Our Sunday session is three hours
long. Today we had a guest speaker,
worked on our i-movie Pirkei Avot
commentaries, wrote thank you note for two guest speakers and parsed out Jewish
birthing traditions through a readers’ theater enactment of a short play.
What is a brit
milah?
Dr./Mohelet Jennifer
Novick was
our honored guest speaker in the Gesher class on Sunday, November 12th. Jen led a fascinating discussion of both
the ritual and procedure of Brit
Milah, ritual circumcision, for our students as part of our Jewish
Life Cycle study. Some of
the content of our discussion follows. For
more information, ask a Gesher student!
The session began with a discussion of “brit” or
covenant. What is a
covenant? The Brit Milah is an agreement between God and the
Jewish people. In Genesis, chapter 17, God promises to be our God and to give
us the Land of Israel. In
exchange, Avraham promises, on behalf of all Jews, to let God be our God and to
circumcise our sons as a sign of our agreement. In fact, the mitzvah to circumcise
one’s sons is a hok, a type of law for which there is no
logical rationale. We must
do it because God said so.
The mitzvah of Brit
Milah is specifically for
fathers and if the father cannot circumcise his own son he must find somebody,
a mohel (male) or mohelet (female), who can do it for
him. This mitzvah is so
important that if the eighth day falls on Shabbat or even Yom Kippur, the brit milah often still takes place.
Some commentators suggest that circumcision offers humans the
opportunity to partner with God in the process of Creation. Rabbi Lebo suggests
that birth is a miracle and we are compelled to do something mysterious and
powerful to honor that miracle. Further,
this ritual helps bring new parents closer to God.
We learned that the Brit
Milah service has four
parts:
(1) Everybody and the baby are welcomed. It is a special honor to bring the
baby into the room in which the Brit
Milah will take place and an
even greater honor to hold the baby during the circumcision.
(2) The circumcision which lasts less than 30 seconds!
(3) Naming the baby
(4) The seudat
mitzvah or festive meal (all
Jewish milestone events are punctuated by a communal meal). Did you know that is customary to eat round
foods at a brit milah to symbolize
the cycle of life?
And we learned that the foreskin is not discarded. It is buried.
Jen brought some of the tools: forceps and a Morgan clamp, used in
the brit milah. Students were fascinated! They had the opportunity to touch and hold
these tools and to understand their use.
Our session with Jen was extraordinary! We were engaged, informed and brought
closer to this significant ritual. During
the presentation, she suggested that like rabbis and cantors, mohelim are klei kodesh, holy vessels, who
bring holiness into the lives of others. This was certainly our
experience! Toddah
Rabbah, thank you so very much.
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