Woo hoo! They got quite a good look at the package, didn’t they?
Wow. Seriously though, I have to admire a religion that takes it’s ritual so seriously. It’s one of the things I admire about Judaism from afar.
The emphasis on practice is one of the things that drew me to Judaism. I advisedly use “practice” rather than “ritual” exactly because so much of what ritual there is in Christianity has become “ritual” in the secular, almost pejorative sense, and is regarded even by many clergy as “window dressing” or “fancy clothes and words time”. In any event, it’s something outside the ordinary run of one’s life. Jewish practice, on the other hand, permeates every aspect of one’s life, and it’s the practices, the things one does (fulfilling the mitzvot), that are important. Kavannah (hard to translate, but means basically the sense of intention or purpose that should accompany performance of a mitzvah) is important too, but it’s better to fulfill a mitzvah without it than to not fulfill it at all.
Not necessarily.
For women, what they do is they cover the mikveh with an opaque sheet with a cutout for the head. The woman goes into the mikveh while the rabbis aren’t there, gets her head in the hole, calls the rabbis in and then immerses. This way her modesty is preserved, but the immersion is witnessed.
Did they do the same for you rackensack? I wasn’t sure if they did this for men as well.
Zev Steinhardt
Good a place as any to hijack with an on topic joke. A Shogun was looking for a new head samurai and three men applied, a Japanese, a Chinese and a Jewish samurai. For his test of skill the Japanese samurai opened a tiny box and a bee flew out. With a deft flick of his sword the bee fell in two parts on the floor. The Chinese samurai opened a similar box and a housefly flew out. With two flicks of his sword the fly fell to the floor in four parts. The Jewish samurai opened a box and a gnat flew out. He took a breath, drew his Katana and with three precise slashes… nothing happened. The Shogun asked why he failed and the jewish samurai replied “I only kill when I intend to, I’ve been a mohel for twenty years and never had a fatal bris yet.”
In an effort to fight ignorance:
A Jewish male baby need not be circumcised. Many Jews choose not to.
This might not fly in the Orthodox community–but of course there is a lot of disagreement between the orthodox and other sects on a lot of things.
Go to www.nocirc.org, scroll down on the right, and click on “circumcision and religion.” There are some interesting links there. (Sorry, there’s no direct link) Some of the rhetoric is a little crazed, but there’s a lot of good info.
You’re right that it won’t fly in the Orthodox community. Nor will it in the Conservative community. Even Reform officially advises circumcision for boys. The number of Jews who actively don’t circumcize their sons is very small, and those that don’t do so are among the most secular and assimilated members of the community.
Zev Steinhardt
That’s certainly true in most cases. But if the kid is born of a Jewish mother, then he’s Jewish, right?
Yes, he’s Jewish. But he still needs to be circumcised according to the overwhelming opinions of rabbis from all denominations of Judaism.
Zev Steinhardt
Nope, no cover of any kind. I’ve forgotten many of the details (it was a sort of stressful day, as I think I’ve mentioned), but IIRC I showered (per custom, and I needed it after sweating through my t-shirt, dress shirt, and suit jacket during the whole hatafat dam brit ordeal), walked from the shower area to the mikveh alone, dropped the towel, and walked into the water until I was up to my neck, at which point I waited for the rabbis to come in to the room. Their vantage point was about what you’d have of someone standing in a similar manner in a swimming pool if you were standing ten or twelve feet back from the edge and they were two or three feet from the edge, in neck-deep water. Not as revealing as what I’d already been through, however. I was more concerned about getting the shehekianu and the bracha for the mikveh right (I still hate praying alone in Hebrew in the presence of rabbis) than anything else at that point.
This thread has been very enlightening. Thanks guys.