L ifestyles /C ulture
The Mohel Wore a Mask
JU DA ISM
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
THE GOOD NEWS: The ritual
known as the brit milah, or bris,
has not changed because of the
pandemic. The aim is the same,
and so are the blessings that are
recited. In fact, the improvements that
have been made in the millennia
since circumcision was described
in the Mishnah — certain
sanitary practices and numbing
agents — remain intact.

Scalpels, forceps and non-
woven dressing remain the tools
of the trade. A bris is a bris,
as permanent as ever. Eight-
day-old babies continue to be
gently laid upon big pillows.

The only changes are just
about everything else.

For a while, according to
several mohels serving the
Greater Philadelphia area, the
rate at which they received work
was down significantly. In some
sects, fewer mohels are being
trained due to the travel and
room occupancy restrictions that
have arisen in the last several
months. Mohels, like everyone
else, are wearing masks at work.

And perhaps most importantly,
what is meant to be a joyous
communal occasion has become
smaller, quieter and decidedly
without a kosher spread to follow.

“A bris does not make the
child a Jew. A bris brings the
child into the Jewish commu-
nity. So when you limit the
number of people who are
present, it’s almost antithetical
to the concept of a bris,” said
Cantor Mark Kushner. Kushner
has been a mohel for decades,
accredited in Israel, with an
honorary degree from the
Jewish Theological Seminary
and a master’s in education from
Gratz College. The homepage of
his website — with a collage
of smiling families tilting their
newly convenanted sons toward
the camera — testifies to the
number of ceremonies he’s been
a part of.

28 OCTOBER 15, 2020
Dr. David Rawdin, a mohel, with parents Jeffrey and Taryn and their newly
minted Jewish boy, Zachary
Photo by Dr. David Rawdin
But it wasn’t until the last few
months that Kushner led ceremo-
nies that relatives were watching
via Zoom, from Israel, South
Africa and elsewhere. Virtual
attendees with whom he might’ve
jostled for position at the bagels
and lox table instead watched
their newest family member be
brought into the global commu-
nity of Jews in pixels.

In the room itself, the number
of people who attend has been
limited to 10 or 15, and fewer of
the assembled end up holding
or touching the baby. When
Kushner walks in the house, the
first thing he does is cover his
shoes, wash his hands and put on
a medical-grade gown. Though
the atmosphere is dramatically
different, Kushner said, families
who contact him for help have
been “very receptive” to the
changes he’s implemented.

“People are frightened.

People want safety, and
anything that you can do to
help them towards that goal ...

my experience is that they’re
very accepting,” Kushner said.

Dr. David Rawdin, a pediatri-
cian in Merion Station, has been
a mohel for 10 years. However
many parents feel nervous about
bringing people into their home
at the moment, they’ll never be as
great in number as those that are
nervous about the circumcision
itself. Skittish parents and relatives
are nothing new for Rawdin.

Rawdin’s approach to britot
milah during the pandemic has
been to fold risk assessment
discussions into his typical
pre-bris conference with
families. Those meetings, once
in person, are conducted via
Zoom or by phone; the partic-
ulars of the service and the
simcha are still discussed in
detail, with extra time made
to discuss pre-screening the
reduced number of guests.

What made the profession
attractive to Rawdin was the
chance to be a part of a family’s
simcha, and those pre-bris
meetings, even with their new
character, are part of what
keeps him coming back.

“One reason I became a
mohel was to do it the way I
wanted to do it,” Rawdin said,
explaining that his way means
personal connections with the
people to whom he provides a
service. That element of his job
hasn’t changed a bit.

Howard Glantz does double
duty; he’s helped families reestab-
lish the everlasting covenant
since ’91, and has been a cantor at
Adath Jeshurun since 2004.

Glantz learned the trade from
an OB-GYN at Jacobi Medical
Center/Albert Einstein College of
Medicine, the OB-GYN himself
being a mohel, and the son of
another mohel at that. Between
JEWISH EXPONENT
Cantor Mark Kushner, aka Cantor K, with his now-customary mask, gloves
and gown 
Courtesy of Mark Kushner
the three of them, that’s a lot of
skin in the game; and yet, it’s safe
to say that neither Glantz’s teacher
nor his teacher’s father could’ve
known to teach Glantz how to
deal with, say, a pandemic.

Back in March and April,
Glantz found himself in a position
he never wanted to find himself
in, turning down opportunities to
shepherd a family through their
child’s bris. Traveling to northern
New Jersey and New York during
that time felt like entering a
conflict zone, he believed, and he
did not want to put himself or his
family at risk.

Just a few weeks ago, he
made the trek to Jersey, and
the danger that was in the air
back in the spring feels a bit
more distant. But still, Glantz,
who loves the profession, who
wants to sing with a sense of
celebration, and regrets that
he must put on gloves before
he gets out of the car, restricts
his services to those that have
acted responsibly.

Rabbi Betzalel Katkovsky,
who serves Jewish families in the
Northeast, feels the new normal
acutely in the way that the
memory of the bris is preserved.

Professional photographers,
begging extended broods to
squeeze together a little more,
have been done away with; in
their place are frequently the
mohels themselves, asking fewer
people for fewer smiles. And even
those smiles, Katkovsky said, are
hard to discern behind a mask.

“Part of the beauty of keeping
this commandment is the consis-
tency that we, the Jewish people,
have had for 4,000 years,” Kushner
said, reflecting on the changes he
and the families he serves have
made since March. “It’s what
makes this so intense, and so
emotionally gratifying, that you
know that you’re reaching back
to something that started with
Abraham. And there’s not much
else that you can do to reach that
far back, and connect.” l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



T ORAH P ORTION
A Tale of Two Interpretations
BY RABBI SHAI CHERRY
Parshat Bereshit
THE BIG BANG defi es our
understanding of the laws of
nature. Th e Bible’s big bang,
the fi rst three verses of Genesis,
intimates the contradiction.

On Christmas Eve of 1968,
Apollo 8’s Bill Anders read,
from outer space, the opening
of the Authorized King James
translation to a rapt nation: “In
the beginning, God created the
heaven and the earth. And the
earth was without form, and
void.” For those who knew either
Hebrew grammar or Rashi,
the great 11th-century sage,
there was a universal wince.

Th e New Jewish Publication
Society translation more faith-
fully reads: “When God began
to create heaven and earth —
the earth being unformed and
void ... ” Th ere’s a world of
diff erence between the two
translations. When the curtain rises on
the drama of creation, King
James’ stage is empty. Even
the stage is missing. Th en God
creates the heaven and the
earth out of nothing.

But on the Jewish stage,
when the curtain goes up,
it’s chaos and confusion.

Everything listed in verse two
Ungar Continued from Page 23
patriarchs. Wondrous as that
is, it doesn’t fi ll the longing to
hug a grandchild.

Once again, our local
government has stepped in,
playing holiday music to lift
fl agging spirits. We even had
a socially distanced version of
the Simchat Beit Hashoavah,
the nightly revelries, an integral
part of this holiday.

Every night of Chol Hamoed,
the intermediate days of the
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM swirled about: an unformed
and void earth with darkness
over the surface of the deep and
a wind/spirit of God sweeping
over the waters. In the Jewish
Genesis, God had not created
those elements; God designs
our world by organizing those
preexisting elements.

In both translations, however,
there’s a contradiction: The
world was unformed and void.

Something unformed, by defi ni-
tion, consists of matter. Something
void, by defi nition, lacks matter.

Th e Torah is telling us, right from
the start, that creation is a contra-
diction in terms. Like the Big
Bang, it’s unfathomable.

Most of us were taught that
God created the world from
nothing. I’m not arguing that
point. I’m simply pointing out
that Genesis, as a text, off ers
counterevidence to that later
theological claim. Th e logic of
Genesis One, without reading
it through the subsequent inter-
pretations of the Talmudic rabbis
or the medieval philosophers,
reveals a breathtaking insight.

In verse 20, God invites the
waters to bring forth swarms
of living creatures. In verse
24, God invites the earth to
bring forth land animals.

Grammatically, God’s words
are invitations, not commands.

Neither the earth nor the waters
are God’s creations. Th us, the
entire animal kingdom is a
co-creation between God and
those primordial elements on
stage when the curtain rose.

What about us humans? We
were created on the same day as
land animals, but the Torah’s
grammar expands: “Let us
create humanity in our image
aft er our likeness.” Previous
divine invitations were directed
to only a single addressee: the
waters or the earth.

With humans, God is
addressing that which had
already been co-created on Day
Six, namely, the multiple co-
creations of the earth. Humans
are the ultimate co-creation.

Perhaps if God had created us
with better raw material, it would
be easier to live a righteous life
— without contradiction.

Genesis One was not
concerned with what we call
science. Its cosmology, its under-
standing of the cosmos, was
like other ancient Near Eastern
cosmologies. However, when God
creates light, days before God
makes the source of light — that
was a religious polemic against
Babylonian religion which saw the
sun as a god (shades of Apollo!).

For us Israelites, the sun was just
another product of Day Four.

We shouldn’t look to
Judaism for science. Conversely,
we shouldn’t look to science
for values. Th at’s clear. What
festival, an illuminated fl atbed
truck carried around a group of
musicians who gave concerts in
the neighborhoods of our town.

Th ere was no dancing; residents
watched the show from their
cars, bikes and balconies.

Th is is a Sukkot like no
other. But who says it was
terrible? Our tradition teaches
that this holiday is best spent
at home in the sukkah, a
three-walled structure built to
resemble a heavenly hug.

And our eff orts to slow the
spread of the virus seem to be
helping. Press reports say that
the number of cases in Israel is
coming down.

As I write these words, a
man with a recording and a
loudspeaker is making his way
through town. Speaking sternly,
he reminds us to stick to the
rules. To remain a part of the
solution, not part of the problem.

I hope we continue to listen. ●
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
Oct. 16
Oct. 23
requires nuance is to relate to
the textual sources of our rich
heritage with critical apprecia-
tion and wonder for what they
do off er.

Genesis off ers the radically
democratic vision of a world
in which every human being,
male and female, is created in
the divine image. King James
might begrudgingly agree, but
only if such a claim did not
challenge the divine right of
kings. In the ancient Near East,
too, kings were the sole images
of God on earth.

In Genesis One, the goal of
humanity goes unstated. We’re
given assignments, but our
purpose is not disclosed until
the following chapter. Th ere the
King James Bible has that our
purpose is to “dress and keep”
God’s garden. Contemporary
Jewish translators have “to
work and watch.” All of them
share the sense of adding
value while preserving what’s
essential. We have succeeded
spectacularly in achieving the
fi rst goal — adding value —
in the form of technological
breakthroughs. But we have failed miser-
ably in the second — keeping
God’s garden — by our indif-
ference to the preservation of
our environment. Th at’s our
contradiction. We need more Torah, more
6:01 p.m.

5:51 p.m.

instruction, to curb our earthly
nature which demands we
feed our yawning appetites. A
midrash off ers a Jewish dimen-
sion to our purpose in God’s
garden. We’re to work with
words of Torah and to keep the
Torah’s commandments. For
our rabbis, the Torah, too, is
God’s garden.

We Israelites began as an
agrarian society. We humans,
literally and literarily, are
co-creations of God and
nature. Th e Torah’s intimations
of our origins were prescient.

Th e Torah’s legal framework to
live long on the land that the
Lord our God has given us is
equally prescient. Judaism has
the resources to restore God’s
garden. Our soil is rich. ●
Rabbi Shai Cherry is the rabbi of
Congregation Adath Jeshurun in
Elkins Park and has just written
“Coherent Judaism: Constructive
Theology, Creation, and Halakhah.”
The Board of Rabbis of Greater
Philadelphia is proud to provide
diverse perspectives on Torah
commentary for the Jewish
Exponent. The opinions expressed
in this column are the author’s own
and do not refl ect the view of the
Board of Rabbis.

Be heard.

Email your letters
to the editor.

letters@jewishexponent.com Carol Ungar is a prize-winning
writer who lives in the Judean Hills
with her husband and sons. This
piece fi rst appeared in JTA.

JEWISH EXPONENT
OCTOBER 15, 2020
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