Skillfully preserving Jewish ritual

Mohel program aims to replenish covenant keepers

Dr. Bob Levenson addressed a group of mohels-in-training after they toured a temple in Newton. (John Bohn / Globe Staff)

NEWTON - Dr. Bob Levenson always appeared wherever he was asked, on the eighth day, whether that was a national holiday, the Sabbath, or a day packed with visits from his regular patients. His task was to preside over the most profound and delicate rituals of Jewish family life, singing ancient prayers in Hebrew while circumcising and bandaging a newborn boy, and counseling his jittery parents.

For 19 years, Levenson, 60, was one of the most sought-after mohels in Greater Boston. But now he is retired, and his shoes have not been easy to fill. Jewish doctors and nurses willing to take on the demanding religious role described in the Talmud are an endangered species.

The solution? Call it mohel boot camp.

Last weekend, 21 students from across the country - mostly pediatricians, urologists, and obstetricians - converged for an intense three-day certification course on how to become a mohel. The first Boston-area training session in 20 years, the workshop was an attempt to replenish the dwindling number of mohels in the region and enliven the connection between Jews and the ancient ritual that symbolizes the Jewish covenant with God.

With just two dozen or so active mohels serving Eastern Massachusetts, many young parents seeking a traditional berit mila - religious circumcision in accordance with Jewish law - describe a frantic and stressful search to book a mohel in the days following their newborn's birth. To increase the numbers requires lobbying an already busy group of men and women to take on a time-consuming and important religious responsibility.

"It's a very demanding role. It has to be someone with very specialized medical expertise, who accepts the role because of a very profound religious commitment," said Rabbi Joel Sisenwine of Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, one of the largest Reform synagogues in New England. With 900 families attending services at his synagogue, Sisenwine receives weekly requests for mohels, but generally has only five or six names to offer.

The new recruits were already proficient at performing medical circumcision, a common procedure performed on nearly half of all American baby boys. Parents of all faiths have their newborns circumcised in the hospital typically about 24 hours after birth, usually for health or cultural reasons, although generally the numbers of parents choosing that option are apparently dropping.

National circumcision rates peaked at close to 90 percent in the early 1960s, but, according to a University of Chicago health study for the federal government, they started dropping in the '70s and by 2004 were hovering at just over 50 percent of baby boys born in hospital settings in most states surveyed.

The training program at Temple Shalom in Newton focused on Jewish history as well as the sociological issues facing contemporary Reform Jewish families. Over three 12-hour days of seminars organized by the Berit Mila Program of Reform Judaism, a California-based national training program for mohels, a panel of interfaith couples discussed how foreign and stressful the idea of home circumcision was for their non-Jewish relatives and Levenson offered some from-the-trenches tips on how to gracefully elevate a medical procedure that makes many cringe into one of life's great blessings.

"It is your job to be calm at a time when nobody else is, and make a meaningful bris by giving the most of yourself," advised Levenson, who performed more than 1,200 circumcisions for Jewish families before retiring to focus on his pediatric practice in 2006.

Be flexible and compassionate, Levenson told the doctors. Wait for the baby's grandparents if they are stuck at Logan during a blizzard. Let your medical instincts determine if a baby is ready, no matter how many relatives have gathered in the living room. Gently tell the truth when a tearful, post-partum mother asks if babies can feel pain. (The answer is "yes, but I'll be as quick as possible"). And it is perfectly OK - recommended, even - to anesthetize the infant with a little kosher wine dabbed on the lips.

Even when the whole family is Jewish, the overwhelmed new parents may be unaffiliated and feeling quite distant from their faith.

"We are ambassadors," said Levenson. "Sometimes the parents haven't talked to a rabbi since he said 'L'chaim' at their wedding."

The need for new mohels is intense at a time when there is a resurgence of interest among young Jewish families in reclaiming a ritual that has sometimes been dismissed in modern society as unnecessarily gory, and sometimes been mocked on TV shows such as "Seinfeld" and "Saturday Night Live."

"It is such an important moment for a family," said Sisenwine. "It is the point of entry into living a Jewish life."

But for doctors, the work is not considered particularly lucrative. Mohels must secure their own malpractice insurance, spend significant time counseling families, travel, perform the ceremony on the eighth day of a child's life, all for a fee of $350 or $400.

About a third of last weekend's participants were women, a significant change to a field dominated for centuries by men who learned the trade from their fathers. Some Orthodox Jews still train by apprenticeship and do not undergo formal medical training.

Male circumcision has its roots in a variety of ancient cultural traditions.

For Jews, it goes back to the book of Genesis, in which God commands Abraham to circumcise his son, Isaac, and is regarded as a precious symbol of identity during centuries of near-constant persecution and exile.

"It signifies this child has a special relationship with God," said Temple Shalom's Rabbi Emeritus Rifat Sonsino. "Jews have died for this."

The aspiring mohels also learned about a procedure performed on an adult man converting to Judaism that involves taking a symbolic drop of blood from the penis and how to perform a religious naming ceremony for a newborn girl.

They also spent time on the politics of a growing secular social movement, with some Jewish supporters, that considers newborn circumcision cruel, unnecessary, and detrimental to the sexual experience of adult males.

One student, Dr. Sandy Falk, a gynecologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said she intends to add her name to the growing roster of Boston-area mohels soon.

Her husband, Dan Judson, is a rabbi at Temple Beth David in Canton, and there is high demand among the families he serves on the South Shore.

"I'm very excited," she said. "As doctors, it is our job to provide pastoral care to people, but this is a way to take on a whole new role in the Jewish community."

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.