Parshas Nitzavim-Vayeilech

Is man, by nature, good or evil. An age-old question whose sides railed the best philosophers mankind had to offer. Thomas Hobbes argued that man in his natural state is driven by self-interest and brutality, that without the restraining hand of society and law, life descends into chaos. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued the opposite, that man is born innocent and good, and it is civilization itself that corrupts him. Centuries of philosophy went back and forth, never quite settling the question. But as the people chosen by Hashem to accept His gift of Divine wisdom, we see from the Torah that our Creator, the One who gave us our nature, has already answered it. This week’s Torah portion, Parshas Nitzavim, contains a striking verse. “Then Hashem your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your offspring, to love Hashem your God with all your heart and all your soul.” Devarim 30:6.

The Ramban unpacks this with extraordinary depth. Free will has existed since Creation, giving man the ability to choose righteousness or wickedness. This applies throughout the entire era of Torah, so that a person can earn merit through good choices and consequence through bad ones. But in the days of Mashiach, something fundamental shifts. The heart itself will no longer desire what is improper. Man will return to the state he was in before the sin of Adam, when his nature aligned naturally with what is good, with no conflicting desires pulling him elsewhere.

This is what circumcision of the heart actually means. The Ramban explains that lust and desire are the “foreskin” of the heart. And circumcision, by definition, is not the addition of something new. It is the removal of something extra, something covering what was already there. The heart does not need to be replaced or rebuilt. It needs to be uncovered. This changes the entire way we should look at ourselves. We are not naturally corrupt beings desperately trying to construct goodness out of nothing. We were created pure, imbued with a heart that, at its core, wants what is right. It is only the external layers, the bodily urges, the desires, the pulls of a physical world, that cover that purity and drag us in different directions.

As we approach Rosh Hashana, this idea should change how we think about teshuva entirely. We are not asking Hashem to manufacture something new inside us. We are asking Him to help us strip away the dried crust that has built up around our hearts, layer by layer, and return to who we actually are underneath it all. May Hashem help each of us peel back what does not belong, and in that merit may we merit a year of closeness, clarity, and a heart fully aligned with His will.