Circoncision

The scriptural foundation of Jewish circumcision is found in the narrative of Genesis chapter 17, where the rite is presented as the sign of the covenant concluded between God and Abraham, extending to his male descendants. The biblical text establishes two elements that would durably structure the practice: the obligatory character of the gesture for every male child, and its accomplishment on the eighth day of life. This prescription of the eighth day, taken up in Leviticus, would become one of the most stable markers of Jewish ritualism across the centuries, to the point of authorizing, in classical halakha, the accomplishment of circumcision even when it falls on a day of Shabbat.

The gesture inscribes itself from its origins within a register of covenant rather than medicine or hygiene. Circumcision, in the ancient world, was not unique to Israel: several peoples of the Near East and Egypt practiced it. What singularizes it in the Jewish tradition lies in its theological significance — a bodily sign of the link with the divine — and in its systematization on the eighth day. The rabbinic tradition would later develop a rich interpretation of this rite, to the point of seeing in circumcision an accomplishment of man and a testimony rendered to the covenant. The contemporary ceremony preserves this founding imprint: the circumcision of an infant testifies to the fact that the link between Jews and God is beyond reason, and brit milah is a symbol of partnership with God [Chabad, Why circumcision?]. This chapter, as to its earliest origins, pertains more to founding Memory than to verifiable archive, hence its caution.

In the Hellenistic period, circumcision became a matter of identity and conflict. Under the pressure of Hellenization, particularly during the Seleucid crisis that preceded the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE, some Jews sought to conceal their circumcision in order to participate in gymnasium games, where nudity was the rule. This concealment involved an operation to stretch the residual foreskin, called epispasm. The phenomenon was widespread enough that rabbinic authorities responded to it: the rabbinate sought to put an end to the practice of young men wishing to appear uncircumcised by stretching the skin [Circumcision: Then and Now, CIRP].

It was in partial response to these workarounds that halakhic tradition reinforced the requirement of a second gesture, periah — the complete exposure of the mucous membrane — making the operation irreversible and clearly visible. The classical ceremony thus breaks down into distinct acts: the excision of the foreskin (milah), the exposure (periah), to which a third gesture would later be added [jewishideas.org, Metzitzah B'Peh]. This period marks a turning point: circumcision ceased to be a simple domestic rite to become a marker defended against assimilation, a sign that one could no longer erase.

One of the most debated episodes in the history of circumcision concerns the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which occurred between 132 and 135 CE. Tradition and part of historiography have long linked the uprising to a Roman prohibition on circumcision. The Bar Kokhba Revolt, directed against Roman domination in Judea, was preceded by years of conflict; in 132, restrictions on Jewish religious freedom, including a ban on male circumcision, are said to have driven the last remnants of the Jewish population of Palestine to rise up [Britannica, Bar Kokhba Revolt]. Later tradition readily retained the image of a hostile emperor: Hadrian despised "foreign" religions and forbade Jews to practice circumcision [Jewish Virtual Library, The Bar-Kokhba Revolt].

Yet archival evidence and research invite nuance. Contemporary historians have seriously questioned the chronology and scope of this edict. Three researchers, using distinct methodologies, reach the same conclusion: that a prohibition on circumcision as a cause of the Bar Kokhba Revolt is unlikely [UBC, The Causes of the Bar Kokhba Revolt]. It is quite possible that the measure was not a cause but a consequence: Geiger concludes that Hadrian did not announce a general edict banning circumcision, the measure having been inflicted only locally as an act of punishment after the revolt [Cambridge, Israel Law Review]. Here, collective memory and critical scholarship respond to and contradict one another: the narrative of a foundational persecution encounters a more cautious reconstruction of the facts.

During the talmudic period, a third act was added to the ritual: metzitzah, the aspiration of blood from the wound. During the talmudic period, a third gesture was added to the ritual of Orthodox circumcision; it was not universally adopted by all Jewish groups, but became a practice of more Orthodox groups [Circumcision: Then and Now, CIRP]. The talmudic source of reference is the tractate Shabbat, where the function of the gesture is presented as protective for the child. It is precisely on this foundation — a medical motive — that one of the most intense halakhic controversies would be born in the modern era.

The debate opposes a literal reading of tradition to a reading that takes medical knowledge into account. The reformist position, adopted by rabbis influenced by the Haskalah and subsequently by what would become Reform Judaism, held that if the talmudic foundation of metzitzah was medical, and if this medical understanding was now proven false, then the practice should be modified [REALM33, Metzitzah B'Peh]. On the traditionalist side, halakha maintains a clear hierarchy among the gestures: according to halakha, if one circumcises and performs periah but neglects metzitzah, one has fully fulfilled the mitzva [jewishideas.org]. The controversy, revived by the question of direct oral aspiration (metzitzah be-peh) and its health risks, continues to this day, opposing rabbinical and medical authorities.

In Christian medieval times, Jewish circumcision ceased to be an internal matter and became an object of the gaze—and suspicion—of the majority society. The gesture, unintelligible to Christendom which had abandoned circumcision in favor of baptism, found itself caught in a network of representations where Jewish blood was charged with threatening meanings. The work of Miri Rubin has shown how, in medieval Europe, circumcision, conversion, and the accusation of ritual murder formed a set of interwoven motifs in the Christian imagination [Rubin, Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, 2010].

This chapter illuminates a major historical mechanism: an intimate and identity-bound rite was transformed, by the external gaze, into a sign of radical alterity, even into a fantasized proof of violence attributed to Jews. The blood of circumcision—a sign of covenant and life in Jewish tradition—was reread by Christian polemic as a blood of threat. This inversion of meaning illustrates how the same gesture can carry opposite meanings depending on whether one views it from within the covenant or from outside suspicion. Rubin's analysis invites us to read the history of circumcision not only as that of a rite, but as that of a symbolic boundary between communities [Rubin, 2010].

In the era of Emancipation and Haskalah, circumcision became a battlefield within Judaism itself. The question was no longer whether the Christian world tolerated the rite, but whether Judaism itself should maintain it in the face of demands for integration and the rise of historical criticism. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, reformist circles openly challenged the obligation of circumcision, viewing it as an archaic rite incompatible with a purified and universalized religion. The debate touched not only on the principle of the milah itself but also on its modalities, notably the metzitzah, which we have seen was reassessed in light of medical knowledge [REALM33, Metzitzah B'Peh].

In the face of these challenges, the vast majority of Judaism—both Orthodox and, ultimately, a large part of the Reform movement—reaffirmed its commitment to circumcision as an irreducible sign of the Covenant. The rite thus traversed modernity without disappearing, progressively reintegrating even into movements that had once questioned it. The contemporary ceremony, in both Sephardic and Ashkenazi form, preserves inherited ritual figures: the mohel who performs the operation, the sandak who holds the child. The principal element of the Brit Milah is the removal of the foreskin of a child eight days old; the child is handed to the Sandak, and before the circumcision the Mohel recites a blessing [Mohel Altabé, La Brit Milah]. Around these gestures there has been maintained a rich custom, including the invocation of the prophet Elijah, present at each covenant according to tradition.

Circumcision, as a theme, is not a family lineage: its "great figures" are the characters and authors who instituted it, defended it, fought against it, or studied it. This book retains a small number, truly attested by biblical text, history, or research, without attributing to them dates we do not know.

Abraham (dates unknown, figure of origins) — Founding Patriarch according to the Genesis narrative, he is presented as the first to receive the commandment of circumcision, seal of the covenant concluded with God and extended to his descendants. His figure remains that of a founding memory rather than a historically documented biography. It is to him that tradition ascribes the obligation of the eighth day and the very meaning of the gesture as a sign of the pact, the foundation upon which all subsequent history of the rite will be built [Chabad, Why Circumcision?].

Hadrian (76–138) — Roman Emperor, he is associated, in Jewish memory, with a prohibition of circumcision linked to the Bar Kokhba revolt. Modern research substantially qualifies this image, several historians estimating that a general edict forbidding the rite is unlikely and that the measure was perhaps local and punitive, subsequent to the uprising [Cambridge, Israel Law Review ; UBC, The Causes of the Bar Kokhba Revolt]. His figure embodies the tension between the transmitted narrative of persecution and the critical reconstruction of facts.

Bar Kokhba (Shimon bar Kosiba) (died in 135) — Leader of the second Jewish revolt against Rome, between 132 and 135. Tradition and part of historiography have linked his uprising to the defense of the right to circumcise, making him, in collective memory, a defender of the sign of the covenant [Britannica, Bar Kokhba Revolt]. Recent scholarship, however, invites us to consider the causes of the conflict as multiple, the question of circumcision being only one possible element among others.

Miri Rubin (born 1956) — Medieval historian, she has devoted major works to the way medieval Christian society perceived and instrumentalized Jewish rites. Her study articulating conversion, circumcision, and accusation of ritual murder illuminates the transformation of an identity rite into an object of suspicion and polemic in medieval Europe [Rubin, Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, 2010]. She remains a key reference for understanding the polemical dimension of the gesture.

From Abraham's covenant to contemporary health debates on metzitzah, Jewish circumcision appears as a continuous thread and yet one constantly reworked. It has been, in turn, a founding sign of a pact, a marker defended against Hellenistic assimilation, an issue of conflict with Rome whose history reassesses its scope, an object of suspicion in Christian Europe, and a point of fracture in Jewish modernity. What strikes one, at the end of this journey, is the stability of the core — the gesture on the eighth day, the seal in the flesh — and the mobility of its meanings according to epochs and perspectives. Tradition and the archive do not always agree: where Memory retains a persecuting emperor, the historian sees a more uncertain reality; where the rite speaks of life and covenant, the outside gaze sometimes read threat. To restore this History is to accept this plurality of registers without confusing them, and to recognize in circumcision one of the places where Judaism has continuously told itself what it was.