The Berkowitz Edition

Rebbe Nachmans Torah 

Parashah Nitzavim

30: 6

"God your Lord will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, so that you can love God your Lord with all your heart and all your soul, and truly live."

"God your Lord will circumcise your heart Circumcise your heart"— this means God will do away" with the foolishness of your heart (Targum Onkelos)

When a person repents, he eradicates the foolishness that led him to sin and attains a pure heart. Then he can pray with a clear mind (Likutey Moharan I, 76: 5 ).

God your Lord will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants.

Zar'akha (your descendants ) literally means "your seed." This refers both to seminal emissions that occur in holiness and to "wasted seed," the fruit of immorality and forbidden relationships.

A person who sins—especially sexual transgressions—causes his heart to be immersed in foolishness. The more he sins, the more he loses control. In order to "circumcise his heart"—i.e., to remove the evil inclination—he must truly feel the anguish caused by his sins, repent, and return to God.

The magnitude of his sorrow and remorse over his sins will even affect the hearts of the seed that has been drawn out of him, and draw them to repentance. This applies both to the disembodied souls that were created from his wasted seed, as well as his human offspring.

The most propitious time for one's regret to have this effect is the Hebrew month of Elul. The initial letters of the words Et Levavkha Ve-et Levav (את לבבך ואת לבב, your heart and the heart of) spell ELUL (אלול) (Likutey Moharan I, 141). 

Reb Noson writes:

I heard the above lesson from Rebbe Nachman on Rosh Chodesh Elul. This is how it happened

The Rebbe was walking with me outside the synagogue. He paced back and forth in his usual way while talking. He asked me if I had experienced fear this Rosh Chodesh Elul, and he told me he had felt the most awesome fear upon hearing the sound of the shofar when they started blowing that day.

Fear and trembling took hold of him. He then gave over the teaching about how the name Elul is made up of these initial letters, signifying how when a person genuinely feels the pain of his sins in his heart, the hearts in all the drops of seed that came out of him or grew into children must also feel their pain. No matter where those drops came out of him or where his children may be, they must necessarily feel their own pain in their hearts through the arousal in the heart of their father and his sense of his sins.

The Rebbe then said, "I felt this today. Today I bristled with fear and trembling when I heard the sound of the shofar. Afterwards, my daughter Adil came to me and said, 'Father, my flesh is bristling and my heart is filled with fear after just hearing the shofar.' Then I saw how the arousal in the heart of the father brings about an arousal in the hearts of the drops that came out of him— his children or, God forbid, the other drops... Wherever they are, these hearts necessarily become sensitive and aroused through their father's arousal and sense of pain" (Tzaddik #165)