For many people, just hearing the words “tikkun ha’bris” brings feelings of heaviness, and the days of Shovavim can be seen as difficult days of fasting and teshuva. But what if Shovavim was not a time of separating from pleasure, but rather a time of pursuing pleasure!
Hashem wants us to live a life of pleasure.
So much so, that He urges us to avoid the counterfeit pleasures of the yetzer hara, which start off as sweet and end in bitterness, so that we can experience true bliss — the genuine spiritual pleasure of a life of closeness with Hashem.
The entire topic of shmiras ha’bris is not there to reduce the pleasure we can have in life.
On the contrary, shmiras ha’bris gives us the only true pleasure you can get in the world — the genuine pleasure of a close relationship with our Creator.
The Zohar Hakadosh explains that the orlah is not just a piece of skin that needs to be removed during a bris milah. Rather, the orlah is a term for the klippos and the yetzer hara, which represent anything that covers over and conceals the light of Hashem from us.
Our responsibility to uphold our side of the bris is not just to remove the orlah, but also to remove anything that covers our emunah and damages our relationship with Hashem.
Cutting off the klippos includes separating ourselves from sin and temptation — but we must remember that the end goal is not to “not do aveiros.” That is just the prerequisite, and the gateway, to what it really means to uphold our bris with Hashem, which is to feel and experience a life of emunah, a life of truth, and a life of genuine pleasure.
The more we cut off the klippos that conceal Hashem’s Presence from us, the more our neshama will automatically experience the presence of Hashem with more clarity.
And that is the greatest pleasure of all!
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 65.