So you have to do something at the bris to make them feel a connection to the previous generations, to Hashem, and to Torah. One of the ways I do that is I have one of the parents speak about the person the baby is named for. When you do that, all of a sudden the bris takes on a totally different approach because they realize they’re not only talking about the future of this child, but the legacy of his past.
I always tell people that the Rebbe Reb Elimelech writes that when you name a child after someone, you make a connection between the neshamah of that child and the neshamah of the person he’s being named for. When I was writing that for the bris milah book, I took the page out of the typewriter to write the word neshamah [in Hebrew]. Now, write for yourself the Hebrew word neshamah. What do the middle two letters spell? Shem. Isn’t that incredible? When I saw that, I thought I would faint. The word shem is right in there – the two neshamos are connected through the name.
So that’s what I tell people, and that’s what I mean by a mission. The bris is not just the technical aspect. It’s being mekadesh shem shamayim in such a way that the people leave elevated.
What would you say is the most interesting bris you did for a non-frum family?
One of them was for a Russian family. The father called me up and said he wanted the bris in the afternoon after he came home from work. So I came to the house on Tuesday – eight days after the child was born – but there was nobody there except the mother, the grandmother, and the baby. The mother looks at me, and says, “What are you doing here?” I said, “What do you mean? I told your husband, Ivan, that the bris is today.” She said, “He thinks it’s tomorrow, everybody’s coming tomorrow.”
So I called her husband. He was in the gym, working out, and I said, “Ivan, listen, I apologize, maybe I didn’t make myself clear, but today is the eighth day. We have to do the bris today.”
I thought for sure he was going to say, “Listen rabbi, we’re not doing it, come back tomorrow.” But instead, he said, “Rabbi, how much time do we have left?” I said, “Half-hour.” He said, “Okay, you get everything set and I’ll be there.”
I couldn’t believe it. So I’m setting everything up and he walks in about 15 minutes later, sweating. I told him to wash up [because he had to be the sandek], I gave him a yarmulke, and we did the bris. We finished five minutes before sunset.
Then I said, “Listen to me, Ivan, I have to come visit the baby so I’ll be here at the exact same time tomorrow. Don’t say anything to anyone and tomorrow we’re going to make a beautiful ceremony.”
So the next day, I come. Many people are there and everybody thinks we’re making a bris. We bring out the baby, I say “Baruch haba,” and then I put my arm around Ivan and said to everybody: “You don’t realize what kind of tzaddik you have as a friend. You see, Ivan never went to yeshiva and he couldn’t possibly know how important it is to have a bris on the eighth day, but his neshamah told him that if God says it’s supposed to be on the eighth day, you do it no matter what, even if nobody’s here.”
