This is largely a summary of פחד יצחק, פסח, מאמר נג. I found it fascinating and I will not be able to do it justice in only 40 minutes. Any errors are entirely mine.
The end of פרשת אחרי מות lists the עריות, the laws of forbidden relationships, and is introduced as follows;
Why mention מעשה ארץ מצרים and מעשה ארץ כנען? Most laws of the Torah are apodictic; why say that these in particular were done by other nations. And if they weren’t, they would be OK? Rashi says it tells us something about how awful those nations were:
But still, why should we care? Other מפרשי הפשט give a practical reason: our intution of “normal” comes from what we observe, so living among these nations would make us think that these acts are not immoral:
Rav Hutner is struck by the contrast with the conclusion of this section:
What happened to מעשה ארץ מצרים?
His answer is that מעשה ארץ מצרים and מעשה ארץ כנען actually refer to much broader categories than just עריות. There are two distinct aspects of our relationship with הקב״ה:
The sin of מעשה ארץ מצרים is rejecting יציאת מצרים; it is violating קבלו מלכותי, destroying the relationship between ה׳ and בני ישראל. ארץ ישראל, on the other hand, is the place where we fulfill ה׳'s will; as Rav Hutner says (in סעיף ט) על ידי הכניסה לארץ ישראל הם באים למקום העבודה ממש. The sin of מעשה ארץ כנען is rejecting those laws; it is violating קבלו גזרותי.
In this, our relationship to הקב״ה is like a marriage:
It’s an interesting idea, but he goes further. It isn’t just relevant to Jewish history, but to our personal relationships with הקב״ה:
The parallel is how we do תשובה. Just like for כנסת ישראל there reaches a point that ה׳ will no longer forgive and ejects us from ארץ ישראל, so too there is a point where ה׳ makes it impossible for us to do תשובה:
Rav Dessler develops this idea in his מאמר התשובה:
The gemara asks: is this only a problem with heresy, rejecting ה׳ entirely? We have a famous story about תשובה:
Rav Hutner offers a metaphor:
And that brings us back to our parasha. The sins of עריות are not מינות, heretical, but are so easily seen as normal and physiologically reinforcing (call it “addicting”) that it is easy to get to the point of דאביק בה טובא, from where it is nearly impossible to return. And this is what happened to בני ישראל historically. They didn’t reject ה׳ per se, but they adopted the culture of ארץ כנען so thoroughly that תקיא הארץ אתכם בטמאכם אתה כאשר קאה את הגוי אשר לפניכם, and because of that, lost all their connection to הקב״ה, losing the גאולת מצרים as well.
And the interplay of the national and the individual teaches us a profound lesson in the nature of our relationship with הקב״ה.