Nitzavim - You Don’t Need to Become More Jewish. You Need to Become More Yourself.

Most of us assume that Yiddishkeit is something being asked of us from the outside. And when it feels difficult, we take that difficulty as proof that it is not really who we are.

But the Torah says something very different: “Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od”—it is already exceedingly close, in your mouth and in your heart.

In this shiur, delivered in Tomer Devorah, Rav Burg explores the startling idea that Torah is not foreign to the Jewish soul. It may become buried beneath habit, shame, or the noise of the yetzer hara, but buried is not gone. Drawing on the Rambam, Tanya, Maharal, Rav Tzadok, and Rav Kook, we discover why our struggles do not get to define us, why damage is not divorce, and why teshuvah is not about creating a new self. It is about finding our way back to the person we were all along.