Vayeira
Genesis 18:1-22:24
The subject of circumcision has engendered much controversy over the past few years. Should we or should we not, as a Jewish people, continue to honor the tradition that is said to have originated with Abraham? Or is it a barbaric practice that ought to be discarded? The marking of the flesh for spiritual purposes has been with humanity for millennia. The renaissance of body tattoos and piercings in our time is the latest manifestation of this age-old yearning. Some tattoos are an expression of love, some of allegiance, some of religious or spiritual beliefs. Circumcision’s purpose, I believe, includes—at least—all three expressions connected to modern tattooing. But our tradition brings an added dimension to this ritual, a teaching that runs deeper still. For whereas tattooing and piercing add something, circumcision takes something away.
This deeper understanding is connected to the opening verse of this week’s Torah portion: “The Eternal appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance of his tent” (Gen. 18:1). At first our rabbis are puzzled by this verse: how could Abraham be “sitting” as God “appeared” to him? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for him to prostrate himself to the ground or stand? Rashi reminds us that Abraham had circumcised himself just three days earlier and was immobilized by pain when God appeared. A Talmudic legend says that God was performing the mitzvah of visiting the sick, but a more mystical interpretation would be that God appeared to Abraham as a consequence of the circumcision and that Abraham awoke to the Divine Presence because of the circumcision. How so?
Abraham was “advanced in days” (Gen. 18:11)—99 years old, the Torah says (Gen. 17:1)—when he circumcised himself. Now, Rabbi Yehuda ben Tema, one of the rabbis quoted in Pirkei Avot, said that “When a man is a hundred, it is as if he were already dead and passed away and removed from the world” (Av. 5:21). “At such point in age or spirit,” explains Rabbi M.M.Schneerson, “the world no longer masks the Divine…” (Torah Studies, p.16). In other words, Abraham had almost reached a state of awareness wherein the ego and its preoccupations fall away, where worldly concerns are no longer overpowering and one’s consciousness can open up to the now-revealed Presence of the Divine. Such ego-free consciousness is commonly associated with the wisdom that comes with the dying process as well as with Awakening. But Abraham was 99, not one hundred and, therefore, not yet “removed from the world.” So how was it possible that “The Eternal appeared to [Abraham]”? The answer: circumcision. Here, however, the circumcision of the flesh—the ritual on the “outside”—is but a reflection of a process that is unfolding on the inside. What is being removed, as Rabbi Schneerson teaches, is “the foreskin of the world.” What is being removed is the veil of the unending torment of ego-centric pleasures, preoccupations and distractions that conceal the True Nature of Reality. And this can be attained at any time, as the rebbe tells us: “in age or spirit.”
True spiritual practice is one that aims at spiritual circumcision, at removing the blindfold of the world from our deluded eyes or in other words, as the Torah commands us, to let “God circumcise our heart” (Deut. 30:6). May we, like Abraham, awaken to this place in awareness where “the world no longer masks the Divine.”