{"id":46900,"date":"2019-01-03T13:53:27","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T11:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=46900"},"modified":"2022-04-21T13:45:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T10:45:46","slug":"to-be-whole-and-holy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/to-be-whole-and-holy\/","title":{"rendered":"To Be Whole and Holy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[368],"acf":{"old_id":"46900","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36663,"related_cahpter":"1025","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"\"Circumcision\" is readily accessible to all Jews who can carry the power of heart and lips to resist the Pharaohs in our world","content":"

Being circumcised profoundly shapes our understanding of what it means to be a Jew.\u00a0 When Abraham wants a physical sign of his covenant with God he is told to “circumcise the flesh of your foreskin” (Genesis 17: 11). This week’s portion Va’era contains an understanding of circumcision as not limited to the male sexual organ but as a state of being that is connected to speech.\u00a0 Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible it is connected to the heart as well, but here Moses protests to God that he won’t be capable of convincing Pharaoh to listen to him because, “I am of uncircumcised lips” (Exodus 6:12, 30).<\/p>\n

What is this peculiar expression conveying?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The word “a-r-l” for either “foreskin” or “uncircumcised” depending on whether it is literal or metaphorical appears 35 times in our Hebrew Bible and can mean “sealed off” “uncircumcised” or a “fruit tree that has not yet produced its harvest,” according to the Even-Shoshan concordance. It can refer to ears (Jeremiah 6:10), the heart (Leviticus 26:41, Jeremiah 9:25, Ezekiel 44:7, 9), and to non-Jews (Judges 14:3, I Samuel 17: 26, 36; Jeremiah 9:25 and others).<\/p>\n

So why does Moses see himself as of uncircumcised lips twice in trying to avoid the prophetic commission God is assigning him?<\/p>\n

The notion that these concepts share is being closed off to the world, covered over, sealed as Rashi astutely notes on 6:12. Circumcision is a process of opening oneself to the possibility of God’s message.\u00a0 For Abraham it is part of his covenant and chance to be “tamim” (Genesis 17:1), “complete.” For Moses, if he is willing to convey God’s message, he too will be whole, enabling both others and himself to be vessels for the possibility of liberation, not to assume that lips, hearts, ears or sexual organs must always remain impervious to messages of transformation and impermeable to the holy.<\/p>\n

That is why though circumcision is physical for men it is readily accessible to all Jews who can carry the metaphorical power of heart and lips that connect us to the message of God both for ourselves and to resist the Pharaohs in our world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":81258,"id":81258,"title":"ps21-lips","filename":"ps21-lips.jpeg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ps21-lips.jpeg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/areshet-sefateynu-the-utterance-of-our-lips\/ps21-lips\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ps21-lips","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":81257,"date":"2020-10-12 08:02:48","modified":"2022-04-21 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