Some people today won’t give their child a bris milah on the eighth day unless they have proof that it’s safe, and at the other end of the world, young men are opting for the holy ritual even though they don’t even have two Jewish parents. What they do have is the answer to Yishmael
Ihope that by the time my readers in New York read these words their prayers will have been answered and the decree on bris milah that they are currently fighting will have been removed. In any case it is surprising that free America of all places should see a revival — albeit in a smaller proportion — of the ancient Greek ban on bris milah and for us it raises a red flag making us wonder what else those who would strike at Torah observance may have in store for us chalilah.
When I read in the news about the campaign against metzitzah b’peh in New York as well as the vote by Germany’s parliament preserving the legality of bris milah I recalled some of my own experiences related to this topic.
A few years back when I was giving a weekly lecture series to a group of secular women in one of Israel’s affluent upper-crust communities one of the participants announced the birth of her first grandchild a boy. She was vehemently opposed to making the bris on the eighth day. “He’s so small ” she argued. “I can’t bear to hear him cry. Let him grow a little and then we’ll give him a bris under anesthesia. Tell me k’vod harav ” she said to me defiantly “don’t you think it’s cruel to do a bris on an eight-day-old baby?”
I’ll admit I didn’t have a ready answer for her. For one who believes in the Divinity of the Torah no such question exists. HaKadosh Baruch Hu commanded us to make a bris on the eighth day and we don’t ask questions. But what could I tell this woman who’s not connected to this belief system?
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