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Nitzavim
“You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem, your G-d…”
We are standing before G-d today, all of us. I am standing before G-d
today, all of me-as one who was born female, as one who was raised as
a girl -child, who is now journeying to take his place the world, before
G-d. But how do I become a man before G-d? A boy is a man before G-d
when he is thirteen and is then bar mitzvah, responsible for all the
mitzvot. Yet, I am already an adult, a child of the commandments-what
can mark my transition not from boy to man, but from girl to man?
It has been difficult for me -as a particularly egalitarian minded Jew- to find some specific action or ritual that defined me as a man in the Jewish community, before G-d. The laying of tefillin, a mitzvah I took on soon after becoming a Jew, is historically a male practice. But I do not define myself as a man by laying tefillin -since I believe women should also lay tefillin (or at least consider it). To lay tefillin is to define myself as a Jew, to declare that my connection to G-d, on a physical level as well as spiritual, is a Jewish one. Not primarily as a man, nor as a woman, but as a Jew, I lay tefillin. (Although, I have to admit, I now feel that it is my duty to lay tefillin, whereas before it was something special. Which goes against my egalitarian philosophy, but there it is.)
What, then, is a practice that is by its very definition a male practice, which declares one to be a man, a Jewish man, before G-d? Bris milah-the covenant of circumcision. A baby boy is separated when he is eight days old-through circumcision he is not only a Jew, but a Jewish male before G-d. But how can I -a man who is not male bodied and cannot be circumcised in the usual way-make this transition from being a Jew before G-d to being a Jewish man before G-d? In Nitzavim, it says, “Hashem, your G-d, will circumcise your heart”. This is a bris milah which is purely spiritual, not physical, and directed not to males but to the entire community of Yisrael. Circumcision, then-in the Jewish sense-is physical and spiritual. Among women, purely spiritual-a circumcision of the heart. In men-both of the body and the spirit. This dimension-to be changed on a physical as well as spiritual level-marks a Jewish man. I am not male--not circumcised by the medical definition. But I mark my body as that of a man. I am changing, I am becoming a man. I am declaring myself, not only a Jew, not only a man, but a Jewish man before G-d. It is a change manifest in my body as well as spirit. It is my bris milah.