New Haredi Trend Sees Men Recircumcise Selves As Adults

Bnei Brak, November 27 – Growing stringency in the practice of Jewish law among the ultra-orthodox has a new generation of adherents arranging to undergo circumcision a second – and sometimes third – time after they reach adulthood, observers report.

The Torah requires every Jewish male to undergo Brit Milah, or the covenant of circumcision, on his eight day of life, health permitting. Formally the commandment applies to the father of the infant, who usually engages a professional called a Mohel – literally, cutter – to perform the procedure to remove the foreskin. However, recent generations of observant Jews have become progressively stricter in their interpretation and implementation of Halacha, unwilling to rely on the mainstream lenient rulings of earlier generations, and taking matters into their own hands.

Called “Milah L’chumra” – “circumcision done stringently” – the grassroots movement has gained increasing popularity in circles where adherents cast doubt on the reliability of those not similarly oriented toward Chumra. Those who follow this line of practice shy away even from accepting their own parents’ adherence to Halacha, often refusing to eat in their parents’ kitchen for fear of possibly eating from utensils once used to prepare food without a satisfactory measure of stringency. The same logic has Milah L’chumra practitioners choosing to undergo circumcision again out of concern over the validity of the original procedure, for which they were not in position to choose the Mohel or verify his credentials.

In practice, Milah L’chumra almost invariably involves merely drawing blood from the skin where the foreskin used to be, since the relevant portion of flesh has long since been cut away. The blood-drawing procedure is common among men who underwent circumcision as infants not in a religious context, which was once nearly universal in, for example, many American hospitals. As adults, Milah L’chumra practitioners bring their own knowledge and sensibilities to the selection of the Mohel and other aspects of the procedure. Several men have even chosen to repeat Milah L’chumra a second time after hearing of possible concerns regarding the previous procedure or the Mohel himself.

Milah L’chumra began in the primarily ultra-orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, but has spread to American Haredi strongholds of Lakewood in New Jersey and parts of Brooklyn and Spring Valley in New York. Choshed Bichsherim, 21, of Borough Park, who had the procedure done last year after studying in Bnei Brak, recieved a ruling from his teachers and mentors there that he he would be best off undergoing Milah L’chumra through a Mohel they knew and recommended.

“I love my parents, but my father actually works for a living, and that’s not frum enough,” explains Bichsherim. “Some of them even have phones that can send and receive text messages, which everyone knows are treif.” He said many of his friends followed the same path, and they have started an organization to encourage others to do likewise, called Chumra Yetera.

A previous incarnation of a movement called Milah L’chumra arose in the 1850’s, but that movement’s focus was on the eighth-day circumcision itself. Those adherents insisted that much more than just the foreskin must be removed. The movement appears only to have lasted a single generation before disappearing.

Please support our work through Patreon.