Reading the Covenant: A Review of Covenant of Blood Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism

or nearly twenty years Lawrence at their synagogues or training them Hoffman, Professor of Liturgy for the rabbinate and cantorate, has at Hebrew Union College- allowed him many opportunities to Jewish Institute of Religion, has both look more closely at how Jews experi- transformed and reformulated a field ence their religious lives. of Jewish liturgical studies. Covenant Hoffman has written an elegant of Blood not only continues his intel- study of the liturgy and ritual of cir- lectual project of defining this field, cumcision, the brit milah. It is the but moves this work along new di- work of a mature intellectual because mensions that are both challenging it beautifully distills the many insights and disturbing for participants in Jew- he has gained from scholars in a vari- ish ritual life. Professor Hoffman ety of fields, and trains them with re- would have it no other way. Over markable economy on circumcision. these decades he has increasingly writ- For example, his long intellectual en- ten not only as a distinguished scholar, gagement with the field of anthropol- but as a rabbilanthropologist whose ogy continues to provide his most sig- contact with Jews, whether speaking nificant interpretive scheme.

Riv-Ellen Prell, an anthropologist, is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and teaches Jewish studies and women's studies. She is the author of the Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender and the Anxeity o Assimilation (forthcoming in 1999 from Beacon Press) and Prayer and Community: TL e Havurah in American Judaism.

88 Fall 1778 The Reconstructionist In brief, Hoffman lays the founda- traditional study of Jewish texts, he tion of his argument on the critical has transformed their study. by . under- insight that the rabbis radically rede- standing ritual-to use the title of one fined the meaning of covenant by se- of his most significant books-as "be- lecting one set of meanings and asso- yond the text." He has consistently ciations available among competing argued- that ritual cannot be contained ones. Covenant before the exile meant by language and must be analyzed something fundamentally different along a variety of dimensions. In Cov- from covenant after the exile, and enant ofBlood, Hoffman moves us to- both meanings are found in the Pen- ward the understanding of brit milah tateuch. The pre-exile experience of in the context of a culture, the world brit (covenant) is marked in Genesis of rabbinic Judaism. He makes no by elaborate animal sacrifice and is claim that this is the only culture of its linked to Israel's power and dominion time or place, but that it is a culture, over Canaan. Later in Genesis, how- and one that defines Jewish practice, ever, covenant is marked by circumci- that is central to his understanding of sion, its most prominent feature, and the ritual. He perceptively explores is linked to the "wholeness" of men the concept of the "public meaning" and their suitability for a special rela- of the brit milah in order to establish tionship with God (Hoffman, pp. 34- his approach to ritual. The meanings 36). that he seeks to interpret are those This interpretation is his starting widely shared in the culture. They are place for a bold and radical analysis of available in the language surrounding the brit milah as the first in a series of the rite, the order of the ritual, the rituals in the life of a man that estab- symbols that constitute it and their lish what Hoffman terms, "the male place in other rituals. Perhaps most lifeline." He suggests that Judaism is importantly, Hoffman draws on the not characterized by "life cycle ritu- cultural categories that brit milah pre- als" that mark the passages of an in- sents, and how those categories- dividual, but by rituals that demarcate gender, blood, semen, fertility-are the "covenantal life of a man" (p. 8 1). positioned in other arenas of rabbinic Hence, there are no parallel rituals for culture. boys and girls or men and women as Anthropological theory, particu- they move through the phases of their larly the work of the symbolic anthro- lives. One set of rites alone reinforces pologists of the 1960s and 1970s, is key relationships of authority and central to this task. Hoffman has built meaning, and they are those that mark upon this work, integrating it with the unique relationship of men to the textual and historical analysis through- covenant. out his scholarly career. In so doing- he has created a powerful and creative Beyond the Text synthesis that has been one of his most Although Lawrence Hoffman has important contributions to the field of always positioned himself within the Jewish liturgy. This synthesis has al-

The Reconstructionist Fall 1998 89 lowed Hoffman to breathe life into women from some participation in the rituals of the rabbinic world. He that covenantal experience, just as the presents them as dramas, spectacles, as rite of the redemption of the first- rehearsals of cultural identities and as born son minimized and then ex- nuanced contexts for rich and multi- cluded women as well. vocal symbols. Hoffman again turns to anthropo- On the occasion of this important logical theory to help him illumine book, Lawrence Hoffman's powerful how male hegemony is established analysis is inevitably disturbing for through ritual. Along with Howard readers of this journal as well as the Eilberg-Schwartz he has argued that minions of progressive Jews who have the blood shed in circumcision is con- fought now for decades for the equal- structed as precisely the opposite of ity of men and women in Judaism. the uncontrollable flow of menstrual Hoffman concludes that brit rnilah es- blood, hence the Rabbis built the ex- tablishes the fact that rabbinic Juda- clusion ofwomen on a critical cultural ism is built upon a fundamental dis- dichotomy between the genders. tinction between male and female that Drawing on the work of anthropolo- makes men the bearer of the covenan- gist Sherry Ortner, showing that the tal relationship with God, a relation- symbolic opposition of male and fe- ship that creates fertility, reproduces male paralls that between nature and sacred knowledge through the study culture, Hoffman suggests that rab- of Torah, and assures the continuity binic Judaism accepts this opposition of the Jewish people. as critical to its public culture. Hoffman writes that he did not set out to tell this story, that he avoided The Power of Brit Milah it, and almost lost the manuscript at one point as an unconscious strategy Lawrence Hoffman is enough of an perhaps not to have to confront this anthropologist to begin and end this fact. As bearers of public culture, ritu- stunning book with a more vexing als communicate social facts; and question. He wonders why brit rnilah what Hoffman discovered as an irre- has had such a powerful hold on Jews ducible cultural reality contained in for so many centuries, and poses the those facts is the centrality of a Jewish question in especially intriguing terms male culture to rabbinic Judaism. for the pioneers of Reform Judaism in That version of rabbinic Judaism, one Germany, who, willing to question so in which Hoffman is daily engaged, is much of rabbinic Judaism, drew a not the one he hoped to find. Never- powerful ideological line at ritual cir- theless having found it, Covenant of cumcision. He notes the attachment Blood is his most significant contribu- of many contemporary Jews-even tion to feminist scholarship to date those with the most minimal involve- because he is able to demonstrate how ment in Jewish life to this rite of cir- brit rnilah not only took on the male cumcision, and he hypothesizes that lifeline role, but over time excluded issues of Jewish continuity, particu-

90 Fall 1998 The Reconstructionist lady in the shadow of the Holocaust, one's own attendance at these ceremo- may be, in the end, explanatory. nies for cousins, siblings, and friends In a balanced coda to the book he with whom one has prayed regularly, lays out the controversy for contem- attended camp, or shared other Jewish porary American Jews. There are three experiences, is the effect different? If rationales for questions about brit mi- one regards tradition in one way or lab-ritual, medical and moral-and another, are the anxieties and fears al- in each case Hoffman analyzes the de- layed? bates surrounding them. He also in- Almost two decades ago an old cludes a brief discussion of liturgical friend of mine, Jeremy Brochin, de- alternatives that minimize or elimi- scribed his experience of his son's brit nate the reason for circumcision. rnilah. Jeremy and I had davened to- Hoffman begins and ends this gether at the Upstairs Minyan of the book with a story that continues to University of Chicago with our be- intrigue me. Studying with a group of loved teacher Rabbi Daniel Leifer z"l. young, male and female rabbis, he Danny was the master ritual innova- learns that many of them continue to tor. With his wife he created one of experience pain and frustration over the first feminist baby-naming cer- the fact that they allowed their sons to emonies and the first pidyon habat (re- be circumcised: Some believed that demption of the first-born child). His their infants needlessly suffered; oth- unerring sense for the balance be- ers had ritual cirumcisers who did a tween tradition and innovation was a poor job. They continue to struggle, model for all of us. Jeremy and his as they are still having children, over wife, Reena Spicehandler, had made a what they will do if they have another number of additions to the ceremony. son. But as Jeremy later recounted to me, I wondered if such an anguished the ritual, particularly the act of cir- conversation would take place at the cumcision, was so powerful that all Jewish Theological Seminary or at Ye- the additions were in the end super- shiva University. There is no way to fluous. Such is the nature of brit mi- know that apart from actual research, lab--unlike a wedding, a funeral, a but I somehow doubt it. As we live in baby naming, or a bat mitzvah. How a time of many Judaisms, Lawrence we square that extraordinary power Hoffman raised for me the same in- with a normative Judaism that in- teresting questions about ritual that he cludes us all is a problem we must has in so many other books and ar- continue to confront. What Lawrence ticles. What are the conditions that Hoffman has done is to give us, as it allow ritual to create public meaning? were, a naked truth. He would be the How is normative Judaism realized in first to recognize, indeed he has the lives of men and women who are helped provide us the vocabulary to conscious or unconscious of those ask, how in the face of that knowledge meanings? When brit rnilah is associ- so many of us-men and women- ated with generations of relatives, of continue to cast our lot with that ritual.

The Reconshuctionis~ Fall 1778 71