Parshat Vayishlach
by Rabbi Avi Billet
We are a people who are proud to honor the Bris Milah, and we very willingly and unquestioningly circumcise our sons. We do this because of our commitment to our end of the Covenant, and our belief that as long as we do our part, God will continue to do His.
Would we be as willing to do this if we had to circumcise at a later age? Would we at the very least reconsider the age at which we do this?
In 2009, an Israel-born woman named Danae Elon produced a movie called “Partly Private” in which she explored the cultural attachment people around the world have to circumcision. Coming from an anti-religious home, and a father who told her that if he could do it over he wouldn’t have circumcised his sons (he was young and naïve and just did what everyone else did), now that she was pregnant, she wanted to come from a place of knowledge in reaching her decision whether to circumcise.
While her particular story is for those who are interested, what I found fascinating was a circumcision party she attended in an Arabic community somewhere (I believe it was Turkey), in which they had boys age 6-9 circumcised in a spectacle that was most public. And while all the fathers were saying, “my son will go through with it no matter what. He doesn’t have a choice” when they turned the camera to some of the boys, they gave a thumbs down and expressed their displeasure in having to undergo this procedure.
A few years ago, a friend of mine, who is also a rabbi of a shul, called me with a dilemma. A family came to him for their son’s bar mitzvah. I don’t think they were particularly observant. There was a question about the circumcision – had it been done at the right time? Was the person who did the circumcision reliable to do it properly? I don’t remember the particulars, but I do recall that what I felt was the best option was for the child to have “hatafat dam” – a largely ceremonial procedure (which could be done privately) in which the tiniest amount of blood is drawn from the circumcision scar to symbolically turn a medical circumcision into a Bris Milah. This procedure is done on circumcised males who convert to Judaism, and on Jews whose circumcisions were done in a manner not following Jewish law.
To make a long story short, when the young man was given this information, he balked and did not go through with the procedure (I think they had enough “safek” (doubt) to accept that the child’s circumcision was kosher in order to go through with the bar mitzvah without the hatafat dam).
I bring all of this as background for a simple question. Shchem the prince agreed to circumcise himself when the brothers of Dinah insisted upon it, and he even underwent the procedure right away. Why do we continue to look at him as deserving of his fate (killed by Shimon and Levi) after he clearly was following his heart and trying to do the right thing after having done a very wrong thing with Dinah? It’s not easy to do what he did – to own up, apologize, ask how he could make things better, and then undergo circumcision!
The Midrash Sechel Tov says this wasn’t for love. It was for lust. It was certainly not for the sake of heaven. In other words, whatever was driving him remained insincere, as evidenced in his not even attempting to understand why circumcision was of value to Yaakov’s family.
Alshikh argues that his prime motivation wasn’t even for Dinah! It was to convince everyone else, the people of Shchem-city, to go through with it. If he came home and said, “I think we should all do this!” no one would have listened. But when he came home already circumcised, it was a much easier sell. And the pitch was that “you will all profit from this relationship!” which, as we know, was not a very honest pitch.
On the other hand, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out the likelihood that in some manner all the people of the city were not merely subjects of the lord and prince, but were actually owned by them in a way, used to having to follow the whims of their masters.
Malbim and Netziv highlight how when he underwent the surgery, his motivation as described in the Torah is “his desire for the daughter of Yaakov.” It’s no longer his love for the young maiden, but to be connected to Yaakov.
There’s an old saying that “money is the root of all evil.” It seems that Shchem used a desire to be connected to the wealthy Yaakov as the motivating factor behind his circumcision. I’ve heard some people say in jest – though I wonder if they aren’t somewhat serious – that they’d give up an arm or at least a finger to attain a certain financial status and stature. If that’s the case, then what’s the loss of a foreskin? According to some in the know, not much. One would typically miss it much less than a limb or even a finger, as its absence changes very little in terms of a person’s day-to-day functional living.
And so we need not give credit to Shchem, the opportunist and the rapist, who cared for Dinah only until he had his way with her, and then turned to bigger, greener sights, when he realized from which family she came.
To answer the opening question, I like to believe that if we had to do this at a later age, we would go for it all the same. The righteous converts I have met were happy, if not in some cases excited, to have their circumcision turned in to a bris. I can’t speak for those who undergo circumcision, as I haven’t spoken to many – most men I meet who have joined the Jewish people as adults happened to be circumcised as children. But I imagine they know coming into it that circumcision will be one requirement. And they continue to go through with it. More to the point, however, is the example we have from the many Jews who came from the former Soviet Union, who did not hesitate to have themselves circumcised as teenagers or as adults. God bless them and their wonderful example of showing what it means to be devoted to God, even when the challenge is so difficult. They proved to us that the Jewish people are not deterred by the difficulty they face when the motivation is indeed for the sake of heaven.
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p.s. I recall the words of a father who had been through this who told me at his son's bris, "Rabbi, I am so glad we are doing this for my son at this age, when he'll have no memory of it. When I came over from the Soviet Union, I was 19. I was excited to have my bris. But I also remember the pain - I couldn't walk for a month!"
As willing as he was, he was grateful to be in a country where he did not have to hide his religion and could circumcise his son at the right time - 8 days old!
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