This is the goal: to connect the end of life with its beginning, to connect the lowliest part with the most sacred part.
Back to Bris
When a baby has a bris milah, we bless him as follows:
כשם שנכנס לברית כן יכנס לתורה ולחופה ולמעשים טובים – “Just as he has entered the covenant, so shall he come to Torah, marriage and good deeds.”
A Jew’s aspiration is to be inherently connected to kedushah at every stage in life, until the final stage, called nefesh, just as he was originally attached to kedushah in a total way. The goal is that even his eating and other bodily activities should continually be bound up with kedushah. Not that sometimes he gets up in the morning for davening and sometimes he doesn’t, that sometimes he learns and sometimes he doesn’t, that sometimes he goes up and sometimes down, but that “his end is contained within his beginning.” That every stage should be a continuation of the beginning.
He began life by entering into a covenant with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This rendered him fundamentally and inseparably connected to Him. Even if chas v’shalom he eats pork on Yom Kippur, he remains a circumcised Jew and nothing in the world can separate him from kedushah. So it should be also in the second stage, and the third, fourth and fifth. He should always be inherently tied to kedushah.
10 Mesilas Yesharim ch. 26.
This is actually the aspect of ruach, which is connected to Torah. To fundamentally be a ben Torah. Not that he happens to learn sometimes, but that his essential being is that of a ben Torah. And if he merits attaining even the level of nefesh, he will be so bound to kedushah that even his eating and sleeping will be part of kedushah. Every movement he makes is all part of one great kedushah. This is the spiritual peak that a person is capable of reaching.
The truth is that all these qualities exist within a person throughout his life. They are not just stages that come one after another, but are always present in him. There is a point inside a person where he is connected to kedushah due to the very fact that he is a Jew. A person can commit every aveirah in the Torah and he will still be a Jew. There is a point within him to which he is always connected, at which is always alive.
Now we can understand why Techiyas Hameisim is mentioned five times in the blessing of Atah Gibor, as we mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Hakadosh Baruch Hu grants life to a person in five stages.
In the first stage, it was possible for a person not to have been born at all, and even after he was born, the kedushah of yechidah comes by means of milah, through which Hakadosh Baruch Hu grants him life and connects him to kedushah, to true life.
Afterwards, in the second stage, when a person is capable of bringing impurity into himself, Hashem continues to grant him life. And so it is in all the subsequent stages.
This is why we bless the baby at the time of his milah by saying שנכנס לברית כשם. It expresses that he is inherently connected to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And we continue the blessing by saying כן ייכנס לתורה לחופה ולמעשים טובים, meaning that at every stage in life, he should be fundamentally tied to Hashem, just as he was connected to Hashem at the beginning of his life through bris milah.
