CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #188 Rabbi David Bitton - The Secrets of Brit Milah

the dig a little child 8 days old put him in a room that's not sterilized thousand people on top of him you're not worried about the germs over there because we always did it no one thinks about it second wait how could I do something like this doesn't make sense how can I put my little child and doesn't make a difference on your um your religious yeah but it's just Lev us I see all backgrounds of all types of people all the time like I was telling you before I would go over there the people who are least observant they make is unbelievable they make such a huge big party so happy and everybody's is but specifically this everybody has a certain connection to it which is actually ultimately the connection maybe don't realize but it's a breit and a breit is a covenant and a covenant is a connection who's the connection between ultimately [Music] connection and welcome to Torah talks program with special guests we have with us all the way from Brooklyn RAB DAV welcome so good to see the rabbi thank you very much for joining us and we're going to be speaking about the secrets of the bre Mila of circumcision a very exciting topic but before we do the topic we get a little bit background about the rabbi and the great work you're involved with so um from a young age you've been uh involved in in obviously we learned in Yesa from you young age and uh slowly slowly we and uh afterwards we learned to B midash started off in you know we grew up in Brooklyn New York flush like any regular uh and uh we started getting involved in in um Zim and uh with the time we I got involved in uh B we it's one of the things that um sparked me up from a young age ow is the first one in the front oh yeah watching from six years old seven years old by the front in the front line oh W and uh together with the and this is one of the things that I focused on very very much from a young age and uh had a very very strong passion for this Mitzvah it is the biggest the Tor if you take the word and you take the numerical value of it the gatria gatria of it the numerical value is 612 which the mid says that 612 is connected the six theah connected to 612 so it's connected all the basically it's the biggest mitvah something very special that began already from abah all the way in the beginning it's the of our our and putting it together in we say we thank for what then what's the next two words right away the first things we say thank you to is even though it's equal to everything and we take it very very seriously and it is the most important mitvah that we have but at the same time not to devalue shom the first Mitzvah that every child has and it's the it's the foundation just like you have a a building and in a building before you build the building first make the foundation in order for the building to stay strong you need the foundation and when the foundation is strong and it's done the right way and everything is good from the beginning the deeper it is the higher the building can can last and therefore there's many many connections between the to and uh sh gave me the to feel a certain passion about it and to try to focus a lot on it and we try to try to take in both very inspiring wow the importance of it uh Rabbi one might be watching and listening and thinking to himself how does one become a c a a mo one that has the Merit to do this mitvah does it obviously there was the passion that the rabbi had as at a young age to do it but let's just say someone has that passion where does it go from there so like you said first you have 100% the passion is number one you have to uh have some of the connection with blood you can't be obviously uh running away from that it has to be something that you're okay with and even more than okay with number one uh number two is that uh you have to begin learning learning besid for is anybody can really learn the but you have to slowly slowly hands on for see a lot of you have to see them observe Ober being observing Jew I always talker you have to know exactly but you first have to also way I started for example if uh if you want to compare is that number one the passion was there I didn't know how to really start it at the time I didn't even plan it that's the truth um just you know when hasm gives you a passion for something and you want something hasem makes it work out somehow without even sometimes you didn't even plan it uh there was an old uh Holocaust Survivor that was making and he asked me uh if I can go instead meaning he couldn't make it he's Holocaust Survivor he lived over in New York and he asked me can can you go be my representative I said sure at that time my wife told me if you're going to you've been wanting to learn Bria for a long time even though it wasn't hand it wasn't something that I really used to speak about but it's something that it was obvious that I and I said maybe once you go to probably is the right place to be able to start to do so yeah I made a phone call actually only one phone call I made to Mel that I you know heard about and uh he said yes you can come we'll do it let's start and uh I actually went this is going back many years now so I still had you know two kids at the time so two or three kids and uh and so I was able to go away for a substantial amount of time which was a month wow I spent a month inel all day doing all day from morning to night this this took you around he took me around we went around from place to place from place to place and we could have sometimes uh obviously there traveling involved but up to 15 of the day that's that's wow 15 be of the day and uh so you you learn you know starting hands on and uh you watch bunch of different situations because every breath is you know every breath is different it's different size it's different you know the skin sometimes they're thick sometimes it's thin and then there's something called hypospadius which is deformation in the in the actual what we call the GID or the area of the breit sometimes there's Ora which is the forkin sometimes it's not fully over sometimes it's less you have to make the cut a different way sometimes even the whole where the where the child urinates from sometimes not on the top sometimes on the side it could be even on the bottom that's called hypospadius that needs to be operated on can the breed be done can the breed not be done sometimes it's not straight sometimes the B is crooked every situation is different and the more you see the more you start understanding what's going on it's not just simple okay I know what to do so I can do it in all situations you come to bre you never saw this before you got to see it before you have to know what exactly what's and how to do it um so the more you see there's also jundas I'm sure you've heard of that's the more famous J yellow of the child when he's born the Jus the yellow pigment and you also have to develop a uh an understanding of what's considered jaundice yellow how you know sometimes it's numbers are high numbers are less and you have to follow up with the child is he able is he ready for the breed not ready for the breed so there's a lot of things that don't come just with knowing about them about how to do it but you have to you know have seen a lot also as well it's called shim you know so that was uh number one that was how it started in the beginning so we got that for a month to come back and then even believe it or not even after that you still need more you still need more after that um I went back to I on a different occasion I got in touch with someone else at the time uh this person was specifically doing uh Arabs he would go around not only Arabs I should say also Jews but mostly Arabs and um also I went with him for much less time but also for a little bit um to get even more practice you can say and to top it all off was uh a trip to England in England yeah so in ell was the the main I should say experience the main experience seeing a lot of BAU and getting a lot of hands-on experience then going to England and um also with circumcised I just call him also because he's not he doesn't really do Jews he's goes from house to house from house to house he's hired as a circumciser not in the hospital they don't do it in the hospital because the over there the uh insurance doesn't pay for circumcision so they have to pay for it privately so you go from house to house house to house over there wasn't as many but to about four a day and um and over there also handson private it's all behind closed doors over there that's the actually the Milo over there is that it's behind closed doors when you're able actually to focus on taking your time and seeing and catching and doing everything it needs to be done as opposed to ceremony in front of everybody where it's a little more you know hectic and right so that was also beautiful and was able to anything that was still missing there was one aspect that I still felt missing at the time which was actually doing the bandage and uh and once I went to England I perfected that so it was L of each step is another is another brick put on to the you know to getting there andem guides you so you start number one you have the Raton is number one you have the physical ability that hasm gives you and everybody has their T So gives you that ability you see that you have ability for it you want for it you have to D in for it also if you see something is important um especially if you see that you want to make a difference because um then I'm doing it for you I want to help you I want to make a difference over here I wanna as uh you know is not just a you know a uh physical just done there also like we said it's the it's the base it's the s the foundation of the child also in in his spirituality so I felt like I want to get involved also in that and have the right coven not at the time of the and EM set it up that's that leads me to my next question which is the the the background of the mitvah from the Torah and the sources or uh you know things along those lines of course the begins [Music] from gives theah to do for him and his children and of course kept this mitvah very very dearly throughout the generations from on was one of the mitv that the Never Let Go they never let it go they always if there was a mitvah that they had to latch onto in order to to get us it was B and it makes sense because like I said that's a foundation if you have a building without a foundation whole building falls and um it's actually every limb of the person resembles a different sphere it's called SP and the sphere that the resembles is called actually so that fits perfectly with what we were talking about that it's actually the and the foundation so the go they know exactly where to latch on they're going to latch on they're not going to destroy the building they'll destroy the the the Y and the building will fall on its own so that's why we see you know from the time from from then on then we had the then we had even H coming to P now one of the things that he wanted to which he did was that's why we say say What's So that's also one of the things that wanted to to destroy and throughout the generations whether it was most of the times it Wasim sometimes even the uh theim were involved also in somewhat in different aspects of the B to uh but one of the things that we have to stay strong will stay strong it began and it will it will uh it will never stop will never stop from from amongst us opposite the um the the is one of not from different is Mator he writes in a that he says this he explains that three levels to the B three parts of the B and there's another thing that we didn't explain before but there's three level there's three parts of the is the cutting off the the forkin there is the PRI which after the forkin there's another skin that's very thin that remains on what we call the is the gland the crown after that that Al after the after the cutting of the that there's another skin that's still there that also has to be taken off that's called the pr that's step number two step number three is called which is sourced in the over there says that if you just did the first part the second part so so you took off the the or for skin but you still have the second skin which call and then there's the third part of it which is called which says so that's a third part is called which is the third part of the and that's connected that's the three parts of the right he says that when the are end of days when the go are gonna come onto because that's what's gonna happen end of the days the go are going to come onto y they're going to want to come and and get as their as their uh like you know their Main Place their head quarters of the world and they're going to come on toim and and obviously they're all going to perish and we're going to take over but there that's going to be their plan they're going to come three times onto what's going to give us to be saved from those three uh the times that they come into so the first one is K is the mil which that that is K adom adom is is the world at whole they don't do so they don't want us to do the cutting off of the they do but they were not commanded on the second part which is called PR so the PRI when we do the pr that's connected that's going to get rid of the second one and then the third one is which is connected the a there even a amongst us and that's what I mentioned before as in hint that even sometimes the Jews can be of the of the of of uprooting the mitah in different forms of course not amongst us but maybe in different places in different ways that they try to uproot theah and that's connected which also there's a you know strong fight about it and a lot of it is even the giving a lot of uh potency to this this and that's also another that we have to stand strong and that's you know the G is not something that's supposed to come easy it's supposed to come through our efforts and sometimes things we have to fight for it and sometimes we have to fight for the K and K is not just going to be there easily and we have to fight we th for through throughout the generations and believe it or not even this generation we have to fight through it even this generation you might think where and what but there are and parts and portions of the mitvah that in the world they show it and they personify it as don't do it barbarus or even maybe dangerous some parts of the Mitzvah don't do it don't do it this way do it that way it's dangerous without real base basic even medically it's it's more like doesn't make sense to us so they try to put it aside and we have to stand strong that's one of the things that we have to do is to stand strong forem if we know that this is the right thing to do and this is the way to do it this what hasm wants us to do we don't have to take into consideration what theim tell us and how they look at it and what they do we know this is a Mitzvah that was given to us whether it makes sense what doesn't make sense doesn't make sense to begin with that they a little child eight days old put him in a room that's not sterilized thousand people on top of him where's the St where's the you're not worried about the germs over there because this we always did it we accept it upon ourselves we continue continue to do it we have to continue with that passion that we all have everybody has it no one thinks about a second wait how could I do something like this doesn't make sense how can I put my little child and doesn't make a difference on your um your your religiousity how you yeah religious Love all backgrounds all types of people all the time they do it all like I was telling before I would go over there the people who are least observant they make when is unbelievable they make such a huge big party so happy and everybody's is doing it this is a passion but specifically this mitvah everybody has a certain connection to it which is actually ultimately the connection between which we maybe don't realize but it's a breit and a breit is a covenant and a covenant is a connection and who connection between ultimately it's connection between us and hm beautiful amazing amazing so so the rabbi touched upon it already about secrets of the bre but there's so many benefits to it as well to the fact that uh even the going the nations of the world have already started doing it over here in America I whenever our boys were born they would always ask us in the hospital uh would you like for us to do a circumcision we're like no we're good we'll take care of it but uh but it's an amazing thing and it shows how the Torah and uh I guess for lack better word science everything comes together uh and shows that there's health benefits as well yes so when you refer to the when you say the secrets for Secrets right so there's different levels and how to explain secrets and to go through it from beginning to end will take us a long time because there's really a lot to talk about when it comes to to to this Mitzvah actually a SE that I wrote on called and we just um just put it out over here actually just in the new print amazing and um this became a big hit all over the world which was we sold over um 4,000 copies already wow just uh amazing and reprinted it about six times already so much of it is about the background and amazing approbations K amazing and um a in in the SE at length go through a lot of the uh on a simple way in a simple way the secrets because like I said Secrets can get very uh deep but in a simple way for even most people to be able to understand um and the reason is like I said before since it's something that's um so important in the um continuity continuity not just of the Mitzvah but in the person's life like I said we're here not just to live our lives you know we Dov day we get up every day we officially try to do what has wants us to do we try our best to do it sometimes we do it more sometimes more attracted to the mitv sometimes it's harder for us and for some people in general it's easier some people it's harder some people are more attracted to some people have a harder time and a lot of it depends on the believe it or not that's something that's that's sourced in the like I said again it's the is the foundation now you're building everything on the foundation how you how is that building of spiritual going to be as you grow old as you start continuing in your life so you're right B takes couple of seconds even not even that long but it could have such a big effect effect on the child's spirituality so again Bria is not just a physical action that we're supposed to do because the torat tells us to do it there's also a lot of things behind it that uh is also one of the passions that I had was to to bring it over and to give it over this as aspect and when you mentioned the secrets so of course like you said there's many uh benefits you know physical benefits it's known that uh the forkin if it's left over on on the child as he gets older the dirt and the different bacterias and things that we get in and can cause even you know cancer and things like that and we take it away that's why it's a known fact that even the go many of them get circumcised in order to eradicate that foreskin you don't have any issues afterwards and uh keeps away these harsh sicknesses that's a know fact but we don't do the mitzvah for those those reasons it's nice outcome benefit and it's beautiful Hashem did the best for us in that aspect we the the next level would be to um to go a little deeper in understanding the the Mitzvah itself so like I said the the Kusa aspect of it if you want to go a little deeper to I'll jump for a second to a very deep level just for a moment and maybe we'll track back but just to see until where these things come so you know Hashem has ways that he runs the world different ways that hasem runs the world every time we say when we say H's name what's hash's name made out of which letters four letters but sometimes we mention the name Elohim Elohim is also a name you can call of hem but it's more the way things are come off sometimes you see the world everything is going good and life is is good and there health and this happiness and thisa that's the way Hashem is acting towards you or towards the person with the attribute of Mercy but sometimes a person goes through hardships in his life and what we call things that are harsh and he's he's not having success he's not having and then his health issues and the Shalom and all these other issues that he's having that's also coming from Hashem but it's coming from the nature of or from the Mida which is called Elohim that's when we say Elohim uh so there Elohim and is they're not actually they're not names of hasm really but the the way that has presents himself when it comes to for example we're getting rid of the getting rid of the the obviously is something that's T once it's t so it's also even something that's believe it or not is also Hashem because there's nothing in the world that's not Hashem whether it's whether it's something that's spiritually contaminated butm has his in everywhere but sometimes tell us no this take away so now you have for example you have the the is the is the foreskin and if you take the numerical value of what am about to tell you now is not my own it's from the writes this in and he says that if you take the word or and so equals 300 plus the is five is 305 if you take the name every letter is actually a word you take the Al it's not just a letter Al it's actually a word what's the word called right so the AL is actually made out of three letters Al and and then so you have be is take the numerical value the G of all those letters comes out to 300 plus the five letters 35 right that so Elohim actually is actually or the elim is the de so the de basically the of the de of the attributes of harshness we're taking away from the child and then afterwards you have What's called the pr because when you have the the on the child he's it's covered the the the crown is covered now the is Holy we have to uncover it but even after you take off the we mentioned before that you have the other thin skin called The Pri that also has to be taken off now if you take the letter the um threel name of hem which whiches well to uh if you take the the two hands like this the right this take your two hands you put them up including the head which letter does that resemble Shin that's a shin if you put your hand out in the body that's a letter do that's shed shed is not so good but then you have the when you open up the and you you reveal the the is symbolizes the letter and that's the letter that brings the name Shak the child and that's one of theab actually that the is supposed to have during the breit now when I say supposed to doesn't have to but it's part of the it's part of the giving over the K of the of the child the the commentary on the he writes that a person should always look for a he writes specifically that the Sak and the Mel should try to be as much possible righteous more righteous the better why what's the difference if you're doing the ban it's kosher so what's the difference if he's righteous or not answer is because he gonna have effect on the child just like a sandak you choose a Sak you try to choose one that's besides family member that you have to give of course that comes first but afterwards when you you have a child that you know you want to choose the Sak you try always try to find the one yeah we've had this right so you try to find someone with why what's the difference the answer is because at that time there's three three people that have an effect on the child father at the time the S and the those are the three that are all and the same so therefore it's not just the action that's done it's also the way it's done make sure it's done with all theim all the the you know the Min that details that maybe sometimes we look over maybe they're not so important but no every every portion is important and every portion will have a special has effect an effect in spirituality to the child and that's what we want the end of the day we want the children to grow up to good children to spiritual to love H to do the Tor and uh the more we put into him the more kavana that's what I was saying before the kavan that you have and you think about it when you're doing it when I'm taking off the I'm actually taking away what I explain to you about so you you transfer Holiness into the action it's not just taking away the Allah and that's it it's actually you're doing with kavana it's not the same when you pray the amid you just say the words to When you understand the words that you're saying so you can pray the words and you fulfill the obligation but when you in tune to the words that you're saying from the beginning to end has a different same things when you're doing with the child so you take of this and you have thatav then you think about the you when doing the and then you do there also another about that and every single thing has another toet W to uhon very very very powerful very very inspiring very informative uh and we have aak t which is a final message for our broad audience so if we want to recap I mean basically what we said is um is basically the message but uh to recap saliz it is just to to focus and give a little extra thought to to what we spoke about and um to you know to try to maybe learn a little bit more about this this Mitzvah and to see really really what has to offer so you know every time I uh you know I I try when I'm able to you know to sit down with the father before B and uh if I have the you know a chance to meet them and things like that in person so I try to sit down with them and and to explain to them the Mitzvah that they're going into it's nothing like going into Mitzvah prepared than just you know going into it because this is what I have to do call I have a it's a a Tuesday 9 o'clock I am uh no problem come and and do and and finish no so it's learning about the mitvah and um trying to uh it doesn't talk to everybody to learn about it but it's to know that something like that exists it's good to know that something like this it's not just just the Mitzvah itself it's a lot more that the Mitzvah has to offer and like I said it'll have a a uh an effect throughout the person's life throughout the person's life there was a an admon his name Wasim El shapir he was from mkat and he he was a big Mel at the time and one of the things that he was also he had a very big passion what we spoke about he had also passion for it and he used to also do the the mitvah with and with um also the K as much as possible and uh he would go around and he would keep tabs on the children that he did would keep tabs and he would he would realize he's writ in I would see on those those children that he did because so something that it's to know about and that's the best for everybody in the end of the day we we put so much into our children how much do we do do we put into them and we try and we want and the end of the day we want them to give us and this is part of it believe it or not this is part of it this is a this is another and not just part of it has a big part in it because like we said it's the foundation and when you build the foundation you put you dig the foundation from the beginning you don't see it yet he's a little child but you don't see the the building when you're making the foundation it's the beginning before the building is made give him the right foundation to see lot of very very very inspiring the secrets of the circumcision this is I think I'm pretty sure we've done over 180 different episodes of first ever uh Torah talk on this topic so very very very informative and exciting and we want to thank everyone for joining us once again for another amazing kazak Torah talk 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time kazak live chq.org glive special than you to the various different platforms that host kazak Tor talks special than you to our friends at Tor anytime for hosting this kazak tor talks and a special shout out to daily giving a dollar day really goes a very very far away really appreciate your supporting everyone at kazak thank you very much for the amazing team and staff and board members and volunteers and donors and everyone that involved looking to do a lot more suggestions for future guests and feedback as always welcome info.org info cq. again Redemption [Music]