God’s Intimate Message

This past summer I developed a medical problem in a very personal part of my anatomy. Sometimes it hurt; other times it was mainly stressful, and week after week it kept getting more challenging.

First, I had a “gross hematuria,” the medical term for blood in the urine. It was yucky, but it didn’t hurt. A local urologist took a look inside my bladder with a special scope and said, “There’s nothing there – go back to your normal life.” Great news.

But then I had another gross hematuria. I checked with a different urologist who arranged for some imaging. They found bladder cancer. It was less than a centimeter long, it was “low-grade,” meaning it was unlikely to become aggressive, and it was not “muscle-invasive,” meaning it would tend to stay put.

That wasn’t such bad news, but it wasn’t as good as I had hoped for. And it didn’t last long.

After another look inside with the scope, they told me that the tumor was more than a centimeter long, it was “high-grade,” meaning it wanted to become aggressive, and it was actually “muscle-invasive,” meaning it would not stay put.

Everything I had been told was being undone, one piece after another. I started to wonder what message God was sending me. But I wasn’t able to decode it myself.

The doctors kept me busy throughout the summer. After yet another look inside with a special scope, I started immunotherapy treatment in mid-October.

And the challenges just kept on coming. More blood in the urine. A total blockage from blood clots, which meant a late-night trip to the ER. Plus an extra-large catheter in order to get things flowing again.

I was physically debilitated and spiritually confused. Why was all this happening?

Then came more challenges. Even with the catheter in place, things still got blocked up. Back to the ER again to tackle that problem.

Now things were flowing, but there was blood in the catheter bag every day, round the clock. Sometimes bright red, other times dark red, but always lots of blood.

After living with the catheter for a week in late October, I was physically debilitated and spiritually confused. Why was all this happening? Why were all these “blows” targeting this specific part of my body? I try to understand why things happen to me, so I can adjust and make sure I’m doing the right thing. But this was a mystery I couldn’t solve.

And then my wife said, “Tell me again about your bris milah, your circumcision.” Wow.

Bris milah – the covenant of circumcision – is at the very core of Judaism. The commandment to circumcise his son was the first commandment given to Abraham, the first Jew. To this day, every Jewish father is obligated to have his son circumcised on the eighth day after he is born.

The bris is usually performed by a mohel, a religious Jew who is specially trained for this procedure. If for any reason this is not done when the boy is still a baby, then he himself is obligated to arrange for his own bris once he becomes an adult.

In America nowadays, many baby boys (Jewish and non-Jewish) are circumcised shortly after birth by the obstetrician who delivered them, or by another doctor in the same hospital. These “medical circumcisions” do not satisfy the father’s religious obligation.

My parents were not religiously observant, but I was confident that they did arrange for me to have a bris. How did I know? Because my maternal grandmother had told me the story so many times. “When you were circumcised, and your father heard you crying, he got so mad that we had to hold him back to keep him from punching the mohel who was hurting you!”

As my medical challenges multiplied, I started to wonder. Maybe something regarding my bris wasn’t right after all?

But as my medical challenges multiplied, I started to wonder. Maybe something wasn’t right after all? My wife’s question got me thinking.

I grew up distant from Judaism: no God, no Torah, no Shabbat. Over the last 25 years, I worked hard to change my life and became more and more Jewishly observant. Could it be I had missed one very important step along the way?

I called a rabbi. He urged me to learn as much as I could from any family members who might recall the events of September 1952. I was not optimistic, because I have only one living relative who might possibly remember anything about it, and it seemed so unlikely that she would know about the details that I needed to investigate.

I called my maternal aunt, age 94, in Florida. She remembered very well the story of my bris milah (or lack thereof) some 71 years ago – because she and my mother both gave birth to baby boys the very same week.

There they were, two sisters in two different hospitals in the Bronx, each awaiting the arrival of her baby. They spoke regularly by telephone. And they even talked about bris milah.

My aunt and uncle were more traditional. When they had a son, they decided to give him a bris milah with a mohel. When I was born two days later, my parents decided to have a doctor perform a medical circumcision, which took place before the eighth day. My aunt still remembers how disappointed she was when my mother told her about this. So my aunt dropped the bombshell that I was never properly circumcised.

What about the story my grandmother told over? After all, she said it was a “mohel” that my father wanted to hit!

Thinking it over now, I realize she was using the word mohel loosely, to mean “the man who performed the circumcision,” not to suggest that it was actually a mohel. This makes sense because my grandparents were not traditional either and they would not have urged my parents to do anything traditional.

So I sat there in the kitchen, absorbing the shock of having missed something so fundamental for so very long.

I also began steeling myself for what needed to happen next: the mohel removes a tiny amount of blood from the area of the bris milah and recites the appropriate blessing.

I felt relieved and grateful, knowing I was about to fix something crucial that I hadn’t even realized needed to be fixed.

But most of all, I felt relieved and grateful, knowing I was about to fix something crucial that I hadn’t even realized needed to be fixed.

And as I sat there, the urine flow in the catheter bag turned from red to yellow for the first time in over a week – and it stayed yellow. The blood in the bag had served its purpose, and now – finally – the message had been received: go get circumcised!

Twelve hours later on a Friday morning, I met with an experienced mohel. Two minutes later we were done. I stood there in his home, drinking in the sweetness of having finally fulfilled God’s foundational commandment to the Jewish people. I decided it was only fitting that I go straight to the men’s mikveh and immerse. I emerged feeling like a new person, ready and eager to greet the Sabbath Queen, appreciating the Divine messages I’ve been receiving. My follow-up treatments are ongoing, but I view the whole experience as a loving “tap on the shoulder,” as gentle as it could be, yet hard enough for me to get the message.