Commentaire sur Le Lévitique 12:3

וביום השמיני ימול, for by that time the blood of his mother has congealed [dry blood does not confer impurity. Ed.] As a result the baby has become ritually cleansed, no moist blood being attached to it.

וביום השמיני, and on the eighth day, etc. Why did the Torah have to instruct us to circumcise a male baby on the eighth day, something that has been legislated already in Genesis 17,12 prior to the birth of Isaac, even? If all the Torah wanted was to tell us that the rite of circumcision must be performed by day and not by night, or that the importance of circumcising the baby on the eighth day is so important that the Sabbath may be violated in order to fulfil this commandment on time (compare Shabbat 132), why did G'd not include this information in Genesis?

וביום, “and on the day, etc.;” the reason why the Torah had to write this word is to teach us that if for some reason the circumcision had been delayed beyond the eighth day it must not be performed at night but on the nearest day thereafter possible, except on the Sabbath, as the Sabbath may be desecrated only when the circumcision is performed on the eighth day after birth. (Sifra)her for her husband.

Perhaps the reason G'd did not mention all this to Abraham at the time was so that people should not think that only the patriarchs were allowed to violate the Sabbath in order to circumcise the baby on the eighth day, seeing they had not yet been commanded to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and that therefore the observance of the Sabbath was not so important. However, the Israelites, who were warned in Exodus 31,14 not to violate the Sabbath on pain of execution, were not expected to circumcise their babies on the Sabbath. The Torah repeated the legislation here in order to include the detail that the Sabbath was not to take precedence over circumcision on the eighth day. While it is true that the Talmud in Chulin 101 states that the legislation about גיד הנשה was legislated at Mount Sinai, the Torah decided to record it in Genesis 32,33 to inform us of the reason for this legislation. Similar considerations may have motivated the Torah in recording the legislation about circumcision already in Genesis 17,12 though it was commanded to the Jewish people collectively at Mount Sinai. All of this still enables those who want to, to argue that there is reason to be more lenient about the date of the circumcision prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai than afterwards.

וביום השמיני ימול, and on the eighth day the baby is to be circumcised; Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai’s students asked him why that day had been chosen by G-d for circumcision of the newly born; (not sooner) he answered them that this was so that the whole family could rejoice in that celebration, as otherwise the mother of the child could not participate in the joyful activity due to her still being ritually unclean. That day has been described as a joyful occasion in Psalms 119,162: שש אנכי על אמרתך, the psalmist proclaiming “I rejoice over Your promise,” and our sages in the Talmud tractate Shabbat folio 130 understand David as having referred to the day the child is circumcised. On the face of it this is a remarkable statement as one would expect both parents to be saddened by the fact that they cannot indulge in marital relations until then; however as soon as the mother has immersed herself in a ritual bath on the evening after the seventh day, she is free to resume normal relations with her husband. Thus on the eighth day the whole family can rejoice. The reason why this commandment has been repeated is to remind us that it is so important that it be preformed on the eighth day that it overrides the work prohibition on the Sabbath. How then can I deal with the explicit warning that anyone desecrating the Sabbath laws is subject to legal execution? (Exodus 31,14.) Only preparatory activities associated with the circumcision are forbidden even on the Sabbath, whereas the circumcision itself overrides the Sabbath provided it is performed on the eighth day. (If the baby was born at dusk on Friday evening, the circumcision is deferred until the day after the Sabbath. If there is some doubt about the baby having a proper foreskin, the removal of that is also not performed on the Sabbath. (Sifra)

Furthermore, we may assume that what the legislation revealed to Abraham in Genesis 17,12 means is that it is as binding as if it had been revealed at Mount Sinai and that therefore the Torah did not need to add any details to that legislation when the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai. G'd did not need to write a special verse to tell Abraham to perform circumcision even on the Sabbath as he would have understood this on his own just as he understood many other מצות which were never spelled out to him. The reason he would have considered the circumcision legislation as overriding the Sabbath legislation is that G'd had not bothered to command him specifically to observe the Sabbath, but He had commanded him specifically concerning the circumcision. In fact, if G'd had spelled out to Abraham that the circumcision on the eighth day overrides the Sabbath legislation, every exegete would have written reams of paper wanting to know why G'd had bothered to do this, seeing that Abraham could have arrived at this by simple logic. Seeing G'd did not tell Abraham, He had to tell the Israelites who, after all, had been commanded to observe the Sabbath and who could not have arrived at these details by using logic as could Abraham at the time.

ימול בשר ערלתו, “the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” We have learned concerning this procedure as follows in the Talmud tractate Shabbat folio 137: “a newborn may be legally circumcised on the eighth, ninth or the tenth, the eleventh or the twelfth day, without the father having been remiss in performing the procedure on the correct day. How can this occur? 1) The normal day for mandatory circumcision is the eighth day. 2) the ninth day as the “official” day is when the baby was born at dusk between the seventh and eighth day. If dusk is considered as part of the next day, then the baby cannot be legally circumcised until the morning of the day following, i.e. the ninth day. If that day happens to be the Sabbath, circumcision would have to be delayed for another day. How could it happen that the legal day for the circumcision would not occur until the eleventh of even the twelfth day? If the baby was born at dusk on Friday, and the day following the Sabbath is a festival. If the baby was born at dusk of the end of the twentysecond of Ellul and the following Thursday which would normally be the eighth day is New Year of the following Year and a holiday. As this day however could be the ninth day, both days of New Year as well as Sabbath following are out, so that the earliest legal day would be Sunday, which is the twelfth day after its birth. It is possible that our author bases himself on a statement attributed in Bereshit Rabbah 7,2, to someone by the name do Yaakov, resident of Nevorai, who issued a ruling in Tzor, that the son of an idol worshipping woman and a Jewish father, born on the Sabbath, could be circumcised on the Sabbath. When Rabbi Chagai heard about this ruling he ordered this Yaakov to appear before him in order to be punished by lashes for such a ruling. To this Yaakov of Nevorai replied that “when someone gives a correct ruling according to the Torah, why should he be punished by lashes?” Thereupon Rabbi Chagai asked him to explain how his ruling could conform to Torah law. Thereupon Yaakov cited Numbers 1,18: ויתילדו על משפחותם לבית אבותם, “they identified themselves according to their families by their fathers’ houses.” To this Rabbi Chagai replied that Yaakov had not interpreted that verse correctly, as it could not override the prohibition against intermarriage with members of an idolatrous nation which is spelled out in Deuteronomy 7,3, with the words לא תתחתן בם, “do not intermarry with them (the Canaanites) i.e. since such a union is illegal its offspring is not Jewish. It is also confirmed by Deuteronomy 7,4 where the Torah gives as the reason for such a prohibition: כי יסיר את בנך מאחרי, “for he will lead your son astray from Me;” a reference to your soninlaw. The Torah did not write כי תסיר, for she will lead astray, but “for he will lead astray.” She cannot lead astray, as she is not Jewish in the first place. Therefore the son of the woman mentioned in the story cited in Bereshit Rabbah, does not require circumcision on either a weekday or the Sabbath since he does not qualify for performance of that rite until and if he converted.

Let us now turn to why the Torah wrote this piece of legislation immediately after the law about the mother who gave birth contracting a kind of ritual impurity lasting for seven days similar to the menstrual impurity. The Torah simply wanted to explain why the circumcision of the baby has to be delayed for seven days (compare Shabbat 135). This is the reason that the Torah wrote וביום השמיני, the letter ו indicating that the timing was related to what has been described previously. The Talmud in Niddah 31 elaborates further, suggesting that the "whole world should not be rejoicing when the baby is introduced to Judaism while its mother is depressed being ritually impure." Devarim Rabbah 6,1 writes as follows: "why does the baby have to be circumcised on the eighth day after its birth? G'd exercised His mercy on the baby waiting until it was strong enough to endure this operation. Just as G'd exercises His mercy on human beings He did so on animals and this is why a new born animal may not be offered as a sacrifice until the eighth day after it has been born (compare Leviticus 22,27).

How do we know that the baby attains a certain amount of physical strength by the eighth day after its birth? It appears that we have to rely on the Zohar both in our Parshah as well as in Parshat Emor where it is explained that the experience of a single Sabbath in its life confers such additional physical strength upon both the baby and the new-born animal. The Sabbath experience provides what is called כח חיוני, a life-sustaining force. You will also find the comment of Bereshit Rabbah 10 that prior to the first Sabbath the universe was in a very unstable condition. It was only the Sabbath which helped stabilise the entire universe. This is what the sages meant when they said that the experience of a Sabbath helps stabilise the vital signs of new-born babies and animals. The letter ו in the word וביום also links the impurity of the mother to the circumcision experience of the baby, i.e. if the baby's mother is meticulous in her observance of the laws pertaining to menstruating women, her baby's chances of living long enough to experience circumcision and not being harmed by it are improved.

Our verse may also be explained in terms of Tanchuma Tazria 5 where we have the following statement: "The Roman Governor Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva whose actions were more pleasing, G'd's or man's? Rabbi Akiva answered that man's actions were more pleasing. Turnus Rufus asked why the Israelites circumcised themselves? Rabbi Akiva said he had known that Turnus Rufus would ask him this and this is why he had said immediately that man's actions were more pleasing. Rabbi Akiva brought both ears of corns and white flour proclaiming: "the former are representative of G'd's works, the latter are representative of man's works. Are not the latter nicer than the former?" Thereupon Turnus Rufus wanted to know why G'd commanded circumcision instead of creating man without a foreskin? Rabbi Akiva replied that the whole reason for Torah legislation is in order to refine human beings as we know from Psalms 18,31 'the word of the Lord is refining;' Rabbi Akiva did not content himself with the example of the ears of corn versus the finished product, the scone or roll, seeing that the improvement necessary in order to convert ears of corn into flour is intended to add to man's enjoyment and man therefore is motivated to convert ears of corn into flour. This cannot be said of his body. Man does not feel that the foreskin is a hindrance to his physical perfection. There was a reason therefore for G'd Himself to create man without a foreskin if that was His will. Why did He leave this to man instead of doing it Himself? Rabbi Akiva therefore answered Turnus Rufus that G'd's laws are designed to refine man. This appears to be a very enigmatic answer for someone like Turnus Rufus. A pagan of the type of Turnus Rufus does not understand the concept that man has to attain his relative perfection by means of carrying out G'd's commandments. He therefore accepted the answer at face value. We Israelites, G'd's favourites, have to examine the matter on a different level. One of the remarkable things is the fact that whereas in nature we observe that nature's products reproduce themselves true to existing features, i.e. the farmer having achieved a certain strain of wheat, for instance, will find that if he sows seed of that strain they will reproduce themselves identically, the same is not true of circumcised Jews producing children without a foreskin. All our evolutionary studies ought to dictate that after thousands of years of male Jews living their lives without foreskins, their children should be born without foreskins! Even if we were to argue that once one has been born with a foreskin the laws of mutation will ignore such a fact and he will reproduce children with a foreskin, why did someone such as Moses who was born without a foreskin (compare Sotah 12) not produce children without foreskins?

Let me enlighten you in matters of G'd's instructions to us. We have learned that the foreskin symbolises evil, its very presence drawing attention to hidden characteristics. Man's entire body is a sheath for the personality it hides within. The sheath reveals information concerning what is inside it. G'd told the Jewish people that by removing the visible evidence of evil within them, i.e. the foreskin, they would be able to diminish the power of evil hidden inside their bodies also. If the Gentiles were to do the same, the effect would not be the same as their entire personalities are the outgrowths of spiritually negative forces, as represented by their foreskins. When the prophet Jeremiah 9,25 refers to all Gentiles summing them up as "foreskins," this is very significant. It is a well-known fact that Adam possessed perfect health, that his body created by G'd Himself lacked any particle of impurity; as a result he had no foreskin which could symbolise any hidden impurity. When the Talmud Sanhedrin 38 describes Adam as "pulling" on his foreskin after he committed the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge, this is a way of saying that he had developed a foreskin. After Eve had eaten from the tree of knowledge, she too developed signs of physical impurity reflecting the fact that her personality had absorbed input by the forces of impurity. In her case the external sign of such impurity which corresponded to the foreskin in Adam was the menstrual blood. The Talmud Eyruvin 100 describes no less than ten curses Eve suffered as a result of her eating from that tree. Man's sin impacted on nature as a whole. Starting after the sin, the earth began to produce fruit covered with many peels, the husks of an ear of grain being one example of such קליפות, "peels.

Proof of all this is that man cannot enjoy bread until he has first removed these peels from the kernel of grain. He can convert it into flour only after having removed the outer husk. In fact, the grain has to undergo no less than 10 stages of refinement before we can serve it up as bread (compare Shabbat 73). These ten stages correspond to the ten curses we mentioned earlier (compare Zohar Pinchas page 243). This is why when the time comes which is envisaged by the prophet Zachariah 13,2 the earth will once again give forth rolls or scones, ready to eat. This is what Rabbi Akiva had in mind when he contrasted the rolls with the ears of corn. The reason that nature (G'd) does not produce perfection nowadays is not G'd's inability to do so but man's interference in the mechanism G'd had provided for nature. As a result, when man procreates at a time when he is already minus the foreskin, the forces represented by the foreskin have not thereby been vanquished; they are still as active as ever in our universe and man is nourished daily by products which have been influenced by all the spiritually negative forces which are rampant in nature. As a result, the seed which ultimately develops into a baby, has been inhibited by all these negative forces in our world preventing it from developing into a human being minus the foreskin. As to Turnus Rufus' second question that if G'd does indeed want man to be circumcised why had He not created him so, this question was based on his ignorance of the relationship between spiritual inadequacy and the resultant inadequacies in nature.

Alternatively, Turnus Rufus was aware that man's external appearance, i.e. that tangible aspects of man reflect some of his intangible parts inside of him; he thought that such stains on man's character as were reflected by his exterior had been given to him by G'd at birth. He believed that when G'd ordered for man to remove his foreskin, the character stains which his foreskin reflected would be removed from him by G'd. Rabbi Akiva gave him a general answer concerning the purpose of the positive and negative commandments. Having a foreskin is not indicative of a single stain on one's character or even a single inadequacy which has become part of human nature. Rather, it is a reminder of basic inadequacies which man is troubled by ever since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge. Inasmuch as man caused these inadequacies, he must labour to overcome them. G'd does not do it for him. Rabbi Akiva explained that all the positive commandments combined are designed to refine man, i.e. to gradually remove the stains which are part of his being a creature born of woman. Performance of each positive commandment restores some of the spiritual light which has become encapsuled in a "peel" as a result of eating from that tree. The negative commandments on the other hand, are the agents which remove the sickness which adheres to man's soul ever since first man allowed such diseases to become part of him. The whole process of rehabilitation is best described in Proverbs 6,23 כי נר מצוה ותורה אור, "performance of a single commandment is equivalent to providing the kind of light given by a single candle, whereas the performance of all of the Torah's commandments (not given to a single individual to perform) provides "Light", i.e. will restore the light which existed when Adam was in גן עדן." It is not G'd who does all this; G'd gave man the commandments as tools in order to enable him to find his way back to "paradise lost." Seeing Adam had contaminated all future souls, it is up to each human being to rehabilitate himself individually. I have dealt with the subject in my commentary on Genesis 4,7.

Furthermore, if we were to allow G'd to remove all these impediments man faces nowadays, the whole concept of reward and punishment which is the philosophical basis of Judaism would be negated. How can one expect to be rewarded for gifts given to us by G'd? To sum up: the fact that we are born with a foreskin is the result of spiritual damage caused to man's soul as a by-product of his sin. This spiritual damage is reflected in an outgrowth of his body, i.e. the foreskin. G'd ordered every male Israelite to excise the visible part of this evil from his body. Having done this his soul will also be on the road to recovery. This is why the Torah stresses וביום "and on that day," etc. There was already the need for the mother to purify herself from the impurity contracted through giving birth. Now there is the added commandment to remove the foreskin from the baby. G'd commands concerning both these rehabilitative steps simultaneously. This is the meaning of וביום השמיני, "and on the eighth day, etc." Seeing that the sin of Eve had been greater than that of Adam, man is able to remove the physical reminder of his impurity with one stroke i.e. the foreskin does not grow back [as distinct from normal skin Ed.], whereas woman experiences menstrual bleeding at regular intervals.

Perhaps another reason why G'd commanded that circumcision should be performed on the eighth day, not sooner and not later, was because on that day G'd judges the mother who has to count seven days of impurity from the moment the baby left her womb. The baby is perceived as having left a grave [simile for the mother's womb. Ed.] hence the baby itself has become contaminated by contact with the impurity suffered by its mother. Seeing that circumcision is equivalent to G'd revealing His name to man as I have hinted in my commentary in Parshat Vayera where G'd visited Abraham after he had circumcised himself, He wanted to wait until the seven days during which cleansing from that impurity occurs have passed. On the eighth day the baby is fit to be circumcised.

ימול בשר ערלתו. "the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised." We understand this in terms of what we have already mentioned, namely that the foreskin is a tangible symbol of the קליפה, the spiritually negative part of the emanations. The Torah hints here that the ritual of circumcision consists of three stages. They are called: מילה, פריעה, מציצה; 1) the removal of the foreskin itself; 2) the splitting of the membrane and pulling it down; 3) the sucking of some blood from the place where the foreskin has been cut. The word ימול refers to the cutting of the foreskin. The פריעה does not involve cutting that membrane and is alluded to in the text by the word בשר. This rite insures that the foreskin will not grow back. The word בשר suggests "dead meat." The מציצה consists of removing blood which had been contaminated by the two parts of the foreskin which have been removed. This blood was considered as part of the foreskin and has to be removed alongside with the foreskin. This ritual is alluded to in the text by the word ערלתו, his foreskin.

There is an interesting analysis of the concept of קליפות, peels, in an appendix to the first volume of the Zohar page 262. The "peels" surrounding the kernel "sanctity" are compared to the four peels surrounding the walnut. The comparison is based on Solomon speaking of the גנת אגוז, in Song of Songs 6,11. 1) There is an outer shell which is bitter in taste, eventually dries out and falls of its own accord. 2) There is the hard shell. 3) There is the flexible type of shell which separates different edible parts of the nut from one another. 4) There is the thin peel which adheres to the fruit itself and is edible when attached to the fruit. This inner peel is not considered so despicable unless it is separated from the edible part of the nut. When we contemplate the ritual of circumcision, we think in terms of three peels. The foreskin itself is somewhat like the outer shell of the walnut. The membrane we fold back during what is called פריעה corresponds to the hard shell of the nut which is broken before one can get at the edible part. Finally, the act of מציצה, the sucking away of contaminated blood, corresponds to the inner peel of the nut which separates edible parts from one another. It too has to be removed in order to enable us to eat the nut without hindrance. Man still remains with the last "peel" the one that we described as not totally despicable while it is attached to the edible part. Zohar part one, page 78, refers to this part as the peel which is attached to a boy until he reaches the age of 13. Until that time he is still considered as possessing some kind of ערלה, foreskin in the allegorical sense, seeing he does not yet have an antidote to the evil urge he has been born with. To carry the simile a little further. Just as every fruit-bearing tree is considered by the Torah as ערלה during its first three years of existence, so man, who is compared elsewhere by the Torah to the tree in the field, is considered as still possessing some ערלה until his בר מצוה. Once he enters the fourteenth year of his life he is קדש הילולים, all his products (deeds) may become holy unto G'd.

Another way of looking at our verse may be parallel to what is written in the תקוני הזהר section 24, folio 69. The commandment of circumcision consists of three levels. The highest level of this commandment is the circumcision of the children of the righteous, the children of the living G'd. Their circumcision is an experience comparable to revelation of G'd's very name to them. They will consider the experience as if G'd's holy name had been engraved on their very flesh which had thus become sanctified. The next lower level of the circumcision experience is that experienced by the average person. For such people the experience of circumcision is equivalent to their having become a sacrificial offering to G'd. The third level of circumcision is when children of forbidden unions are circumcised, people who are evil and hated by G'd. When people like that perform the ritual of circumcision it is as if they donated part of themselves to the original serpent, as if giving it dust which is its bread, i.e. these people feed the forces of evil (compare Tikkuney Hazohar folio 10). These three levels of the circumcision experience are alluded to in the Torah by the words ימול־בשר־ערלתו. The first word ימול may be understood as יו׳ד מול, G'd (יו׳ד) is perceived as present by the person being circumcised. The word בשר is a simile for the meat-offerings, i.e. the person being circumcised conceives of himself as being sacrificial meat. The word ערלתו is a simile for the people whom G'd hates being circumcised. The word "his foreskin" is a reference to the unworthy part of man which in reality is part of Satan. Unworthy people are perceived as donating those parts to Satan when they undergo circumcision. As a result of these considerations we find that G'd commanded all three levels of our people to undergo the ritual of circumision so that a Jewish court would not be able to say that there is no point in performing circumcision on the body of a ממזר, a "bastard" (the product of a union between partners who are forbidden to be joined in marriage on pain of the Karet penalty). The reason the Torah wants the foreskin of such a bastard removed is to weaken the Satanic forces active within such a person. This is so even though such a male is not allowed to marry a Jewish girl even after he has been circumcised. Once his foreskin has been removed this (innocent) victim of the sins of his parents has a chance to perfect his personality and to strengthen all the positive elements within him. This is why our sages in Horiot 13 are on record that a ממזר who is a Torah scholar takes precedence in matters of personal honour over a High Priest who has not studied Torah.