense anyway. Our hearts are – and always were – way more powerful than we give them credit for.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
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