Brit Milah - Reasons For Circumcision

Reasons For Circumcision

In Of the Special Laws, Book 1, the Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC - AD 50) gives six reasons for the practice of circumcision. He attributes four of the reasons to "men of divine spirit and wisdom". These include the idea that circumcision 1) protects against disease, 2) secures cleanliness "in a way that is suited to the people consecrated to God", 3) causes the circumcised portion of the penis to resemble a heart, thereby representing a physical connection between the "breath contained within the heart is generative of thoughts, and the generative organ itself is productive of living beings", and 4) promotes prolificness by removing impediments to the flow of semen. To these, Philo added two of his own reasons, including the idea that circumcision 5) "signified figuratively the excision of all superfluous and excessive pleasure" and 6) "that it is a symbol of a man's knowing himself".

Rabbi Saadia Gaon considers something to be 'complete', if it lacks nothing, but also has nothing that is unneeded. He regards the foreskin an unneeded organ that God created in man, and so by amputating it, the man is completed.

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon "Rambam", CE 1135-1204), who apart from being a great Torah scholar was also a physician and philosopher, argued that circumcision acts to repress sexual pleasure and serves as a common bodily sign to members of the same faith.

The author of Sefer ha-Chinuch provides three reasons for the practice of circumcision:

1. To complete the form of man, by removing what he claims to be a redundant organ;
2. To mark the chosen people, so their body will be different as their soul is; The organ chosen for the mark is the one responsible for the sustenance of the species.
3. Said completion isn't congenital, but left to the man. This implies, that as he completes the form of his body, so can he complete the form of his soul.

Talmud professor Daniel Boyarin offered two explanations for circumcision. One is that it is a literal inscription on the Jewish body of the name of God in the form of the letter "yud" (from "yesod"). The second is that the act of bleeding represents a feminization of Jewish men, significant in the sense that the covenant represents a marriage between Jews and (a symbolically male) God.