Rabbi Chagai Londin from the Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot - Shabbat Bi-shabbato Parshas Vayishlach
The basic desire for life of a human being contains within it a yearning for eternal perfection. This might even be considered "a yearning for Divinity." It encompasses a desire not to make do with the limited life of this world but to leave behind a visible sign even after death.
Since this desire cannot be fulfilled fully in our life on this world, which is limited by time and space, this goal is transformed into a psychological urge expressed as sexual drive. At its deepest, sexual desire is the will to have children, in order to continue to appear in future generations in an infinite number of souls, feelings, actions, and places – that is, to become part of the chain of future generations, to live for all eternity. Sexual drive is the mainstay a human personality, and control over it is therefore the key to control of the personality in general. This is not an easy task, in view of the great power with which it is revealed in the soul. As Rav Kook wrote, "the inclination of illicit sex (sexual drive) can completely envelop a person... because it is linked to the desire for continuing to live over a span of all the coming generations. On the other hand, with respect to sanctity, it is possible through the holiness of the Brit to rise up to the level of a righteous person for all the coming generations." [Orot Hakodesh 3:298].
In order to fulfill the human desire to achieve perfection, in order to extricate the bodily dimensions from their limitations, it is necessary to peel away the external shells of physical coarseness. The Brit makes it possible to help the body come in direct contact with the absolute and the eternal. With the mitzva of the Brit, we remove the physical obstruction from the reproductive organ of mankind, and this is an expression of removing the bodily "shell" and revealing the dimension of value that exists in the flesh. "And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins. And this will be a sign of a covenant between Me and you." [Bereishit 17:11]. The possibility of achieving perfection, of creating – as it were – a "covenant" between us and G-d, depends on the purity of the sexual drive. The mitzva of the Brit is an expression of the fact that we see within the sexual drive the internal dimension that lies within it and not only the sensual shell that surrounds it. The word "orlah" (the foreskin) in the Torah means something that is "blocked." When we remove the "orlah" of the flesh, we are in effect removing the "foreskin" of the heart and in this way we remove the blocking of our soul
