Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] By circumcision we find an interesting custom.
[00:00:05] You would think that circumcision is a ceremony with only men involved. It's done to a boy, it's not done to a girl.
[00:00:15] The moyal is usually a man. Actually, according to the law, a lady is allowed to be moyal. But I've never seen it in my life. I mean, but according to law a woman is allowed to.
[00:00:26] And we know it from the Torah itself, because Zipporah, Moses wife, she was the one who circumcised their children.
[00:00:33] This story with Zipporah's circumcision of her children is a whole other story which we could talk about. But the child who circumcised it is always of boy. Obviously, the moil is usually a man.
[00:00:47] And an obligation to circumcise the child lies on the father, not on the mother. The mitzvah is on the father. So are there women that play any role in circumcision? And our customers them to have a role. And usually the way it's done that there is a married couple that takes a baby from the mother.
[00:01:09] The lady of the married couple takes the baby from the mother and gives it to her husband.
[00:01:17] And her husband brings the baby to the father, who is then is told by the moyel. The moil usually stands right there. And the moil says that the obligation to perform circumcision is on you. If you want to do it, you could do it yourself, but if you want to delegate me, then you can do that too. And the father usually delegates the moel, unless sometimes he does it do himself. I've seen fathers like this also. I have a couple of friends who actually did the cut themselves for their children. But I never did it. So there is a woman who is usually taking the baby from the mother and brings the baby into the hall, the room where the circumcision is performed.
[00:02:02] And there is a practical reason for it that the baby is eight days old, the mother usually just eight days after giving a birth. And a woman in this situation is very often not up to being the center of attention, walking onto the stage in front of everybody. She has many other things to worry about. As you know, women after they give birth, you know, she is probably barely sleeping, barely taking care of herself, if at all. She's nursing the baby every woken moment. And it just, you know, and then takes care of many other things for the baby. Between changing the diapers and nourishing, the whole day is gone.
[00:02:43] So that's why we have a woman who takes the baby from the mother and bringing the baby in and then it will not be that appropriate, won't be modest. If a woman is going to be handing the baby to a man who is not her relative, that's why she gives the baby to her husband and her husband is bringing the baby to the father. So that's a technical explanation, but then there is spiritual explanation to it as well. What is the spiritual explanation? It says in the books of Kabbalah that the reason why we have a married couple bringing the baby into the room for circumcision, it is because when two people are getting married under a chuppah, we also have a married couple who are leading the bride and the groom to the chuppah.
[00:03:29] And usually you have two men leading the groom and then their respective wives are leading the bride.
[00:03:40] And usually it's the parents. But if, let's say if somebody doesn't have one of the parents, then they make sure to find someone else.
[00:03:49] Because you need to have a couple who are going to be leading them to the room and the mother or the father will also be there, but the person next to them will be this man whose wife is going to be leading the bride.
[00:04:05] So why is that? It says because really men and women as you can imagine are very, very different.
[00:04:16] They're different in their nature, they're different in their upbringing, they are different in the way they see the world and see themselves.
[00:04:26] I had a Yeshua teacher who was an 80 year old man when he was teaching me and he didn't know anything about modern American life. So his comment will not based on the western reality of today. But he was saying I don't understand why is it that boys marry girls?
[00:04:46] Do you know why we have so many family and marriage problems? He says because boys marry girls, boys should be marrying boys and girls should be marrying girls. Then you'll have no fights in the family because boys understand boys and girls understand girls. A boy and a girl, they are so different and they come together, obviously they're gonna have fights.
[00:05:03] So this was a joke, but this joke has a lot of truth to it. Why? Because men and women are very different.
[00:05:10] And the whole point of marriage is to have this difficulty breached, to have this relationship where two people who are two opposites gonna be coming together.
[00:05:23] And there's a Kabbalistic reason for that as well. Because we Jews are called the wife of God. We are the woman in relationship with God and God is the man.
[00:05:38] And we got married to God. We are God's Wife. And the marriage was the process of giving on the Torah.
[00:05:47] When God came down on Mount Sinai, then we got married to him. And it says that we also had people leading us to this chuppah.
[00:05:58] It says God was brought down here by Moisha, Moses. And Aaron was the one who leading us to the chuppah.
[00:06:08] And Mount Sinai was the Chuppah itself.
[00:06:11] And that's why God came to Mount Sinai first and then we met him. Because the groom is coming to Chuppah first, and then Kala walks in. So there are many parallels there as well.
[00:06:23] So here you go.
[00:06:25] The whole idea of a groom being led to Chuppah by two men and the bride being led to Chuppah by two women is because men and women are very different. And a boy might not feel so comfortable to go into this relationship with a woman, and a girl might feel not so comfortable to go into this relationship with a man.
[00:06:48] So to help them bridge that gap, you have two married people who already bridged that gap, leading them respectively to the chuppah.
[00:06:57] So the same thing with Aaron and Moses.
[00:07:02] They led us to the chuppah. Why? Because they already bridged that gap. They were prophets.
[00:07:08] They bridged that gap. And they were coming to take us to meet our groom, which is God, because divine authority is that marriage.
[00:07:18] And then bris. Now we understand what is the whole idea of bris, of circumcision.
[00:07:24] We are bridging the greatest gap there is. If you think a gap between men and women, a gap between physicality and spirituality is even bigger.
[00:07:37] And that's what circumcision is, bridging.
[00:07:40] Why? Because there's a physical body, as physical as it gets, and now it's going to have a covenant with God on it, is going to be linked to spirituality.
[00:07:52] So circumcision is an act of bridging this gap between the physical world and spiritual world, because we are having now covenant with God.
[00:08:02] And this is why you have a man and a woman involved in circumcision, because again, men and a woman are representing, bridging the biggest gap that we have among people between two different natures, a male nature and a female nature.
[00:08:17] And they represent as well the marriage between us people and God.
[00:08:25] And now they are also helping each individual person to bridge this gap between him and spirituality. And that's why we have this interesting custom of kvateren. They're called a man and a woman that are bringing boy to the chuppah.
