The Covenant of Circumcision

Jewish women are used to the traditional statement made by people who should know better that circumcision is the mark of Jewish identity. The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on An Ancient Jewish Rite is composed of sixteen essays by a variety of authors studying the history, cultural interpretations, and contemporary significance of Brit Milah. Several of the essays that put the ceremony into psychoanalytic and kabbalistic perspectives are somewhat difficult reading. Orthodox readers may find especially challenging the group of essays written by Jews who are genuinely ambivalent or negative about having their sons circumcised. That said, there is much in this book that is fascinating, such as the discussions of the role of Zipporah as mohelet, the exploration of the influence of Christian baptism customs on Jewish circumcision in the Middle Ages, when women were eliminated from previous active participation in the ceremony, and the analysis of the work of the twelfth century commentator, Bechor Shor, who, in response to Christian polemicists who used the non circumcision of girls as an anti-Jewish argument, equated circumcision in men with menstruation in women.