Brit Milah — Lech Lecha – Rav Ari Shames At the very end of this week’s parsha we find the mitzvah of Brit Milah. Much has been written about this important mitzvah but there is one aspect about which I found very little discussion. Hashem commands Avraham Avinu to circumcise himself and his sons as well as his slaves, including any male that is a member of the household, whether they were born there or they were acquired later in life. Whatever the reason for Brit Milah and whatever we want to explain about the importance and symbolism of this act, we will find it difficult to explain why a slave must be circumcised as well. If the mitzvah is to represent some sort of identification of the tribe of Avraham, how could this possibly extend to the hired help (obviously not all hired help, rather the owned slaves, but I believe the question to still be very strong). I would like to suggest a solution to this problem by focusing on the brachot that are recited as we perform the mitzvah. The Gemara in Shabbat 137b tells us that in addition to the standard bracha that one makes prior to doing any mitvah (the “birkat hamitzvah”) there are additional brachot after Brit Milah. In the case of a Brit of a Jewish child the Mohel makes the Birkat Hamitzvah and then the father makes a bracha “Lehachniso …” relating to his obligation to bring his child into the Brit of Avraham. After that bracha is made there is a third bracha made by a third party extolling the institution of Brit Milah: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who sanctified the beloved one from the womb, set His statute in his flesh, and sealed his descendants with the sign of the holy Covenant. Therefore, as a reward of this (circumcision), the living God, our Portion, our Rock, has ordained that the beloved of our flesh be saved from the abyss, for the sake of the Covenant which He has set in our flesh. Blessed are You Lord, who makes the Covenant.” (There are two major interpretations of this bracha. Rashi identifies all of it as relating to Yitzchak while Rabbeinu Tam sees references to all three Patriarchs in the bracha. I encourage all readers in need of a dvar torah for a brit to see the commentaries on the gemara for much interesting material.) The Gemara goes on to state that when one circumcises a slave one makes a different set of brachot. The bracha of the mohel remains the same, however there is no second bracha usually made by the father (maybe should have been the master?) and the third bracha has a totally different text: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who sanctified us and commanded us to circumcise slaves and to draw the blood of the covenant, for if not for the blood of the covenant the rules of the heavens and the Earth would not remain as it says (Yermiyahu 33), ‘If My covenant be not with day and night, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’. Blessed are You Lord, who makes the Covenant.” The contrast between the texts of the final brachot is striking, yet expected. When it comes to the Brit of a Jewish baby we are not only fulfilling a commandment of God, as we do any time that we fulfill a mitzvah, but in addition we are adding another member to the covenantal community. We pause to reflect and recognize the enormity of the deed and note the continuity between this child and all previous generations of Jews all the way back to the Avot. God’s words to Avraham in this week’s parsha come alive in an act performed thousands of years later. When a slave is circumcised all of this is absent. Not a single reference is made to joining any fraternity or being linked to any historical anchor. The philosophical grounding is based on the idea that without Brit Milah the world would not exist. This is a very different approach to the mitzvah. It sounds as though there is some objective value in the act of Brit Milah even if by doing so one cannot actually enter the full covenant of Avraham Avinu. It would seem that this particular aspect of Brit Milah is similar to the commandment of Shabbat. While we, the Jewish people, are commanded to keep the Shabbat as a symbol of God’s pact with us it is not sufficient to simply observe on a personal level. The Torah tells us that “you, your sons, your daughters, your slaves and maids, and even your animals” are to refrain from working on Shabbat. The parallels are striking, including the need for individual fulfillment along with ensuring that the wider community also adheres to the values involved. [I admit that at this stage of the shiur I need some help. I am convinced of the parallel described above but I am at a lack for the explanation in this case. When it comes to Shabbat I can understand the importance of Sabbath observance in the entire surroundings. One cannot compare being a Shomer Shabbat Jew in a society that acts in the same manner to being Shomer Shabbat as the lone adherent. However I find it difficult to promote the same argument in the much more private mitzvah of Brit Milah. Your suggestions are very welcome – shames@harova.org] If our reading of this issue is accurate then I think that we can reread another famous passage with a new twist. In a few weeks we will read of the destruction of Shechem by the brothers of Dinah after her rape. The brothers convince the people to undergo circumcision and kill them as they are too weak to defend themselves. Why was Brit Milah used in this plot? Obviously, as far as Shimon and Levi were concerned, it allowed the plan to work, but what was the claim that they used to convince the inhabitants to adopt this practice? The standard reading of the incident is that the entire episode is based on a sexual crime and the subsequent plan of intermarriage. If this is the backdrop then we can understand the insistence of the brothers to conform to the Jewish norm in this area. Based on our reading of Lech Lecha I would like to suggest that the brothers’ ideas were rooted in a totally different realm. They were explaining to the locals that the only way that they could possibly establish a united people was to bring them up to par on the most basic level of behavior which starts out with Brit Milah. They were not trying to turn them into Jews but rather the theme of the bracha mentioned above was their guiding light – without Brit Milah the very existence of the world is in question. Your comments are very welcome – shames@harova.org. Shabbat Shalom