Few practices in Jewish history are as ancient, as sacred, or as intimately connected with Jewish identity as brit milah, the covenant of circumcision. When God commanded 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” (Genesis 17:10), circumcision became more than a custom of the ancient world. It became the physical sign of the covenant between God and Abraham and, through him, the generations of Israel that would follow.
For traditional and Orthodox Judaism, brit milah is therefore not simply an ethnic tradition, a cultural artifact, or a ceremony preserved because our ancestors practiced it. It is a mitzvah rooted directly in Torah. God describes the covenant as something placed “in your flesh for an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:13). The physical nature of the command is essential to its meaning. Judaism is not a religion concerned only with beliefs, emotions, or private spirituality. Torah sanctifies the physical world. We eat differently, structure time differently, conduct business differently, rest differently, form families differently, and even mark the covenant in our bodies. Brit milah is one of the clearest expressions of this embodied Judaism.
The Covenant of Abraham
The covenant of circumcision appears at one of the defining moments in the life of Abraham. God promises that Abraham will become the father of nations and that the covenant will continue through his descendants. Abraham is then commanded to circumcise himself, the males of his household, and future generations of his descendants.
The Torah presents the command in unequivocal terms. Circumcision is not offered merely as an optional expression of devotion. It is the sign of the covenant itself.
This significance continues throughout Jewish history. Circumcision became one of the practices most closely associated with Israel’s faithfulness to God. Even when Jews lived under foreign rulers, experienced persecution, or encountered cultures hostile to Jewish observance, generations of Jewish parents continued to bring their sons into the covenant of Abraham.
That persistence is important. Our ancestors often practiced brit milah when doing so was difficult, socially unpopular, or even dangerous. They understood that Judaism could not simply be reshaped every time the surrounding culture developed different values. The covenant belonged not merely to one historical generation but to Israel across generations.
Traditional Judaism inherits that same understanding. We do not perform brit milah because circumcision happens to be fashionable, because contemporary society approves of it, or because we can always demonstrate some independent practical advantage. We perform it because it is a mitzvah of Torah and because Israel remains a covenantal people.
Modern Objections to Circumcision
In the modern world, circumcision has increasingly become the subject of ethical, political, and cultural debate. Critics sometimes describe infant circumcision as mutilation, abuse, or an unacceptable violation of bodily autonomy. Some advocate restrictions or even legal prohibitions on the practice.
Traditional Judaism must take such arguments seriously enough to understand them, but it cannot accept the assumption that modern secular ethical categories automatically possess greater authority than the covenant itself.
The disagreement ultimately concerns more than a medical procedure. It reflects two very different understandings of human life.
Contemporary Western culture often places individual autonomy at the center of moral reasoning. Traditional Judaism certainly recognizes the dignity and moral responsibility of the individual, but it also understands human beings as members of families, communities, and covenants. Parents routinely make serious decisions for children who are not yet capable of making those decisions themselves. Within Judaism, parents also have religious obligations toward their children. Bringing a Jewish son into the covenant of Abraham is among those responsibilities.
The Jewish understanding of brit milah therefore cannot be reduced to the question, “Did the infant personally consent to this procedure?” The Jewish question is also, “What obligations do Jewish parents have toward the child whom God has entrusted to them?”
Within traditional Judaism, the answer has remained remarkably consistent: a Jewish father is obligated to see that his son enters the covenant of Abraham.
When Opposition Becomes Intolerance
People are free to question circumcision, just as they are free to question Judaism itself. Intellectual disagreement should not frighten us. Jews should be capable of discussing difficult ethical questions honestly and thoughtfully.
There is, however, an important difference between criticizing a religious practice and attempting to prohibit an entire religious community from observing one of its foundational commandments.
Throughout history, governments hostile to Judaism have sometimes attempted to suppress circumcision precisely because they understood how central it was to Jewish identity. From the persecutions associated with Antiochus IV to Roman restrictions under Hadrian and other periods of Jewish history, attacks upon circumcision have frequently accompanied broader attempts to suppress Jewish religious life.
For that reason, proposals to criminalize brit milah should concern Jews even when they arise from very different motivations today. A society may sincerely believe that it is protecting children while nevertheless creating laws that make traditional Jewish life impossible.
Religious liberty has little meaning if it protects only religious practices that secular society already finds agreeable.
A government that permits Judaism to exist while prohibiting Jews from observing commandments central to Judaism has offered only a very limited form of religious freedom.
Jews Who Question Brit Milah
The question becomes more painful when opposition comes from within the Jewish community itself. Some contemporary Jews have concluded that brit milah should be abandoned or replaced with a purely symbolic naming ceremony. Others describe themselves as culturally or spiritually Jewish while rejecting circumcision on ethical grounds.
Traditional Judaism cannot agree with that conclusion. Torah does not present brit milah as merely a cultural option that later generations may replace with another ceremony. The mitzvah is specifically circumcision, and its covenantal significance cannot simply be transferred to a symbolic substitute.
At the same time, disagreement should not become an excuse for contempt.
A Jew who rejects circumcision remains a Jew. A Jewish parent who struggles with the mitzvah should be met with serious Torah teaching, patience, and compassion rather than humiliation. Traditional Judaism should be confident enough in Torah that it does not need to attack every Jew who questions a commandment.
Our responsibility is to teach why the mitzvah matters.
Brit milah connects the Jewish child with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and generations of Israel. It declares that Jewish identity is not merely an intellectual philosophy that each generation reinvents for itself. We inherit a covenant, obligations, a people, and a sacred history.
The appropriate response to Jews who have lost sight of that meaning is not hatred. It is education.
Circumcision of the Flesh and the Heart
Modern discussions sometimes suggest replacing physical circumcision with a purely spiritual concept sometimes described as “circumcision of the heart.” Yet Torah itself never establishes such an opposition.
Indeed, the Torah speaks of circumcising the heart: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stiff-necked” (Deuteronomy 10:16). Later Moses says that God will “circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, to love the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 30:6).
But these verses do not abolish brit milah. They deepen its meaning.
Judaism does not ask us to choose between the body and the spirit. We are commanded to sanctify both.
Physical circumcision is the sign of the covenant in the body; circumcision of the heart describes the spiritual work of removing stubbornness and becoming receptive to God. One does not replace the other.
This distinction is especially important because later Christian theology often interpreted spiritual circumcision as superseding the physical commandment. Traditional Judaism rejects that interpretation. The Torah itself contains both teachings and gives each its place.
The covenant of Abraham remains a covenant in the flesh.
Brit Milah Is Not Child Abuse
Perhaps the most emotionally charged contemporary accusation is the claim that parents who circumcise their sons are abusing them.
Traditional Judaism should reject that characterization.
Jewish parents who bring their sons to brit milah ordinarily do so not from cruelty but from love, religious conviction, and a profound sense of responsibility. The ceremony itself is surrounded by prayer, blessing, family, community, and joy. The child is welcomed into the covenant and formally given his Hebrew name.
One may disagree with the parents’ religious understanding. One may even believe that circumcision should not be performed. But describing generations of Jewish parents as child abusers simply because they fulfilled one of Judaism’s oldest commandments crosses the boundary from ethical disagreement into caricature.
The Jewish community should likewise insist upon the highest standards in the performance of brit milah. The mitzvah should be carried out competently, hygienically, responsibly, and with appropriate concern for the welfare and comfort of the child. Reverence for a commandment never excuses negligence. On the contrary, the sacred character of the mitzvah demands that it be performed with exceptional care.
Traditional Judaism need not deny that circumcision is a real physical procedure in order to defend it. The covenant has meaning precisely because Judaism does not separate spirituality from embodied human life.
The Responsibility of Parents
Modern discussions of circumcision frequently focus exclusively upon the child’s future autonomy. Judaism approaches childhood somewhat differently.
Children cannot make most important decisions for themselves. Parents determine where they live, what they eat, what medical care they receive, what language they learn, what values they are taught, and what community shapes their earliest understanding of the world. No child grows up culturally or religiously neutral.
Jewish parents likewise transmit Jewish identity.
We give children Hebrew names before they can choose them. We teach them Torah before they are capable of evaluating every competing philosophy. We celebrate Shabbat with them, bring them to synagogue, teach them blessings, establish dietary practices in the home, and raise them within the history and memory of Israel.
Brit milah belongs within this larger responsibility of transmitting the covenant.
Traditional Judaism does not understand parenthood as simply keeping every possibility open until a child reaches adulthood. Parents are obligated to give their children a foundation. Eventually those children will become adults and make their own decisions about how they live, what they believe, and how faithfully they observe Judaism. But parents have the responsibility to give them something meaningful to inherit.
For Jewish parents, that inheritance begins with covenant.
An Ancient Practice in a Modern World
Being traditional does not require hostility toward the modern world. Medicine, science, philosophy, and changing social understandings can help us think carefully about how commandments are practiced. Jewish law itself has always taken physical welfare seriously.
But there is a difference between examining how a mitzvah should be performed and asking whether contemporary culture possesses the authority to erase the mitzvah altogether.
Traditional Judaism answers the second question clearly.
It does not.
The Torah is not binding only when its commandments coincide with modern preferences. Covenantal faith inevitably requires moments when Jewish practice stands apart from the surrounding society.
Kashrut does this.
Shabbat does this.
Jewish sexual ethics do this.
Jewish worship does this.
And brit milah does this.
To live as a Jew has always meant accepting that Israel will sometimes see the world differently from the cultures around it.
The Eternal Sign
A Jewish child entering the covenant today participates in something extraordinarily ancient. Abraham lived thousands of years ago, yet the covenant established with him remains embodied in Jewish families throughout the world.
The setting may have changed. The language spoken in the home may be English, Hebrew, French, Russian, Spanish, or any of countless others. The family may live in Jerusalem, New York, London, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, or a small town far from a large Jewish community.
Yet the words of the covenant remain.
The child enters the brit of Abraham.
That continuity is one of the remarkable features of Jewish civilization. Empires that once ruled the Jewish people have disappeared. Cultures that considered Judaism obsolete have themselves passed into history. Yet Jewish parents continue to gather family and community together and bring another generation into the covenant.
Brit milah therefore represents something larger than circumcision itself. It represents continuity—the conviction that we have received something sacred from those who came before us and that we have a responsibility to transmit it to those who come after us.
Conclusion
Traditional and Orthodox Judaism cannot regard brit milah as an optional cultural custom. The command comes directly from Torah, where God declares circumcision to be the sign of His covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
Modern ethical questions surrounding the practice deserve thoughtful discussion. Jews should not fear honest questions, and those who struggle with the mitzvah should be treated with patience and dignity. But openness to discussion does not require abandoning conviction.
There are times when Judaism must simply say that the covenant matters.
Brit milah is one of those times.
We should therefore defend the right of Jewish families to practice it, teach its meaning clearly, ensure that it is carried out responsibly, and resist attempts to portray faithful Jewish parents as immoral for observing their religion.
We do not circumcise our sons because our ancestors were incapable of imagining another way of life. We circumcise because we remain the heirs of Abraham’s covenant.
Four thousand years of history stand behind a Jewish father and mother as their son enters the brit. Behind them stand Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and the generations of Israel. Before them stands another Jewish life whose story has only begun.
And between those generations stands the covenant—the ancient promise written not merely upon parchment, but upon the living people of Israel.
It remains, as Torah declares, brit olam—an everlasting covenant.
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