Encore Archive

Welcome to Encore, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on topics of the moment. Each week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

To access the CLAL Encore Archive, click here.

To join the conversation at CLAL Encore Talk, click here.

(from Sh'ma 12/227, May 20, 1982)

The Opposition to Circumcision

By David Novak

Brit milah, the covenant of circumcision (Genesis 17:10), is the oldest Jewish rite and one whose importance has been continually emphasized in normative Judaism. Thus, for example, its operation is required even if the eighth day of the infant boy's life falls on the Sabbath or Yom Kippur (Sifra on Leviticus 12:3; Shabbat 19:2). Under any other circumstance (except a life-saving operation, see Mechilta on Exodus 31:14), the making of such an incision is forbidden (Babylonian Talmud, hereafter TB, Shabbat 107a). No other Jewish rite still practiced in our day has this priority over the Sabbath. Moreover, it is the only mitzvah permanently part of the flesh (see TB, Berachot, end re: Psalm 12:1).

Nevertheless, there have been times in Jewish history when certain Jews have openly abandoned the covenant of circumcision. Understanding what I believe to be the essential motivation for all of the opposition to this mitzvah will help us to better understand its importance in the constitution of authentically Jewish life. As the Talmud notes, "from the negative we infer the positive" (TB, Nedarim l l b).

During the Hellenistic period, we know that there were Jews who were very upset that their circumcision clearly made them look different from non-Jewish males. Anxious to be full and undifferentiated participants in the public gymnastic exercises, where the participants were all nude, these Jews submitted themselves to a painful operation whereby skin from the penile shaft was stretched to recover the glans. (See I Maccabees 1:11-15; TB, Shevuot 13a/top.) The essential motivation for this was clearly a rejection of covenantal closeness, which involves commandments which set the Jews apart from other people in order that they might more fully concentrate on the primacy of their unique relationship with God. (See, e.g., Sifra and Rashi on Leviticus 19:2.) That this happened in the Hellenistic period is significant, for it was during this period that Greek civilization, with its emphasis on the natural beauty of the unadorned and unimproved human body, was now seen as the ideal form of life for all humanity.

Early Reform Opposition

In the 1840's a group of radical reformers in Germany advocated the abolition of circumcision as being inconsistent with the universalism which they saw as the essence of Judaism. Just as in the Hellenistic period Greek civilization was seen as normative for more than just Greeks, so in this period German civilization was seen as normative for more than just Nordics. It is to the credit of such reformers as Abraham Geiger and Samuel Hirsch that they insisted that circumcision be maintained. For, although they themselves advocated the abolition or serious reformulation of many traditional commandments, it seems they did not wish to negate the covenant between God and Israel. Since circumcision is so covenantally constituted (see TB, Nedarim 32a), its abolition would very really indicate that the Jewish covenant with God no longer pertained. These other reformers were unwilling to make that radical a break with the God of Israel or with the rest of the people of Israel. One can see the same reasoning in the refusal of many Reform Jews earlier in this century to change the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday, for the Sabbath, too, is a covenant (Exodus 31:16). One can also see the same reasoning in the current resistance of many Reform Jews to permitting Jewish marriage--a covenant (Exodus 34:15-16; Malachi 2:14)--between a Jew and a non-Jew.

For the past sixty years or so, since circumcision has become the usual medical procedure for infant boys in this country, Jewish opposition to the covenant of circumcision has taken a new course. Since the old assimilationist purpose for being against circumcision per se no longer applies in America, this opposition has become an opposition to circumcision as a specifically religious procedure performed by a mohel on the eighth day, usually outside of the hospital. A number of Jews now have their sons circumcised, as any other infant boy would be circumcised, by physicians in the hospital prior to the eighth day, before the mother and baby return home. (Whether Jewish law in such cases requires the drawing of a drop of blood from the place from which the foreskin was removed is a point of dispute now at the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly. My colleague, Rabbi Joel Roth, sees it as a legal requirement; I do not. For further discussion of irregular circumcision, see my Law and Theology in Judaism, chapter 7.)

Medical Practice: Counter-Covenantal

Here again we see a counter-covenantal motive. For medical practice has become for many in this country an object of religious devotion--understanding "religious devotion" a la the late Paul Tillich's designation of it as "ultimate concern." (For a powerful critique of this whole phenomenon, see the book of my friend, Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., Confessions of a Medical Heretic, New York, 1980.) Therefore, resistance to religious circumcision, however rationalized, really reflects the belief that the covenant with modern medicine now determines what is to be done with the flesh (and the soul), and that this new covenant cannot be superceded by anything so ancient and parochial as the covenant between God and the descendants of Abraham. On purely objective medical grounds on the other hand, most physicians would readily admit that a good mohel, restricting himself as he does to just one operation, is more skilled in this area than they. The conflict arises when the physician's priestly role is chosen against the priestly role of the mohel performing what is, for Judaism today, the only blood sacrifice left. (Today a contemporary Hannah, instead of taking her first born son, Samuel, to the House of the Lord [I Samuel 1:24] might take him to be enrolled in a junior medical school in gratitude for fertility treatments!)

Lately, we have seen a new opposition to circumcision in general and the covenant of circumcision in particular. This opposition has been expressed as being motivated by a desire to alleviate needless pain for the infant. I suspect that this reflects the influence of such movements as natural childbirth and Lamaze, which attempt to alleviate as much of birth trauma (for both infant and parents) as is possible. Now whether the infant actually suffers pain from the circumcision or not is difficult to ascertain. A leading New York mohel, however, basing his assumption on his long and expert experience, says he thinks that the infant does feel some pain. Furthermore, whether or not the infant feels pain, the parents undoubtedly feel psychological pain, hence the wisdom of the common Jewish folk custom where the other women present at the brit milah force the mother to look away during the actual operation. (I have seen more than one father faint.)

Hedonism: Modern "Sacrament"

Can such concern with eliminating pain be considered counter-covenantal? (See TB, Berachot 33b.) I think so. For whatever suffering the infant undergoes is ephemeral with no lasting detrimental effects. (Cf., however, Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 3:49.) The real concern, it seems to me, is that the hedonism so prevalent in our culture has elevated sexual intercourse to the level of a sacrament. It is seen as the good above all other goods. Now the penis is the obvious initiator of this summum bonum. Therefore, this hedonism quickly becomes phallic worship. Perhaps the reason of the location of the sign of the covenant in the penis (Genesis 17:11) is to emphasize that the continuity of the covenantal people, of which it is the initial instrument, is existentially prior to any physical state, however ecstatically intense. Covenantally constituted procreation (see TB, Yevamot 63b-64a) takes precedence over sexual pleasure perse, although it by no means denies or denigrates the latter, as shown by my friend, Rabbi David M. Feldman, in his now classic study, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York, 1968). The anxiety associated with the performance of the covenant of circumcision is an existential affirmation of this truth. The covenant of circumcision emphasizes to the parents that their task is to teach their son that the covenantal relationship with God governs his whole life, his sexuality included. (See Psalm 73:25-28; TB, Kiddushin 30b.) In rabbinic lore the female loss of virginity at the beginning of marriage, with its pain, is seen as the female equivalent of the covenant of circumcision. (See TB, Sanhedrin 22b re Isaiah 54:5; also, Ibn Ezra on Genesis 3:16.)

Idolatry is Opposition to Covenant

Idolatry, as Maimonides emphasized (Guide of the Perplexed, 3:37), can be seen as the source of all opposition to the covenant. I think that his reasoning can be extended to opposition to the covenant of circumcision specifically. In the Hellenistic period and in mid-19th century Germany, it was the idolatry of trying to negate Jewish particularism. More recently it is the idolatry of regarding modern medicine as our covenant and the physicians as our priest for rites de passage. Finally, the newest anti-covenantal idolatry, so appropriate for our narcissistic culture, is that nothing be done which would indicate that bodily pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. Resistance to the circumcision of the foreskin of the penis is essentially rooted in the resistance to the covenant which requires, as Scripture says, "circumcision of the heart" (Deuteronomy 27:9). Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose!