The Knife

by Joshua Hammerman
New York Times Magazine (1994)

Rabbis, for a living, instruct young, unassuming parents to commission the mutilation of their baby boy's genitalia on the eighth day following birth. Having led hundreds of families down that path over a fifteen-year rabbinical career, I've memorized the various text-book explanations in favor of circumcision. But not until the eighth day of my son Daniel's life did I truly understand the logic behind this mysterious ritual. Until that day, although I had witnessed countless cuttings, never had I myself performed one. I had assumed I'd be playing a relatively passive role, chanting a blessing or two, as I had for my first son, or daubing the child's mouth with gauze soaked in wine. But the Mohel, a skilled pediatrician with whom I had worked countless times, suddenly handed the knife and gestured down to the squirming infant. "It's all set up," he said, "no way you can go wrong." Indeed, the foreskin had been separated from the glans of the penis and was now protruding through a narrow slit of the flat, stainless steel clamp, with the rest of my child safely on the other side. It's the greatest honor a father can have." He took that line right out of my typical song and dance, only I always remind parents that they have the option of delegating that task to the Mohel. This Mohel wasn't followingthe script. "All you have to do is cut." Daniel, who had been crying incessantly throughout, suddenly fell silent, like Isaac centuries before, waiting for his father's knife to drop. Daniel had spent most of his first week of life blissfully attached to my wife Mara's upper anatomy, while I played computer games with the two-year old and did lots of arranging: food shopping, medical insurance, long-distance phone calls and social security numbers are what a father normally brings to the process of family bonding during first few days post partum. Utterly closed off by from the mystery by sheer exhaustion, I became a master of the mundane. Until I was handed the knife. Since the day Abraham circumcised Isaac, the knife has transformed father into sculptor, affirming his responsibility to mold and perfect nature. The knife also turns father into mentor, one willing to inflict pain for the sake of proper moral development. But mostly, the knife turns father into potential murderer. It is no coincidence that only one biblical chapter after Abraham circumcises Isaac, he nearly slaughters him, perhaps with the same knife. One does not have to be a master Freudian to know that the birth of a child brings about more than pure joy to the lucky father. There is no greater primal anger than that caused by seeing another male in carnal contact with your wife, and there is no greater primal envy than that caused by looking down at the person who was brought into the world specifically to be your survivor. In traditional Jewish society a male child was called a "kaddish," the one who would say the memorial prayers when the parent dies. With the birth of a "kaddish," the father hears a whisper that it is now all right to die. Mission accomplished. All this anger and jealousy, and then give the guy a knife, provide an accomplice to hold the kid's legs down, and ask the father to do that? There?!

What kind of perverse religion is this? And let's just say that I am no surgeon. The last time I gave blood, I passed out. I shave only with an electric razor. I'm a vegetarian. Mara and I ruminate for hours before cutting our baby's fingernails. But with our friends and relatives waiting impatiently, when my friend the Mohel gave me the knife, what was I to do? I took the blade in my right hand, forgetting that I bat, throw, eat and probably cut foreskins best lefty, and swallowed hard. My hand trembled as I began to push the knife across the edge of the clamp through which an inch of my infant's foreskin protruded. But it wasn't cutting easily. The seconds felt like hours as my hand swayed back and forth over its undesired prey. The situation called for a hard, sturdy chop, without regard for the person on the other side. It called for a butcher. Success required an instinct for tunnel vision, an ability to distinguish the protruding part from the living whole. But I wasn't used to cutting meat, living or dead, raw or cooked. Was this what it was all about? Unprovoked aggression? Dehumanization of one's own flesh and blood? It was becoming clear that in order to finish the job I would have to rely on a carnivorous side that I didn't think existed, that I feared greatly. Then Daniel began to cry again. I suppose that had Abraham fumbled things this badly, even stoic Isaac might have cried. But Daniel let loose a wail that normally was reserved for four in the morning and was almost always assuaged by a speedy rendezvous with his Mom. This time, there was just the two of us. I was holding the knife and he appeared to sense both its power and my inability to control it.

Then, from the other side of the stainless steel divide, I noticed for the first time his blue eyes looking straight into mine, a look not of fear but of utter dependence and trust; the kind of look we masters of the mundane aren't used to getting from infants. And I finally understood that the knife transforms the father not to sculptor, mentor, or butcher, but, rather, paradoxically, into a shield. The breast provides, but the knife protects. It channels a father's natural anger and jealousy into one controlled cut. He takes off one small part in order to preserve -- and love -- the whole. A rush of guilt and fear that went through me. I just wanted to hold Daniel and tell him that never would he suffer the agony of uncontrolled parental rage. With one burst of empathy and a series of short jagged flicks, the foreskin was gone. The Mohel cleaned things up and it was over. No parent should be denied this experience, even vicariously, of inflicting upon his child a ritualized blow so intense as to make both shake and recoil, but so controlled that no damage is really done, so that this might be the worst the child will ever know from his parent's hand. For it is from the parent's hand that Abraham's knife dangles, every moment of every day.