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

Arie Folger afolger at aishdas.org
Fri Sep 21 08:01:46 PDT 2012


Rabbosai, when we question the medical permissibility of metzitza befeh,
those who reject it tend to combine two statements of which one does not
imply the necessity of the second. Practically, the Talmud states that not
doing metzitza is tantamount to endangering the child, which is why it it
is allowed on Shabbat. When fellow Oved R' Meir Rabi writes:
>  MR; This is irrelevant. We have no objection to Minhag unless it violates
> Shabbos. In this case Metzitza may be performed 6 days of the week,
> but not during Shabbos.

... he essentially assumes that once we understand metzitza befeh to be
exposing the infant to multiple infectino risks, we simply overrule the
Talmud's medical statemen t of metzitza befeh, and hence it should be
prohibited on Shabbat.

However, it really need not be that way. Metzitza being necessary for the
health of the baby and also endangering him are not orthogonal positions,
and hence, really, metzitza could both be prohibited and required at the
same time, even without resorting to classifying it as part of the qiyum
mitzvah of milah. Practically, this would mean that MbF is a problem, but
insofar as that problem is avoided, MbF is allowed and even required on
Shabbat.

That is actually the scientifically motivated opinion of IIRC R' Dr.
Mordechai Halpern. He discovered that a properly applied metzitzah is
medically indicated in the case of babies with hypospadias (an incompletely
formed urethra, with an incomplete  orla), as in such kids there may be a
smaller blood flow to the glans, which metzitza prevents from being
constricted by the sudden trauma of circumcision.

The solution? Unless one insists on metzitzah with direct oral contact, it
would require doing metzitza with a pipette that is applied in such a way
as to create a proper vacuum for several seconds. And that would be muttar
on Shabbat.

By the way, that is also how he explains the hetter to heat up water for
washing the recently circumcised newborn, a technique he has also brought
into emergency medicine when there is a risk of gangrene. The halakhah is
that where this is done, it is allowed even to heat the water on Shabbat,
while where there is no such minhag, one may not do so on Shabbat. How
could a piquach nefesh be dependent on minhag? Well, it could if the minhag
is to be trusted as indicative of the likelihood of certain risks in
certain subpopulations. He proves that the occurrence of hypospadias varies
vastly across populations.

Gmar chatimah tovah,

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* RCA Decries German Threats on Brit Milah
* Unterschriften-sammlung für einen offenen Brief zum Schutz des Rechtes
auf Beschneidung
* Plumbing the Depths of Aggaddic Exegesis
* Did the Talmud Suggest G”d Has a Head? Learning to Interpret Rabbinic
Legend
* Photos From Interfaith Meeting
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