Rabbi Shai Held, in his essay on Ekev in The Heart of Torah, points out that this verse could be seen as contradicting an earlier one in Devarim: “You must circumcise… the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more” (Deuteronomy 10:16).
Who is to circumcise your heart, you yourself (chapter 10) or the Divine (chapter 30), and what’s involved in such a potentially painful sounding act?
The aspiration that the thickening around our hearts be cut away is a desire for life-changing openness. The heart, the lev, in the Torah is connected to thought as well as feeling. It’s the centre of our very being.
So, when we are commanded in Devarim 10 to cut away the thickening around our hearts, we are challenged to have the will to cultivate a profound emotional and intellectual openness. As Rosh Hashanah, and this time of returning to our best selves, is before us, we must, ourselves, cut away the thickening about our hearts by truly and powerfully wanting to change — and doing what we can to effect this. If we don’t want to change, we won’t.
