Brit milah, the covenant of circumcision, is among the oldest, most distinctive, and most enduring commandments of Judaism. Long before the giving of the Torah at Sinai, God commanded Abraham to circumcise himself, the males of his household, and his descendants. From that moment onward, circumcision became the physical sign of the covenant between God and the family of Abraham, and eventually one of the defining practices of the people of Israel.

Modern discussions sometimes approach circumcision primarily as a medical procedure, a cultural tradition, or a matter of personal preference. Within Torah-observant Judaism, however, brit milah belongs first to the category of mitzvah. It is not practiced because it is fashionable, medically advantageous, or socially expected. It is practiced because God commanded it as an everlasting sign of the covenant.

This does not mean that questions of medical safety, parental responsibility, or the dignity of the child are unimportant. Torah law itself takes human life and physical well-being with the utmost seriousness. It does mean, however, that the Jewish discussion must begin with the Torah rather than with the assumptions of contemporary secular society.

The Covenant With Abraham

The commandment of circumcision first appears in Genesis 17, where God establishes His covenant with Abraham:

“This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.”

The Torah describes this covenant as a brit olam, an everlasting covenant. Every male child is to be circumcised on the eighth day, and the covenant is to be marked in the flesh itself. Circumcision is therefore not merely a symbol chosen by the Jewish people. It is the sign chosen by God.

Abraham circumcised himself, his son Ishmael, and every male of his household. Later, Isaac was circumcised on the eighth day in fulfillment of the commandment. The command is repeated in Leviticus 12:3, where the Torah again requires that a male child be circumcised on the eighth day.

The importance of circumcision is further demonstrated when the Israelites enter the Land of Israel under Joshua. Before celebrating Passover in the land, the males who had not been circumcised during the wilderness journey underwent circumcision. Participation in the covenantal life of Israel was inseparable from bearing the sign of the covenant.

Brit milah is therefore not an optional ceremony of ethnic identification. It is a positive commandment of the Torah and one of the foundational obligations given to Abraham and his descendants.

The Written Torah and the Authoritative Oral Torah

Derekh HaTorah (the Way of Torah) understands Jewish law through both the Written Torah and the authoritative Oral Torah, especially as the practical rulings of the Oral Law were systematically codified by the Rambam in the Mishneh Torah.

The Written Torah gives the commandment, establishes the eighth day, and identifies circumcision as the sign of the covenant. The Oral Torah explains how the commandment is to be carried out, who bears responsibility for ensuring that it is performed, when it must be postponed, what happens when the eighth day falls on Shabbat, and how circumcision functions in the conversion of a male convert.

This is not an arbitrary “rabbinic expansion” of an otherwise simple biblical practice. Every legal system requires interpretation and practical application. The Torah commands that circumcision be performed, but living communities must still determine how to fulfill that commandment faithfully and safely in the circumstances of actual life.

According to the halakhic structure codified by the Rambam, the father is initially responsible for circumcising his son. If the father fails to fulfill that responsibility, the Jewish court and community bear responsibility for ensuring that the child is circumcised. When an uncircumcised Jewish male reaches adulthood, the obligation rests upon him personally.

An uncircumcised Jewish man does not cease to be Jewish. Jewish identity is not erased by the failure to perform a commandment. Nevertheless, knowingly and deliberately refusing circumcision is a grave neglect of a central Torah obligation. The open and compassionate approach of Derekh HaTorah does not require us to pretend that commandments are optional. It requires us to teach them without humiliation, cruelty, or exclusion.

Circumcision of the Flesh and Circumcision of the Heart

The Torah also speaks of circumcising the heart:

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and no longer be stiff-necked.”
— Deuteronomy 10:16

Later, Moses promises that God will circumcise the hearts of Israel so that they may love Him completely:

“And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
— Deuteronomy 30:6

These passages teach that the covenant must penetrate deeper than the surface of the body. A person may bear the physical mark of circumcision while remaining arrogant, unjust, cruel, or spiritually indifferent. Physical circumcision without humility and obedience does not represent the fullness of covenantal life.

Yet circumcision of the heart does not replace circumcision of the flesh. The Torah commands both outward obedience and inward transformation. It does not present them as competing alternatives.

This principle applies throughout Jewish life. Prayer does not eliminate the obligation to act ethically, but ethical intentions do not eliminate the obligation to pray. Loving God does not cancel Shabbat, and observing Shabbat does not excuse dishonesty or cruelty. Torah joins ritual, ethics, discipline, intention, and action into a single covenantal way of life.

To argue that an inward spiritual disposition makes the physical mitzvah unnecessary reverses the meaning of the Torah. The circumcised heart gives meaning to the commandment; it does not annul it.

The Meaning of the Eighth Day

The Torah requires brit milah on the eighth day of a male child’s life. This timing is itself part of the commandment. A properly timed circumcision is considered so significant that, under the conditions defined by halakha, it may be performed even when the eighth day falls on Shabbat.

The child is brought into the covenant before he is capable of understanding or choosing it for himself. This reflects a fundamental feature of Jewish identity: the covenant is not merely an individual philosophical commitment made by isolated adults. It is an inheritance, a peoplehood, and a sacred responsibility transmitted from one generation to the next.

Jewish parents make many consequential decisions for their children. They give them names, provide medical care, choose where they will live, determine their early education, teach them a language, and introduce them to a moral and religious community. Parents do not wait until children reach adulthood before giving them any identity, values, or obligations.

Brit milah belongs to this covenantal responsibility. Jewish parents do not create the covenant through circumcision. They receive a child who has been born into Israel and fulfill the commandment that marks his place within the covenant of Abraham.

Medical Safety and the Preservation of Life

Recognizing brit milah as a binding commandment does not mean performing it recklessly. Torah law never requires a circumcision to proceed when doing so would place the child in serious danger.

The Rambam emphasizes that the preservation of life takes precedence. When a child is ill, weak, or medically unstable, the circumcision must be postponed until it can be performed safely. There is no virtue in endangering a child in order to insist upon the eighth day. The mitzvah may be fulfilled later; a life that has been lost cannot be restored.

This is an important distinction between halakhic obedience and religious fanaticism. Halakha does not command blind performance without regard for circumstances. It commands disciplined obedience governed by the Torah’s own concern for life.

Parents should therefore use a properly trained and competent mohel and should disclose relevant medical information. When there are questions concerning bleeding disorders, premature birth, jaundice, infection, unusual weakness, family medical history, or other risks, qualified medical advice must be obtained. Serious medical concerns should also be presented to a competent halakhic authority who understands both the mitzvah and the principle of preserving life.

Medical danger may postpone the performance of the mitzvah. Personal discomfort with the commandment, however, does not transform a preference into a medical exemption.

Metzitzah and the Difference Between Law and Custom

Modern discussions of circumcision frequently focus on metzitzah, the drawing of blood from the circumcision wound. Traditional halakhic sources describe suction as part of the procedure, historically understood as a protective measure for the child. In some communities, this developed into the practice known as metzitzah b’peh, in which suction is performed directly by mouth.

It is important to distinguish brit milah itself from one particular method of performing metzitzah. The commandment of circumcision comes directly from the Torah. Direct oral suction is not the essence of the biblical commandment, and many Torah-observant authorities permit or require the use of sterile alternatives when direct contact creates a risk of infection.

Derekh HaTorah distinguishes binding law from local custom and from practices that developed under earlier medical assumptions. Respect for tradition does not require ignoring credible danger. At the same time, concern about one disputed procedure should not be used as an argument against brit milah as a whole.

A safe and halakhically valid circumcision can be performed without treating every historical technique as eternally unchangeable.

Circumcision Is Not Primarily a Medical Procedure

Some defenders of circumcision concentrate on possible medical benefits. Others oppose it because they believe those benefits are insufficient to justify a procedure performed during infancy. Both approaches risk missing the central Jewish claim.

Brit milah is not fundamentally preventive medicine. Its legitimacy within Judaism does not depend upon proving that every circumcised man will enjoy measurable health benefits. It is a religious commandment and a covenantal act.

This does not place brit milah beyond ethical reflection. A mitzvah must be performed competently, humanely, and with appropriate pain management and medical safeguards. But a secular calculation of immediate medical benefit cannot, by itself, determine the meaning or validity of a religious covenant that has shaped Jewish life for thousands of years.

The modern language of bodily autonomy also deserves a thoughtful response. Bodily autonomy is an important ethical concern, particularly in protecting people from exploitation and unnecessary harm. Yet autonomy is not the only moral principle recognized by society. Parents routinely authorize necessary and beneficial procedures for children who cannot provide informed consent. They also shape the religious, cultural, linguistic, educational, and communal lives of their children.

The disagreement is therefore not simply between those who respect children and those who do not. It concerns whether parents and religious communities may transmit a covenantal identity through a limited physical rite that they understand to have been commanded by God.

Torah-observant Judaism answers that they may and, in the case of a Jewish son, that they are commanded to do so.

Women and the Covenant

Because brit milah is performed only upon males, some modern critics argue that it presents the covenant as exclusively male. This misunderstands both the commandment and the status of Jewish women.

Jewish girls are born fully into the people and covenant of Israel. They do not require a corresponding surgical procedure, and Judaism neither commands nor permits any form of female circumcision. The absence of the physical sign does not make a Jewish woman less Jewish, less holy, or less responsible before God.

Torah does not assign every commandment identically to every person. Some obligations apply particularly to priests, others to judges, farmers, kings, parents, men, women, residents of the Land of Israel, or those living while the Temple stands. Difference in obligation does not necessarily imply difference in human worth.

The Torah’s covenant includes the entire people of Israel. Brit milah is the bodily sign commanded for males within that covenant; it is not a declaration that the covenant belongs only to them.

Communities may celebrate the birth and naming of a daughter with prayer, thanksgiving, and appropriate customs. Such celebrations can be meaningful expressions of joy without inventing an artificial equivalent to a commandment that the Torah does not give.

Opposition to Circumcision and Antisemitism

Not every person who questions circumcision is antisemitic. Some people raise sincere concerns about consent, pain, medical safety, or the authority of parents. These questions should be answered honestly rather than dismissed automatically as hatred.

Nevertheless, opposition to circumcision has repeatedly become entangled with hostility toward Jews and Judaism. Calls to prohibit brit milah do not merely regulate a peripheral religious preference. They threaten one of the most ancient and central practices of Jewish life.

Jewish history contains many examples of governments attempting to suppress circumcision as a means of weakening or erasing Jewish identity. During the persecutions associated with Hellenistic rule, Jews risked their lives to circumcise their sons. In later periods, hostile governments and political movements likewise treated circumcision as evidence that Jews were alien, primitive, or disloyal.

The 2012 ruling by a German court that characterized the religious circumcision of a child as bodily harm caused alarm among Jewish and Muslim communities. Germany subsequently enacted legal protection for religious circumcision, but the controversy demonstrated how quickly abstract debates about autonomy can threaten the practical survival of minority religious communities.

Criticism becomes particularly troubling when brit milah is described with language intended to portray Jews as barbaric, sexually corrupt, violent, or dangerous to children. Such rhetoric often repeats patterns that have been used against Jews for centuries.

Defending brit milah does not mean refusing every discussion about safety or ethics. It means insisting that Jews have the right to live openly according to Torah and to transmit their covenantal life to their children.

Brit Milah and Conversion

For a male convert, circumcision is an essential part of the traditional conversion process. Conversion is not merely the adoption of Jewish beliefs or the declaration of personal identification with the Jewish people. It is a formal entrance into the covenant of Israel under the authority of a qualified beit din.

The Torah connects circumcision with the integration of the stranger into the covenantal community:

“When a stranger shall reside with you and wishes to make the Passover offering to the Lord, every male among him shall be circumcised; then he may draw near to perform it, and he shall be as one born in the land.”
— Exodus 12:48

Traditional conversion for a man therefore includes acceptance of the commandments, circumcision, and immersion. When a man has already been medically circumcised, halakha generally requires hatafat dam brit, the drawing of a symbolic drop of covenantal blood, rather than repeating the surgical procedure.

This requirement should not be treated as a meaningless technicality. Medical circumcision and brit milah may involve the same physical removal, but the covenantal significance of the act must still be formally recognized within the conversion process.

At the same time, the requirement should be handled with dignity, privacy, sensitivity, and appropriate medical care. A prospective convert should never be mocked, publicly embarrassed, or treated as though his willingness to undergo circumcision gives others permission to disregard his humanity.

Conversion must be serious because joining the covenant is serious. Seriousness, however, does not require cruelty or unnecessary obstruction. A sincere convert should be taught, prepared, supported, and welcomed.

A Pastoral Approach to Those Who Are Uncircumcised

An Orthodox understanding of brit milah must combine clarity about the law with compassion toward actual people.

Some Jewish men were not circumcised because their parents were secular, uninformed, fearful, medically advised against it, or disconnected from Jewish life. Others may have been raised in communities that considered the practice optional. A man encountering the mitzvah as an adult may experience fear, anger, embarrassment, or uncertainty.

Such a person should not be humiliated or rejected. He remains a Jew and should be welcomed into Jewish learning, prayer, community, and observance. A rabbi or teacher should explain the mitzvah honestly, help him obtain competent medical and halakhic guidance, and support him as he considers fulfilling the obligation.

Compassion does not require declaring that the mitzvah no longer matters. Conversely, fidelity to the mitzvah does not justify treating another Jew with contempt.

The purpose of Torah teaching is to help people draw closer to God and to the covenant. Shame and public condemnation often drive people farther away. The proper path is patient instruction, truthful guidance, practical assistance, and respect for the dignity of every Jew.

Commandment, Not Superstition

Brit milah is not magical. It does not guarantee righteousness, erase sin, or transform an unethical person into a faithful servant of God. A circumcised Jew remains responsible for every other aspect of Torah: justice, prayer, Shabbat, honesty, sexual morality, care for the vulnerable, reverence for God, and love of neighbor.

Yet the fact that circumcision is not sufficient by itself does not make it unnecessary. No single mitzvah constitutes the whole of Judaism. Each commandment occupies its proper place within the larger covenantal life of Israel.

A person should not trust in the physical mark while ignoring the God who commanded it. Neither should a person claim an inward covenant while rejecting its outward sign.

Brit milah joins body and spirit, ancestry and responsibility, individual identity and communal belonging. It reminds us that Judaism is not merely a collection of abstract beliefs. Torah is lived through the body, the family, the home, the calendar, the community, and the concrete actions of everyday life.

An Everlasting Sign

Brit milah remains one of the clearest signs of the continuity of the Jewish people. Empires have risen and fallen, Jewish communities have crossed continents, and Jewish cultures have developed in radically different surroundings. Yet generation after generation has continued to bring Jewish sons into the covenant of Abraham on the eighth day.

Derekh HaTorah therefore affirms brit milah as a binding commandment of the Written Torah, interpreted and implemented through the authoritative Oral Torah. It should be performed safely, competently, compassionately, and without superstition. Genuine medical danger must be taken seriously, but personal preference or changing social attitudes do not annul a divine commandment.

Circumcision of the heart must accompany circumcision of the flesh. Ethical conduct must accompany ritual observance. Compassion must accompany halakhic conviction. None of these truths cancels the others.

The final decision concerning whether brit milah is a mitzvah is not left to individual conscience, because the Torah has already spoken. The individual conscience remains vitally important in determining whether we approach the mitzvah with humility, sincerity, reverence, and love.

Brit milah is the covenant marked upon the body, but its purpose is to shape an entire life of faithfulness to the God of Abraham and to the Torah of Israel.