Mohel

The mohel performs the ritual circumcision of a Jewish boy on the eighth day, acting as the agent of the father on whom the obligation properly falls.

Agent of the father

The commandment to circumcise a son rests on the father, and the mohel acts as his agent, carrying out on his behalf the rite that marks the entry of the child into the covenant of Abraham, so the office is one of skilled delegation of a paternal duty. The circumcision is performed on the eighth day after birth, in a ceremony, the brit milah, that is among the most fundamental and widely kept of Jewish observances, marking the covenant in the flesh of the child.

Skill and training

The mohel must be trained both in the religious requirements of the rite and in its safe performance, and the office therefore combines religious standing with practical skill, the traditional mohel learning the procedure by apprenticeship and, in the modern period, many mohels also holding medical qualifications. There is no ordination, and the office is a recognised competence rather than a clerical order. The rite the mohel performs is ancient and central, the physical sign of the covenant that the tradition traces to Abraham, and the office exists to carry it out correctly and safely on behalf of the father and the community into which the child is being received.

The circumcision the mohel performs is described in the book of Genesis as instituted for Abraham himself, making it one of the very few Jewish practices that predates the giving of the law at Sinai in the tradition's own account of its history, and the eighth-day timing has been kept with enough consistency that it is cited in classical rabbinic sources as one of the most reliably observed commandments even among otherwise non-observant Jews.

One traditional element of the rite, metzitzah b'peh, direct oral suction of the circumcision wound by the mohel, has become the subject of a genuine and ongoing dispute in the last two decades. Public health authorities in New York City, after investigating cases of neonatal herpes infection linked to the practice, introduced consent and reporting requirements specifically targeting it, a move some Orthodox and Hasidic communities that maintain the practice have resisted as an intrusion on religious observance, while other Orthodox authorities have recommended alternative methods, such as suction through a sterile tube, that preserve the ritual gesture without direct oral contact. The dispute remains unresolved between the communities that regard the traditional method as required and the public health position that it carries a real and avoidable infection risk to newborns.