My brother the mohel

My dad, who is very generous with everything, including the term “favorites,” has many favorite jokes. One that always makes him laugh (this is in his accent, not mine) is:

A guy walks by a shop with watches hanging in the window. The guy walks in to havehis watch repaired. The man behind the counter waves him away.
“We have no dealings in vhatches,” he says.
“You’re not a watchmaker? So what are you?” asks the customer.
“I’m a mohel,” replies the man.
Customer: “So why should you advertise with all these watches in the window?”
Mohel (pronounced 'moyle'basically): “Nu? Vhat would you think I should hang instead?”

My brother was for a long time trying to become a mohel. Turns out that mohalim need to be trained by… mohalim. My mom got annoyed because a potential Mohel Master would not take on my brother, who is a completely anal, OCD (i.e. excellent) student, and not just in my mother’s eyes. (Of course he is also, in her eyes, the perfect son, but that is an entirely different post.) The mohel’s apparent concern? My brother is not religious enough.

My mother’s reaction (she really should have donned her Christmas sweater ensemble for this statement): I mean, he is a Reformed Jew! Of course he is religious! He just doesn’t necessarily go to shul (temple) or believe in God. So nu? (A.k.a. So what?!)

But it turns out that actually, she was half right, in that (even though my brother swears he is now - away from our very religiously confused household and alongside his newly converted, very sincere wife - is quite religious and does believe in God), a lack of god-believing cred turned out to matter to no one. Much in the spirit of a terrible ethnic stereotype, the fellow wouldn’t take him on because they could not settle on a price, since my brother refused to shell out the exhorbitant per day fees of this mohel's training. Sigh. And my mother was very disappointed. Turns out she was eager to have a t-shirt made about the whole thing.

Luckily, several thousands of my brother's dollars later, my mom's dream was realized. The mohel flew out to my brother's place, intensively trained my brother for some probably reassuring amount of hours. [On a side note: The mohel even brought my brother a gift, a Shabbos bread board with an embedded 9" serrated knife. The mohel took this on the PLANE. As a CARRY ON. No problem. God love the no-we-don't-profile ways of airport security, eh?]
And my brother performed his first brit (religious circumcision) as a mohel at 8,000 feet, at his own kitchen table, in front of their rabbi, Elijah, my parents and I, the kvatter and kvatterin (kinda like godparents), and several of their friends, in August … on his OWN son.
In the words of my friend Mister Hogan (cue visual of depressing finger on imaginary intercom system button),“Paging Doctor Freud. Dr. Freud? Paging Dr. Freud.”

Baby Max, my sister-in-law, her friends? All wept with various volumes of accompanying noise. My mother took off her glasses to remain near-sighted, stood in the back and stared at the ground. My dad, who got to play the Sandek, put on his hearing aids for the occasion, concentrated on minimizing his flappiness as he soothed the squirming infant, and declared the cranberry juice to be the most tasty wine he’d had in a while.

I took commemorative pictures - only above the waist, of course. The dog, Jezzie the Hooch, remained locked outside. After the snip-snip and the naming ceremony, everyone did what we Jews do, whether an occasion is sad, stressful, or cautiously joyous.... we all ate.


Meanwhile, my brother left the foreskin in a clamp on the kitchen table for the next five days of our visit so the dog couldn’t eat it before they got around to burying it. After all, he’s a very traditional guy, my brother. Oh and my parents? They got to wear the t-shirts my mom had made:

Our Son the Mohel.