PORTLAND, ME — Beforehand, there was a lot of handshaking, hugging and catching up.
Afterward came the singing, celebrating and eating.
What happened in between – the ancient Jewish ritual that brought everyone together – was over in the blink of an eye, or one small stroke of a scalpel.
Ritual of Bris Brings Jews Together
PORTLAND, ME — Beforehand, there was a lot of handshaking, hugging and catching up.
Afterward came the singing, celebrating and eating.
What happened in between – the ancient Jewish ritual that brought everyone together – was over in the blink of an eye, or one small stroke of a scalpel.
Welcome to a bris, a traditional Jewish circumcision.
Circumcision is cause for much anxiety and some controversy for many Americans. About 56 percent of male babies in the United States have their foreskins removed today, compared with 85 percent in 1965.
Among Jewish families, however, the bris remains a strongly held religious tradition, even if there are variations in the ceremony that accompanies it, local Jewish leaders said. The ritual continues the eternal bond between Jewish people and God, said Rabbi Moshe Wilansky, director of the Chabad House-Lubavitch, a branch of Hasidic Judaism.
“It’s the same way they did it from Abraham’s time,” Wilansky said. “It’s a covenant between the person and God. Some people might use different medical ways, but the meaning is the same.”
More liberal Jewish parents, for example, might have the circumcision done by a physician trained to follow religious customs, either at the hospital or in their homes. Traditional ceremonies involve specially trained rabbis.
“It’s one of the rituals that seems to bridge all levels of Judaism,” said Richard Buckberg, a physician’s assistant at Maine Medical Center who had a traditional bris for his first son earlier this year.
Like other Jews, Buckberg said the traditional Jewish circumcision, along with the deeper spiritual meaning, is faster and less traumatic than the hospital version. “I cried more than my son did,” he joked.
Wilansky and his wife Chana had their son Shmuel circumsized last month in a traditional orthodox ceremony, one performed eight days after birth by a rabbi known as a mohel (pronounced mo-el or moy-el). Shmuel is Hebrew for Samuel.
The ceremony was a large one, with more than 200 friends and family members gathered in the community room at The Cedars, a home for the elderly in Portland where Wilansky serves as a rabbi. Most are small enough gatherings to be held in the family’s home.
But, like most, this one also was filled with sanctity and levity. Shmuel’s was the seventh bris for the Wilansky family. (The couple has seven sons and six daughters.)
The actual procedure gets easier over time, but only a little, said Wilansky, who held Shmuel during the circumcision rather than giving the honor to a relative or close friend. “It took me seven kids to want to hold him,” he joked.
montreal post sem
go rabbi sperlin!
us
MAZEL TOV!
Shluchim Who Know...
The Wilansky’s are Model Shluchim and an inspiration to many of us! Thank you for what you do, and keep doing it!
raskins from vermont
mazal tov!!!!!!!!111
Rubins
Mazel Tov!!!!! From ur cousins in CH.
Roedy Green
Jews traditionally have a rabbi called a mohel circumcise male infants in a ceremony called a bris. The procedure is unsanitary. The mohel uses a knife to remove the foreskin then puts the infant’s penis in his mouth and ritually sucks blood from the wound. The mouth and saliva are highly septic. Two mohels in New York city with herpes, who have already infected eleven infants and killed two, are insisting on continuing to perform the ceremony in the traditional unsanitary way. I object on five grounds:
-I don’t care how long-standing a tradition, no one has the right to deliberately infect an 8-day old baby with herpes and kill it.
-I don’t care how long-standing a tradition, no one has the right to perform an operation on a baby in septic conditions.
-I don’t care how long-standing a tradition, no one has the right to perform an operation on a baby without anaesthesia.
-I don’t care how long-standing a tradition, no one has the right to perform an operation on a baby without surgical training. And they certainly should not be drinking! Mohels, who lack medical training, often bungle the procedure, accidentally removing or deforming the penis.
-Circumcision is painful, and impairs sexual sensitivity for a lifetime. No one has the right to perform this operation without consent. It is not the parent’s decision, but the child’s. The decision should be postponed at least until bar mitzvah. The tradition already makes alternate provision for this.
At the very least, mohels should modify the ritual to make it sanitary, and to refrain from performing it if they are infected with diseases harmful to infants.