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Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: I just wanted to ask, why it's so important for Jewish boys to be circumcised. Why would G-d ask us to cut away a piece of his own creation, it just doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm a post-war European Jew, so my mother wouldn't have me circumcised because she didn't see any loyalty to G-d in it, but I suspect it also might have to do with the fear of easy recognition like in the war. So now, I'm having quite a hard time deciding whether I would be more Jewish or not if I had that piece of myself cut away. I'm sorry to put such an strange question to you, but I hope you'll be able to answer it. Shalom from the Netherlands. P. |
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A:First of all, P, your question isn't strange at all. I'm not going to pretend that there aren't lots of people who are wondering about this ritual and its meaning. And I want to let you know that it is okay that this is a difficult issue for you. Having said that, let me try to answer some of your questions. I want to explain why we might want to cut away a piece of God's creation and what some of the symbolic meanings of circumcision are, and finish with some communal, as opposed to ritual/symbolic, reasons why you might want to do this. Believe it or not, the blessing that is traditionally said before eating bread is relevant here. That blessing praises God as "hamotsi lehem min ha'arets -- the One that brings forth bread from the earth." Now, when was the last time you saw bread sprouting from the earth? Rather, God created human beings to "finish" God's creation of bread. We are partners in creation and when we create for the good (to use a favorite phrase of my father of blessed memory), it is as if God Itself were creating. This principle, that God left changes to be made in the world by human beings, shows up in a number of ways in Judaism: in the idea of tikkun olam, or in the balance between the command to rest on the Shabbat and the command to work on the other days, for example. So human activity in the world, which changes the world, is part and parcel of human perfection. Judaism understands the removal of a Jewish male's foreskin as the same sort of perfecting activity, the same sort of completion of God's creation, as the cutting down, grinding, and baking of God's wheat. It is one of the ways in which we make sexuality intentional and human. In fact, Judaism sees a lot of parallels between circumcision and rituals dealing with agriculture. The first three years of a tree's fruit, which are not to be harvested, are known in Hebrew by the same word as the foreskin, orlah. I personally suspect that circumcision is also related to the practice of leaving the corners of the fields unharvested (except by the poor). There is a feeling that hoarding all of God's productivity to oneself ends up being unproductive. (Note, of course, that the penis is an organ of human productivity.) But of course, the main symbolism of Jewish circumcision is that of a covenant that links the generations to each other and to God. God said to Avraham: As for you, you are to keep my covenant, you and your seed after you, throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you are to keep, between me and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, so that it may serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you. I understand from your comments that your mother may have decided that God was no longer a reliable partner in covenant after the Holocaust. That's a difficult theological problem. But whatever we may say about God after the Holocaust, there remains the question of the covenant among the Jews, ourselves. A very large majority of the Jewish people of every denomination believe that circumcision is an essential sign, for males, of the Jewish covenant, however they understand that term. There is a phrase in your question, P, that pains my heart: "the fear of easy recognition like in the war." It pains me that Hitler (yimakh shmo -- may his name be erased) may still be instilling fear in Jewish hearts. There is a Hebrew phrase that is not very nice -- it's a swear-phrase, a nasty curse -- but it is so appropriate to this situation that I, a rabbi, will write it on the Web. The phrase is: zayin ba'ayin. It means "a penis in your eye." You can imagine the equivalent English phrase. For a Jew in post-holocaust Europe to enter the covenant of circumcision -- brit milah -- is a real, literal zayin ba'ayin to Hitler. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
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