Almost 25 years after God calls Abramto leave his home in Mesopotamia andgo to the land of Canaan, God formallyestablishes a covenant with him. Likethat established with Noah, his descen-dants, and all living beings, it is uncondi-tional, everlasting, includes blessings andpromises, and carries with it a signdecided upon by God.However, unlike the rainbow, placed in

the clouds and passively received byhumanity, the sign of God’s covenantwith Abraham — male circumcision — issomething with which Abram and hisdescendants, not God, are entrusted.They are to circumcise their sons andother male children in their householdon the eighth day after birth as a physi-cal sign of the covenant. The punishment

for failing to do so is severe. “An uncir-cumcised male who has not circumcisedthe flesh of his foreskin,” says God,“shall be cut off from his people; he hasbroken My covenant.”By the early second millennium BCE,

the time in which, according to tradition,Abraham and his wife Sarah are said tohave lived, male circumcision was notunknown in the ancient Near East, norwas the concept of covenant. TheEgyptians, for example, circumcisedtheir sons as part of a prenuptial cere-mony or, more likely, near the age ofpuberty as an initiation into manhood.The Canaanites, like the neighboring

Ammonites, Edomites and Moabites, alsopracticed circumcision, and archeologicaldiscoveries have shown the resemblanceof the Hebrew covenant to othercovenants of the ancient Near East.Indeed, the literary-juristic form of thecovenant between God and Abrahambears a striking resemblance to covenantsmade between Hittite sovereigns andtheir vassals dating back to the third mil-lennium BCE. Yet what is unique aboutGod’s covenant with Abraham is theexplicit connection between the covenantand male circumcision, as well as, in con-trast to the gods and goddesses of ancientMesopotamia whose “capriciousness wastaken for granted,” specific unconditionaland eternal commitments by God. Godpromises Abram progeny and land, andto signify his change in status, changes hisname from Abram to Abraham, an

expanded form of Abram indicating themany nations that will descend from him.It is not arbitrary that God chooses cir-

cumcision as the covenantal sign.Fertility is central among God’s promiseshere, as are concerns about lineage bythe priestly editors of Genesis 17. Maleblood, shed during circumcision, came tobe seen as salvific, in contrast towomen’s impure menstrual blood, andby the end of the first century CE, withthe growth of Christianity, circumcisionbecame recognized as a sign of Jewishdifference and as a marking in the fleshof the intimate relationship between Godand the Jewish people.But what about women? When God

changes Sarai’s name to Sarah and tellsAbraham, “I will bless her and she shallbecome [the progenitor of] nations;rulers of people shall come from her,” itis made clear that the covenant will notbe established through Abraham’s firstchild, Ishmael — the son of Abrahamand Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave — butrather through Isaac, the son ofAbraham and Sarah. As with Abraham,God’s covenantal promise to Sarahincludes fertility, and her name changemay symbolize the end of her barrenness.While this promise isn’t seared intoSarah’s flesh or that of her femaledescendants, they too will be fullcovenantal members.One can argue that Sarah is “not a

covenantal person in her own right,”since she does not bear the physical signof the covenant, although as the one whogives birth to Isaac, she is “essential tothe covenantal process.” Yet one mightalso claim, as I would, that the centralityof women to Judaism — a role thatincludes but is not solely predicated onour giving birth — belies this formerargument. While one need not have a (cir-cumcised) phallus to be a covenantalperson in one’s own right, perhaps weneed more private acknowledgement andpublic celebration of this religious truth.Brit banot (the covenant of daughters)

rituals, alternately named simchat bat(celebration of a daughter) rituals, inwhich Jewish girls are named and wel-comed as full members of the covenant,need to become more mainstream thanthey are today. They need to be seen asobligatory, in the same way that mostJews see male circumcision as a religiousor cultural obligation. And I hope thatthe time when this ritual for baby girlstakes place can be agreed upon, if notuniversally, then at least by individualJewish communities or religious move-ments: on the eighth day after birth as aparallel ritual to brit milah; on the 13thday, the biblical end of women’s state ofimpurity following the birth of a daugh-ter; or on the first Rosh Chodesh (newmoon) following the girl’s birth, inacknowledgement of Rosh Chodesh as aspecial holiday for women.

Dr. Ellen M. Umansky is the Carl andDorothy Bennett Professor of JudaicStudies at Fairfield University inConnecticut and director of the univer-sity’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies.A version of this article first appeared onreformjudaism.org.

18 — THE JEWISH CHRONICLE NOVEMBER 11, 2016

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