Do we Follow Abraham or Moses? - Tazria 5784

Why are Jewish boys circumcised?  This pillar of our faith, for which our people have made major sacrifices through the ages, originates with our father Avraham.  Hashem appeared to him when he was 99 years old and told him to circumcise himself.  One of the blessings we say at a Bris is: Blessed are You... Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to bring [this child] into the covenant of our father Avraham.”  We are obviously associating the bris with Avraham’s incredible act of connection to Hashem.

Yet if we look at the Mishneh Torah, Rambam’s codex of Jewish law, we find that he derives the Mitzvah from this week’s Parsha, Tazria.  In his list of the positive Mitzvot he writes: “[Mitzvah] 215: To circumcise a son, as [Vayikra 12:3] states: ‘On the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.’ “  

It seems as though the source of the Mitzvah is not from Avraham but rather from a commandment given much later, to Moshe at Mount Sinai.  So which is it?

I can’t help but think of one of the oldest Jewish stories.  Two people come to the Rabbi with a dispute.  The first states his case and the Rabbi says: “you’re right.”  Then the second man argues the opposite, and the Rabbi says “you’re right.”  The Rabbi’s wife overhears this and asks her husband: how can they both be right?  The Rabbi responds: “you’re right.”  

(Pardon the interruption:  As we prepare for Pesach, there are two very important things to think about.  One is to “Sell the Chametz” - see here.  The other is to get hand-baked Shmurah Matzah for the Seder.  See here.)

When it comes to the 613 Mitzvot, the Rambam counts the commandment in this Parsha, because whatever was commanded before the Torah was given at Sinai does not have a bearing on our obligations.  The source of our obligation is therefore the commandment at Sinai, not Avraham’s observance. 

However, the impact of the Mitzvah on the boy receiving the Bris is the same as that of Avraham’s Bris.  Let me explain by talking about the impact of this Mitzvah and its centrality to Torah and Jewish life.   Our spiritual soul, a part of Hashem, was removed from the spiritual realms and placed in a physical body to bring the spiritual into the physical world.  

Every time we do a physical Mitzvah, we are bringing the spiritual and physical realms together.  But there is no Mitzvah that accomplishes this like circumcision.  The transformation of the physical to spiritual in mitzvot is not seen by the physical eye.  The actual physical object remains as it was, and only with learning and contemplation we can recognize the difference.  Not so with Bris, where the actual physical flesh now permanently bears the sign of the eternal covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people.

(By the way, the Talmud implies that women have a superior, inborn connection to Hashem that comes to them automatically without the need for a physical ritual such as circumcision.  A man needs a physical reminder, a woman knows it in her heart.)

So when Avraham circumcised himself, he brought the process of transforming the physical world into its true reality for the first time, because until then the spiritual impact was not evident in any physical item.

When a baby is born, our sages taught, his divine soul is not yet revealed in his body.  When he has his Bris is when “the holy soul begins to express itself.”  When a boy has his Bris, he is recreating the experience that Avraham had.  So while the actual Mitzvah was given at Sinai, it is also accurate to say that we are bringing the newborn boy into the covenant of our father Avraham.

As we can see, the bris is much more than just a tradition.  It is the epitome of the fulfillment of joining spirituality and physicality on earth.  It is done, as the Torah says, on the eighth day, creating an eternal bond with Hashem that can never be broken.