Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism)

"I cannot comprehend the necessity of working up a spirit of enthusiasm for the ceremony merely on the ground that it is held in general esteem. It remains a barbarous bloody act. . . . The sacrificial idea which invested the act with sanctity in former days has no significance for us. However tenaciously religious sentiment may have clung to it formerly, at present, its only supports are habit and fear, to which we certainly do not wish to erect any shrines."

Notwithstanding Geiger's private views on the subject, his public position was quite different when, in 1843, a group of Frankfurt laymen formed the Society for the Friends of Reform and declared, among other things, that the long-standing rite of circumcision was null and void. Like other members of the emerging Reform rabbinate of mid-nineteenth century Germany, Geiger could not consider abrogating the rite, even though every other aspect of Jewish religious practice was subject to reconsideration in the light of modernity. As Lawrence Hoffman notes in the opening chapter of "Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism," when discussing the actions of the German Reform rabbinate in response to the Frankfurt laymen and during three historic meetings in the period between 1844 and 1846:

"Rabbis apparently found it possible to commit nothing less than liturgical surgery on their time-honored prayer book; they could cancel age-old mourning and wedding customs; they even declared the Talmud no longer binding. They had no trouble dispensing with Hebrew and cutting off their ties to a Jewish Land of Israel. They would even think seriously of declaring a marriage with a non-Jew `not forbidden.' But they could not even consider abrogating circumcision. Moreover, they could not even agree that males who are not circumcised are still Jews! Nowhere else, to the best of my knowledge, were the reformers so adamantly tied to their past as in the case of circumcision."

Indeed, the atavistic power of tradition almost prevented Professor Hoffman himself from publishing this fascinating and compelling exploration of the role of circumcision in Judaism, a work that he largely completed as early as 1987 (nearly ten years before its publication). Struggling to find the light of day, he admits to having erased the text from his computer and then lost the only hard copy in his possession. In the end, fortunately for those interested in better understanding the real meanings of Judaism, he decided "it is better to come to terms with the crawly creatures in the basement than to pretend that they are not there."

"Covenant of Blood" methodically explores the development, importance and meaning of circumcision within Judaism. Tracing the rite from its original textual origins in the story of Abraham, Professor Hoffman combines close analysis of Jewish texts with anthropological theory (particularly the seminal and insightful writings of Mary Douglas and Claude Levi-Strauss) to demonstrate how circumcision evolved into a binary system that served to reinforce Jewish patriarchy while simultaneously marginalizing women. It is a system that developed initially from the dichotomy between the salvific meaning ascribed to the blood of circumcision and the impurity of the blood of menstruation. From this dichotomy, Professor Hoffman demonstrates how the rabbinic system evolved in a manner that effectively excluded women from the religious culture of Judaism (while recognizing that the preserved rabbinic texts do not always reflect the reality of cultural practice). In a characteristic passage showing how "Covenant of Blood" relies upon anthropological analysis to illuminate Jewish theology (and which reminds me of some of the linguistic observations of Judith Tannen), Professor Hoffman summarizes why Jewish women were excluded from compliance with positive commandments dependent on time:

"[W]ith regard to gender, the rabbinic system presents a cultural diad of in control/out of control. Men are controlled, they learn the system of controls, and they exercise control to transform the environment; women are the opposite: they are out of control; they are nature; they are wild, loose, unable (by temperament) to master the application of those commandments that must be done precisely `on time.' Therefore, the system necessarily exempts them from those commandments. In a word, men are nature transformed by culture; women are nature, dependent on culture, that is, on men. They enter men's domain at times like marriage (thus requiring one-sixth of the Mishnah to tell their men how to deal with them), but they are never fully `culturated.' They do not learn Torah and are not obliged to effect culture's-that is, Torah's-transformation of nature. Using Levi-Strauss's celebrated categorization scheme loosely, we can say that men, as culture, are the cooked while women, as nature, are the raw."

Tracing the circumcision rite through history, Professor Hoffman demonstrates through careful textual and philological analysis how women were finally excluded entirely from participation in the rite by the Medieval rabbinate, making circumcision an exclusively male ritual in the synagogue.

For those who view Judaism as revealed religion, and Torah and its Talmudic elaborations as revealed texts, "Covenant of Blood" will appear to be nothing more than heresy. Similarly, for those who unquestioningly accept Judaic tradition and practice without regard to its origins and effects, there will continue to be a cultural, if not religious, imperative for circumcision, "the sine qua non of Jewish identity throughout time." But for those willing to examine the religious ritual of circumcision in the light of reason, Professor Hoffman has written a text worthy of careful reading and consideration.
April 08, 2002