The Daily Chizzuk of our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a — Why does Avraham need advice about circumcision?
Wednesday, 2 Tamuz 5783 — “Only now, science revealed why it’s good to circumcise at eight days”
These are his holy words:
Rashi says in Parashat Chukat about the verse, “And the Canaanite, the king of Arad, heard” (Bamidbar 21:1) — why the “Canaanite.” Because Amalek changed their language to the language of the Canaanite. They switched their language. They knew seventy languages. Rashi says that this was Amalek and not the Canaanite — because the main thing is that it’s forbidden to change the clothing, like how Amalek changed the language but not the clothing.
The clothing changes the whole nature of a person. If a person stops wearing the suit, the hat, he changes his whole nature — Rashi says that a change in language doesn’t matter like a change in clothing!
Mamrei sacrificed his soul in his counsel to Avraham about milah (ritual circumcision). What is the meaning that Aner gave Avraham counsel about milah? Does Avraham need advice? Do we need counselors for Avraham?!
Hashem said to Avraham to perform milah, so perform milah! There are tens of interpretations of this. Avraham and Aner said to Avraham, “Do the brit milah, but don’t do it publicly,” because in Hevron they said under no circumstance.
“On this very day,” the Midrash says that they said, “If you begin to cut people…” then, they still hadn’t seen anything like this; Avraham was the first circumcised person. This was the first time that they performed brit milah. Before this, everyone was born circumcised — Shet, Noach, and Metushelach were born circumcised (Tanchuma 58:5). There’s no such as this, that you suddenly begin to cut a person at the age of eight days. This is total insanity. There’s no such thing as this in the entire world. In Germany, they’re trying to ban brit milah, but there are also Arabs.
They took the Rabbi of Metz to jail for two days. They said, “What should we do with the Arabs? Here you have two million Arabs. So, it’s possible to work over the Jews, to tell them that anyone who performs a brit milah will be taken to jail, but what should we do with the Arabs?”
So they cancelled this entire law!
And likewise they’re trying every time to decree new laws against brit milah, but the Arabs also perform brit milah. This is a miracle that also the Arabs perform brit milah — otherwise, they would have banned brit milah. At the age of eight days, to take a baby and to start cutting it?
Now they checked scientifically — that only at the age of eight days, the body excretes a substance that congeals on the spot within a thousandth of a second. Usually, it takes several minutes for the blood to congeal, but with the baby, a congealing substance comes out, and this only happens at the age of eight days. Within a second, the blood congeals. The baby cries only a little at the beginning, when they place on him the device, the metal, but after a second, he stops crying. The baby has no pains from this.
Only the Torah revealed this. If not for the Torah, no one would dare to do such a thing — the Torah reveals that at the age of eight days, it’s already possible to cut the child; it’s already possible to circumcise him. The baby can’t stand the foreskin for a second. You need to perform the milah immediately after [praying at] sunrise. It’s forbidden to do this in this middle of the day — for the baby, this is terrible suffering. He doesn’t want the foreskin for even a thousandth of a second — he’s not prepared [to tolerate this].
“And from the womb, they are circumcised for Your Name” [from the song for the brit milah meal]. Straight from the womb. Inside the stomach, however he is formed, after forty days he already doesn’t want the foreskin.
