Brit Milah
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- Duration: 4:22
- Published: 2010-04-11
- Uploaded: 2011-02-20
- Author: solomonsimonj
Abrahamian Brit Milah
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:Abram was 99 years old. God appeared to him and said, 'I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be perfect. I will make a covenant between Me and you, and I will increase your numbers very much.' [...] This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you. 'Throughout all generations, every male shall be circumcised when he is eight days old. [This shall include] those born in your house, as well as [slaves] bought with cash from an outsider, who is not your descendant. [All slaves,] both houseborn and purchased with your money must be circumcised. This shall be My covenant in your flesh, an eternal covenant. The uncircumcised male whose foreskin has not been circumcised, shall have his soul cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant. ()
As well as in : :On the eighth day, [the child's] foreskin shall be circumcised.
According to the Hebrew Bible, it was "a reproach" for an Israelite to be uncircumcised (Joshua 5:9.) The name arelim ("uncircumcised" [plural]) is used opprobriously, denoting the Philistines and other non-Israelites (I Samuel 14:6, 31:4; II Samuel 1:20) and used in conjunction with tameh (unpure) for heathen (Isaiah 52:1). The word arel ("uncircumcised" [singular]) is also employed for "impermeable" (Leviticus 26:41, "their uncircumcised hearts"; compare Jeremiah 9:25; Ezekiel 44:7,9); it is also applied to the first three years' fruit of a tree, which is forbidden (Leviticus 19:23).
However, the Israelites born in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt were not circumcised. Joshua 5:2-9, explains, "all the people that came out" of Egypt were circumcised, but those "born in the wilderness" were not. Therefore Joshua, before the celebration of the Passover, had them circumcised at Gilgal specifically before they entered Canaan. Abraham, too, was circumcised when he moved into Canaan.
The prophetic tradition emphasizes that God expects people to be good as well as pious, and that non-Jews will be judged based on their ethical behavior. Thus, Jeremiah 9:25-26 says that circumcised and uncircumcised will be punished alike by the Lord; for "all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart."
The penalty of non-observance is kareth (spiritual excision from the Jewish nation), as noted in . Conversion to Judaism for non-Israelites in Biblical times necessitated circumcision otherwise one could not partake in the Passover offering (). Today, as in the time of Abraham, it is required of converts in Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism . ().
As found in Genesis 17:1-14, Brit milah is considered to be so important that should the eighth day fall on the Sabbath, actions that would normally be forbidden because of the sanctity of the day are permitted in order to fulfill the requirement to circumcise. The Talmud, when discussing the importance of Milah, compares it to being equal to all other mitzvot based on the gematria for brit of 612.
According to the traditional Jewish sources, the 'priah' is performed, as part of the Jewish circumcision, since the Israelites first inhabited the Land of Israel. However, the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, argues that many Hellenistic Jews had an operation performed to conceal the fact of their circumcision, and that similar action was taken during the Hadrianic persecution, in which period a prohibition against circumcision was issued. Thus, hypothesize the editors, it was probably in order to prevent the possibility of obliterating the traces of circumcision that the rabbis added to the requirement of cutting the foreskin that of priah. The frenulum may also be cut away at the same time, in a procedure called frenectomy.
A sterilized glass tube is now used. However, the practice has become a controversy in both secular and Jewish medical ethics. The ritual of metzitzah is found in Mishnah Shabbat 19:2, which lists it as one of the four steps involved in the circumcision rite. The Chasam Sofer observed that the Talmud states that the rationale for this part of the ritual was hygienic — i.e., to protect the health of the child. The Chasam Sofer contended that metzitzah with a sponge would accomplish the same purpose as oral suction. His letter was published in Kochvei Yitzchok. The Maharam Shik, a student of the Chasam Sofer, states in his book of Responsa, She’eilos U’teshuvos Maharam Shik (Orach Chaim 152,) that the Chasam Sofer gave the ruling in that specific instance only and that it may not be applied elsewhere. He also states (Yoreh Deah 244) that the practice is possibly a Sinaitic tradition, i.e., Halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai.
The Sdei Chemed claimed the practice to be Halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai and elaborates on what prompted the Chasam Sofer to give the above ruling:. He tells the story that a student of the Chasam Sofer, Lazar Horowitz, author of Yad Elazer and Chief Rabbi of Vienna at the time, needed the ruling because of a governmental attempt to ban circumcision completely if it included Metztitzah b'peh. He therefore asked the Chasam Sofer to give him permission to do Brit milah without metzitzah b’peh. When he presented the defense in court, they erroneously recorded his testimony to mean that the Chasam Sofer stated it as a general ruling.
In three medical papers done in Israel, Canada, and the USA, oral suction following circumcision was suggested as a cause in 11 cases of neonatal herpes. Researchers noted that prior to 1997, neonatal herpes reports in Israel were rare, and that the late incidinces were corralated with the mothers not carrying the virus themselves.
Because of the risk of infection, some rabbinical authorities have ruled that the traditional practice of direct contact should be replaced by using a glass tube between the wound and the mohel's mouth, so there is no direct oral contact. The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest group of Modern Orthodox rabbis, endorses this method. The RCA paper states: "Rabbi Schachter even reports that Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik reports that his father, Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, would not permit a mohel to perform metzitza be’peh with direct oral contact, and that his grandfather, Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, instructed mohelim in Brisk not to do metzitza be’peh with direct oral contact. However, although Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik also generally prohibited metzitza be’peh with direct oral contact, he did not ban it by those who insisted upon it,...". The sefer Mitzvas Hametzitzah by Rabbi Sinai Schiffer of Baden, Germany, states that he is in possession of letters from 36 major Russian (Lithuanian) rabbis that categorically prohibit Metzitzah with a sponge and require it to be done orally. Among them is Rabbi Chaim Halevi Soloveitchik of Brisk.
Additionally, the Talmud explicitly instructs that a boy must not be circumcised if he had two brothers who died due to complications arising from their circumcisions; this may be due to a concern about haemophilia.
A brit milah is not considered complete unless blood is actually drawn. This is not the intentional spilling of blood. The standard medical methods of circumcision through constriction do not meet the requirements of the halakhah for brit milah, because they cause hemostasis, i.e., they stop the flow of blood. A brit milah, to be conducted properly, requires the use of a specialized surgical knife, called an , which does allow for dam brit.
Unlike the traditional Jewish method, when circumcision is performed by a urologist or other surgeon the foreskin is removed by constriction, either with the use of clamps or a synthetic ring. This non-Jewish method works by crushing the skin until it is severed. The nerve endings and the blood vessels are severed in the same manner, causing pain and hemostasis.
The expressly ritual element of circumcision in Judaism, as distinguished from its non-ritual requirement in Islam, is shown by the requirement that a child who either is born aposthetic (without a foreskin) or who has been circumcised without the ritual must nevertheless undergo a Brit milah in which a drop of blood (hatafat-dam, הטפת דם) is drawn from the penis at the point where the foreskin would have been or was attached.
The laws of conversion and conversion-related circumcision in Orthodox Judaism have numerous complications, and authorities recommend that a rabbi be consulted well in advance.
In Conservative Judaism, the Milah l'Shem giur procedure is also performed for a boy whose mother has not converted, but with the intention that the child be raised Jewish. This conversion of a child to Judaism without the conversion of the mother is allowed by Conservative interpretations of halakha. Conservative Rabbis will authorize it only under the condition that the child be raised as a Jew in a single-faith household. Should the mother convert, and if the boy has not yet reached his third birthday, the child may be immersed in the mikveh with the mother, after the mother has already immersed, to become Jewish. If the mother does not convert, the child may be immersed in a mikveh, or body of natural waters, to complete the child's conversion to Judaism. This can be done before the child is even one year old. If the child did not immerse in the mikveh, or the boy was too old, then the child may choose of their own accord to become Jewish at age 13 as a Bar Mitzvah, and complete the conversion then.
*The ceremony, when performed l'Shem giur, does not have to be performed on a particular day, and does not override Shabbat and Jewish Holidays.
Where the procedure was performed but not followed by immersion or other requirements of the conversion procedure (e.g., in Conservative Judaism, where the mother has not converted), if the boy chooses to complete the conversion at Bar Mitzvah, a Milah l'shem giur performed when the boy was an infant removes the obligation to undergo either a full brit milah or hatafat dam brit.
Rabbi Saadia Gaon considers something to be 'complete', if it lacks nothing, but also has nothing that is unneeded. He regards the foreskin an unneeded organ that God created in man, and so by amputating it, the man is completed.
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon "Rambam", CE 1135-1204), who apart from being a great Torah scholar was also a physician and philosopher, argued that circumcision acts to repress sexual pleasure and serves as a common bodily sign to members of the same faith.
The author of Sefer ha-Chinuch provides three reasons for the practice of circumcision: #To complete the form of man, by removing what he claims to be a redundant organ; #To mark the chosen people, so their body will be different as their soul is; The organ chosen for the mark is the one responsible for the sustenance of the specie. #Said completion isn't congenital, but left to the man. This implies, that as he completes the form of his body, so can he complete the form of his soul.
Talmud professor Daniel Boyarin offered two explanations for circumcision. One is that it is a literal inscription on the Jewish body of the name of God in the form of the letter "yud" (from "yesod"). The second is that the act of bleeding represents a feminization of Jewish men, significant in the sense that the covenant represents a marriage between Jews and (a symbolically male) God.Some contemporary Jews choose not to circumcise their sons. They are assisted by a small number of Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis, and have developed a welcoming ceremony that they call the brit shalom ("Covenant [of] Peace") for such children, also accepted by Humanistic Judaism.
This ceremony of brit shalom is not officially approved of by the Reform or Reconstructionist rabbinical organizations, who make the recommendation that male infants should be circumcised, though the issue of converts remains controversial and circumcision of converts is not mandatory in either movement.
However, the connection of the Reform movement to an anti-circumcision, pro-symbolic stance is a historical one. From the early days of the movement in Germany, some classical Reformers hoped to replace ritual circumcision "with a symbolic act, as has been done for other bloody practices, such as the sacrifices." As a result, many European Jewish fathers during the nineteenth century chose not to circumcise their sons, including Theodore Herzl. In the US, an official Reform resolution in 1893 abolished circumcision for converts, and this ambivalence towards the practice has carried over to classical-minded Reform Jews today. In Rabbi Elyse Wechterman's essay A Plea for Inclusion, she argues that, even in the absence of circumcision, committed Jews should never be turned away, especially by a movement "where no other ritual observance is mandated". She goes on to advocate for an alternate covenant ceremony, brit atifah, for both boys and girls as a welcoming ritual into Judaism. With a continuing negativity towards circumcision still present within a minority of modern-day Reform, Judaic scholar Jon Levenson has warned that if they "continue to judge brit milah to be not only medically unnecessary but also brutalizing and mutilating...the abhorrence of it expressed by some early Reform leaders will return with a vengeance", proclaiming that circumcision will be "the latest front in the battle over the Jewish future in America." Nevertheless, it has "remained a central rite" in Reform Judaism, and the Union for Reform Judaism has, since 1984, trained and certified over 300 practicing mohels under its "Berit Mila Program".
In Israel, the small minority of Jewish and non-Jewish families that chose not to have their sons circumcised, has formed a support group in the year 2000. Over two and a half years, 200 couples have enlisted. Meanwhile, Ya'acov Malkin, the academic director of the College of Judaism as Culture in Israel, who circumcised his own son 50 years before "because of habit, because it was a custom, it is a custom of the Jews", says of circumcision: "I don't regard it as a religious act at all... if it's medically not necessary, it's not necessary." The U.S.A based Secular and Humanistic Jews Movement, that also has members in Israel, argues that "circumcision is not required for Jewish identity."
Category:Jewish law and rituals Category:Jewish observances Category:Hebrew words and phrases Category:Circumcision Category:Jewish medical ethics Category:Penis Category:Birth in Judaism Category:Religion and children Category:Rites of passage
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![Jewish Brit Mila Part 3-3 [HD]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110225075820im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yzym1xsEkP8/0.jpg "Jewish Brit Mila Part 3-3 [HD]")
