[Avodah] Beris Milah with Metzitza 6 days of the week

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 12:42:40PM +0000, Akiva Miller wrote:
: R' Micha Berger asked:
: > (1) Why does metzitzah qualify as minhag if people were doing
: > it solely because of Aristotilian medical theory?
: > ...
: > (2) Why would RSRH, RYESpektor, etc... require metzitzah bepeh
: > (even if through a tzinor), if Aristotle didn't give reasons
: > for such a preference?

: How did Aristotle get involved in this? Do any poskim mention him in
: this context?

: Even if you can show that Aristotle's medical theory preceded that
: of Chazal, that doesn't prove causality. Chazal may well have come to
: similar conclusions independently.

True. The whole region believed in bloodletting. It needn't have come from
Aristo (or Hippocrates or Galen) in particular. I was using "Aristotle"
as shorthand for "medical theories we have experimentally shown to
be incorrect".

My point was that the sources do not compellingly state neither that
a- metzitzah was invented by Chazal rather than the Borei, nor
b- metzizah was instituted for specifically medical reasons (Aristo's
or otherwise).

So the question of whether current research both disproved the medical
basis and has shown direct MbP in fact increases medical risk presumes
ideas that are under contention. (It was in stating what I summed up in
the first clause of the prior sentence that Aristotle's name came up.)

: For all I know (and, for the record, I suggest this about most or all
: of Chazal's medical and scientific comments) Chazal's belief in the need
: for metzitzah came not via any sort of scientific or empirical research
: or observation, but via revelation or ruach hakodesh.

I agree this is likely as well. But I do not think that Chazal's medicine
is likely to be revealed knowledge. Just that I have no proof and little
reason to believe MbP is only about medicine. (Although, as R Papa
notes, neglecting metzitzah would also be medically harmful according to
then-current theories, and therefore one should fire a mohel who doesn't
do it.)

Lulei demitztafina to take on contemporary poseqim having this debate,
hayisi omer than until 5760, the overwhelming majority held that metzizah
is a din, not medical advice. The CS held metzitzah needn't be befeh,
Yekkes and Litvaks generally held that it did have to befeh -- but via
a tube is MbP. And while the idea was "out there" that MbP was based on
ideas about medical need, few if anyone were making halachic decisions
based on it being just medical (or minhag based on medicine).

(Just a side-note: Technically, proper Hebrew whould be to call the
practice Metzitzah beFeh, with a fei refuyah. I have been been using
the more common MbP because it has become a buzzword with a life of
its own meaning metzizah by direct oral suction [excluding metzizah via
RSRH's and RIES's looser definition of befeh].)

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha at aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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