[In Parshas Eikev, the Torah writes, “And you will circumcise the foreskin of your hearts.” What is this concept of the “foreskin upon the heart”, which the Torah calls orlas halev?]
It is written, “And you shall know today, and you shall return the matter to your heart.”
Our avodah is always first to know the facts, and then to internalize our mind’s knowledge into our heart.
The Egyptian exile deterred us from receiving the Torah. As long as we were in Egypt, we could not receive the Torah; we had to leave Egypt in order to become purified at Har Sinai and receive the Torah. In Egypt, we would not have been able to internalize the Torah had we received it. In Egypt, there was “bricks and mortar”, and this personified the exile. What exactly are these “bricks and mortar” that held us back from receiving the Torah?
It wasn’t just that we had cruel physical labor. It was a spiritual kind of bricks and mortar – a blockage that held us back from receiving the Torah.
There were two layers to the redemption. There was a physical redemption, which took place when we actually left Egypt, in the physical sense. But there was also a spiritual layer of the redemption – the redemption that took place in our souls, enabling us to receive the Torah.
Although the physical redemption happened a long time ago, the spiritual redemption of our souls happens every year. Let us learn how we can merit having the yearly spiritual redemption during this time – to reach the level of receiving the Torah, the level of internalizing our knowledge.
In the Haggadah we express, “By your blood shall you live”. The Sages explain that this refers to the blood of the korban pesach (paschal sacrifice) and the blood of bris milah (circumcision). What is the connection between korbon pesach and bris milah? Simply it is because in order to eat the korban pesach, one had to be circumcised, as the Gemara says. But the deeper meaning is that one has to circumcise his “orlas halev” – the blockage that is on his heart.
There exist two kinds of orlah (blockages) which we remove – a physical blockage which exists in the part of the body that is circumcised by bris milah, and a spiritual kind of blockage, which is present on the heart. This is called orlas halev. When our heart is blocked, the Torah knowledge in our mind isn’t able to penetrate into our heart.
On Pesach, we were commanded to become circumcised; the simple meaning of this, as we said, was because we need to undergo bris milah in order to eat from the korbon pesach. But the deeper meaning is that we had to remove our orlas halev, “blockage of our heart” that was on us – as it is written, “And you shall circumcise the foreskin of your hearts.”
We must remove the barrier between our mind and heart, so that our mind’s knowledge can settle in our heart. And it has to be “in” our heart, not just on our heart.
In order to eat the korbon pesach, we had to have a bris milah. As we explained, the deeper meaning of this is that we had to remove our “orlas halev” in order to eat the korban pesach. In Egypt, we removed some of the blockage as we began to cry out to Hashem from our heart, but this process was not yet complete until we left Egypt, when we actually received bris milah – which was not just a physical act of circumcision, but a removal of the blockage on our heart.
