These Jews want to normalize not circumcising with their synagogue's help

• Published date: 08 October 2021
• Author: BEN HARRIS/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

For most synagogues, such an inquiry would have been a no-brainer. But Johnson had elected not to circumcise her three sons, departing from one of Judaism's most widely practiced traditions, and she was concerned about whether that would be a problem.

Johnson says the synagogue told her she was welcome to enroll her sons, but that without circumcision they would not be allowed to celebrate their bar mitzvah. That decision was in line with a position adopted by the Conservative movement's Jewish law authorities in 1981 that recommended including non-circumcising families in synagogue life but denying uncircumcised boys a bar mitzvah.

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Johnson didn't feel included: Her family joined a nearby Reform synagogue instead.

"I want to be more observant and in a more observant community," she said. "But I also just want my kids to be happy and welcome and feel as little judgment as possible no matter where we go."

A new organization launching this week aims to make that more likely. The group, called Bruchim (Hebrew for "welcome"), is seeking to normalize the decision not to circumcise Jewish boys, a venerable religious rite that goes back to the Bible and which is widely practiced across the spectrum of Jewish observance, even by otherwise non-observant Jewish families.

"Families who are making this decision shouldn't feel marginalized and they shouldn't feel like they have to be secret about it," said Lisa Braver Moss, Bruchim's co-founder and president.

The group is an outgrowth of advocacy that Moss and Bruchim co-founder and executive director, Rebecca Wald, have been doing for decades. Moss first argued against Jewish circumcision in a 1990 essay, and together they outlined an alternative ceremony, brit shalom (literally "covenant of peace") in a 2015 book and distributed flyers at that year's Reform movement convention outlining ways for synagogues to be more welcoming for families that had opted out of circumcision.

Now, in Bruchim, they have a volunteer staff, including Johnson as social media strategist, as well as a four-member rabbinical advisory board. The team includes people with professional backgrounds in all of Judaism's non-Orthodox movements, as well as several people who grew up Orthodox.

Among its objectives, Bruchim wants to see synagogues make proactive statements of welcome for non-circumcising families...