I like to tell the story of how, a lifetime ago, I found myself on
the 1985 Mediterranean cruise of the USS Nimitz. The Nimitz is a very famous ship. She was not the first nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier operated by the US Navy.
To the USS Enterprise goes that distinction. But the name ‘Nimitz’ is famous the world
over, because she was the lead ship in a class of ten. The Nimitz herself entered service in 1975,
and the final ship in the class, the USS George H.W. Bush, was commissioned
only in 2009.
I was therefore
excited when my first aircraft carrier deployment turned out to be on such a
famous ship. During the cruise, we made
a week’s port visit in Palma de Majorca, Spain.
On the last night in Palma, I joined a liberty party to one of those
medieval banquets where there is jousting on horseback and rowdiness by the
guests is allowed, even encouraged. The
next morning, as the ship weighed anchor, I found myself with a sore throat. Thankfully I was aboard the Nimitz, whose
sick bay is essentially a small hospital.
Whilst waiting to be
seen by the physician’s assistant who would give me something to soothe my sore
throat, I noted a dozen or so sailors sitting on a row of benches in the
waiting room. They did not look
happy. In fact, they looked downright
petrified. When I was called into the
examination room, I asked the PA taking my vital signs: What gives with the guys in the waiting
room, Sir?
“Oh,” he replied
nonchalantly. “It’s Tuesday, circumcision day.”
Say what,
Sir? I said.
The PA, a Chief Warrant
Officer, explained. Whilst on
deployment, on Tuesday mornings the surgical staff does circumcisions for those
requesting them. And why would
grown men be lining up to get circumcised?
Because their wives wanted them to.
As the ship was winding down her operational deployment, these sailors
could be spared from their duties for a few days whilst they recovered. And they would be fully healed by the time
the ship reached Norfolk, and homecoming.
I was gob smacked by
the information. And then the PA, a
twinkle in his eyes, asked me: Aren’t
you glad you’re a Jew?
Indeed. I’d thought such thoughts, with reference to
circumcision, before. Two years earlier
I arrived in Turkey for a one-year remote assignment in Sinop, a city on the
Black Sea. I arrived a few weeks before
Ramadan. Every night there were boys,
dressed up like princes, being led through the streets on the backs of donkeys.
What is this all about? I asked a friendly Turk.
Sünnet, he
replied, grinning.
Out came the pocket
dictionary. Sünnet means ‘circumcision.’ And that’s how I was introduced to the
Islamic custom of circumcising young boys not at the age of eight days as is
our custom, but at the age of about 13 years. Oy!
And now, I was privy
to a subculture of young married women who wanted their husbands, not having
been circumcised at birth, to have it done whilst they were away on a
Mediterranean deployment.
In this week’s Torah
reading, Tazria, in the 12th chapter of Vayikra, the law
concerning circumcision on the eighth day of life is promulgated. Anthropologists tell us that circumcision was –
and still is – a common tribal practice in various parts of the world. But amongst the aboriginal peoples who
practice it, it is usually done to boys as part of their process of initiation
into adulthood, to take their place among the tribe’s warriors. On one hand it is a test – putting the boys
through a painful ordeal to test their stoicism to endure it. On the other hand, it is seen as preparing
them for marriage and procreation, by placing a visible sign on their
reproductive members.
The Torah preserves
the procedure of removing the foreskin, whilst changing it to a rite on the
eighth day of life, unless medically contraindicated. We’ll never know for sure the reason for the
shift, but from the Torah we can draw inferences that hint at why. Hashem created the world in six days, rested
on the seventh, and then on the eighth day it was man’s turn to take up the
task and finish the work. Oh, not the
work of the physical world; that was done! But the building of a just society, a place
where G-d’s Glory would shine through the human race reaching for its destiny. G-d’s sanctuary was inaugurated on the eighth
day of its completion, after a series of purification rites to make it ‘fit’
for its holy work.
Finally, the men of
the tribe of Levi who were the direct descendants of Aaron, were chosen to be
G-d’s priests, to serve in on behalf of all Israel.
Given all this, circumcision on the
eighth day begins to make sense. As the
Aaronic priests served on behalf of Israel, Israel serves as a nation of
priests, a holy people, chosen to serve humanity. Circumcision, performed on the eighth day,
was the sign that the Israelites were set apart for this service. Even from infancy, the sign of this setting
apart was inscribed in their flesh.
And what about the
female children of Israel? Why was there
no parallel to male circumcision for the females? We do know that there are tribal cultures
where a ‘female circumcision’ is practiced. Most of the Western World decries this,
properly, as genital mutilation. But
since we don’t practice it, what special rite sets the women of Israel apart
from other women?
The answer is also
found in this week’s Torah reading. The
cycles of tumah and taharah, impurity and purity. Prescribed for women from the start of
reproductive age, they serve as women’s ‘mark’ serving the same function of
ensuring their ritual fitness for their role in propagating the Torah on Earth. The doubling of the period after giving birth
to an infant female might be seen as a harbinger of the purity rites that will
pass to that child at the onset of her menses. But a variant opinion is that the period is
not doubled after the birth of a female. Rather, it is halved after the birth of
a male, to enable the mother to witness the circumcision ritual for her son. We’ll never know which it is. But the women’s rites of purification – after
birth, and after marriage – are every bit as powerful as the permanent mark in
the bodies of the men of Israel.
But back to the eighth day circumcision. The first time I crashed a circumcision party
in Turkey and saw the suffering of the boy, I thanked my lucky stars I’d been
born a Jew. Likewise, that morning after
sailing from Majorca on the USS Nimitz, when I saw those grown men waiting with
great trepidation for their turn at the knife.
Years later, when my son was born and we inaugurated him into the Covenant
of Abraham as an infant, I winced at his reaction to the scalpel. But intellectually I knew that we were
subjecting him to only a tiny portion of the pain that I’d seen boys of 13 in
Turkey, and grown men on the Nimitz, endure.
And there’s the medical
evidence that the eighth day is the ideal time for circumcision. It is just after the blood normally develops
it ability to clot and thus lessen the danger of a catastrophic bleed. And it is just before the nerves develop to
the point where they transmit pain from a surgery done without anesthesia.
I know, I know! Last week I cautioned against drawing a
rationale for kashrut from its various benefits. And here I am today, apparently ‘selling’ the
eighth-day circumcision, in part, on the strength of its medical basis. I’m really not. I’m just trying to remind us that the Torah
is full of the most sublime wisdom. And
perhaps, revealed the squeamishness I felt as a man, when exposed to the idea
of circumcision as a teenager, or as an adult.
Shabbat shalom.
No comments:
Post a Comment