My son the half-Brit was unable to have a full-brith after his birth. At least, according to traditional Jewish law, which follows matrilineal descent. The word brith (pronounced Brit and also sometimes spelled bris but where's the pun in that?) means "covenant". The full Hebrew phrase is "brith milah" which translates as "covenant of circumcision". My damn iPad autocorrect keeps writing "brith Milan" which would be a covenant of Milan, sounding like a secret society for fashionistas. Anyway, a brith is supposed to be the first step towards actively joining the Jewish people and being bound by the rules of (their? our? everyone's?) God. A covenant is a posher, more poetic-sounding version of a contract. Posher, more poetic and supposedly unbreakable.
Thus, a religious Jewish snip is called a "brith" while a common or garden snip is called a circumcision. Not that either word makes a blind bit of difference to an eight-day old baby. In our case it was about six weeks from birth to circumcision since Sam was underweight and a touch fragile on entering the world.
The only people present were myself, his mother and the Masorti mohel, which might sound like an Italian racing car but in fact refers to the man who cuts the foreskin (that's the mohel bit), while the Masorti refers to a more modern and liberal branch of the Jewish religion. Our Master of Ceremonies, whose day job was as a surgeon, employed a quirky mix of ritual and hospital. What you might call brith control.
I've seen a few circumcisions over the years and can confirm that the more orthodox the ceremony, the more, how shall we say, biblical the procedure: a blade and a sip of wine as anaesthetic. By contrast, ours involved some snazzy and sophisticated operating theatre implements. It was reassuringly high-tech, although the main piece of equipment looked like a clamp and confused the heck out of me. It stressed me even more because it seemed to be snipping the entire thing in half rather than simply removing a flap of skin.
The Maserati mohel had apparently clamped this instrument onto the tiny protrusion and then folded it onto itself. He maintained this worrying position for what seemed like an eternity while insisting that I repeat several blessings, word for word, after him. Never have Hebrew sounds been uttered with such sweaty, desperate intensity as in those few seconds.
In that excruciatingly elongated moment I genuinely wondered whether the nice Jewish doctor was a in fact a psycho-killer in disguise. But thank the Lord-of-non-or-half-Jewish-babies that suddenly it was all over and I was relieved to discover that my son's tiny tinkler was still intact, minus its cap. P, on the other hand, took some convincing that he hadn't chopped the thing in half. I told her if he had there would be rather a lot of blood. By the way, P taking part in the ceremony-operation was extremely unusual: most Jewish mothers retreat in horror to another room, leaving the theatrics to their menfolk.
The local anesthetic, something shunned by traditionalists in favor of a drop or two of wine, had also done it's job. Thankfully, Sam healed well over the next week or so and, apart from one panicky moment, we survived without the mohel's promised follow-up visit. Which was just as well since it was a promise he didn't keep. Still, we did carry out his surprisingly orthodox suggestion that we bury the foreskin rather than chuck it.
I say "orthodox" because according to that ancient world view, human parts - skin, organs, nail clippings, pretty much everything except for the unpleasant internal emissions - must all be buried. This is in anticipation of the Messianic era and the corresponding resurrection of the dead. In my view, and that of many others, such behavior is both philosophically absurd and, from a practical point of view, well, also absurd. Nevertheless, bury the foreskin we did, in a shallow grave somewhere in Tiradents square. How very Jewish of me: deride a practice, mock it, but then do it anyway.
The area in which we have been living, and in which this circumcision took place, is still quite Jewish, but mainly Jews of a traditional and orthodox hue - the type for whom this blurring of surgery and ritual is anathema. For them, it's very simple: my son is not Jewish and therefore he can't have a brith. A circumcision to them is meaningless. There can be no blurring of lines according to the obsessive-compulsive motif of traditional Judaism. I partly agree with them.
Well, Sam is the product of a blurred union. Of course I wish his life to be one of perfect clarity but we are where we are. Was it right for me to have him circumcised ? There is currently a reawakening of the anti-circumcision movement, if by using that word I am not aggrandizing the opposition too much.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer whose maverick world view and iconoclasm I have long admired, has ranted pretty forcefully against the "child abuse" that is ritualized circumcision. More recently, a lobby group in San Francisco has tried to ban the practice. Less seriously but still prompting headlines, the actor Russell Crowe got his Twitters in a tizzy about the evils of circumcision; and, on a severely sinister note, there is a comic strip doing the rounds in the US called "Foreskin Man", which many American Jews equate with Nazi propaganda from the 1930s.
As a foreskin "victim" myself, and never having given it a second thought over the years - if anything enjoying the aesthetic and presumed health benefits - I am, admittedly, no fan of unnecessary surgery and suffering.
But I had one very clear objective when gritting my teeth and deciding to go ahead with my son's circumcision: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour," as Rabbi Hillel said (subsequently misquoted as "Do unto others as you would have them do to you"). I know that it would be hateful to me to have to endure a circumcision, with all the medical complexity, as an adult, and so I would not want that for my son. I have met men who have converted to Judaism as adults and had the necessary surgery, losing as it were a family member.
For them, crossing the Rubicon in this most painful way, I have the greatest respect and admiration. But not everyone has that level of fortitude and commitment. If it were me, I would be damn relieved to have jumped this hurdle long before I even knew it existed. Now, at the ripe old age of almost nine months, Sam's circumcision is already a distant memory. My memory, that is. For him, as for me almost 44 years ago, there will be no memory at all.
Is it really worth doing ? Do I honestly believe in the ritual ? As I get older, I am less definitive and dogmatic about such things. I just know that since it might be worth doing, better to get it over and done with long before you have to think about it too much.
PS: Male circumcision bears absolutely no relation to so-called female circumcision, which is an evil mix of child abuse and misogyny.
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