I currently deliver a weekly lecture (usually two versions thereof) on topics related to the coming week’s Torah reading, and write a short weekly column on halachic topics related to the same (the latter is usually a condensed, written version of the former). I intend to begin posting these regularly here.
For פסח, my weekly lecture was titled “The Songs of the Prophetesses”; it is an expanded version of this post.
My weekly column:
In the haftarah of the first day of Passover, we are told that “all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt” had not been circumcised (Yehoshua 5:5). The Talmud (Yevamos 72a-b) justifies this apparent dereliction by explaining that due to the particular circumstances of the sojourn in the desert, circumcision would have been dangerous. The Ramban in his commentary to this Talmudic passage takes for granted that the general rule that a father’s failure to circumcise his son disqualifies the father from participating in the Paschal offering (korban Pesach) applied to this situation of the Jews in the wilderness, and he therefore assumes that the derelict fathers of that period did not offer the korban Pesach.
The Avnei Nezer (Yoreh De’ah #323) finds this baffling, since the nonperformance of circumcision due to danger is not generally disqualifying. He resolves this by the proposal that a mere “suspicion” (chashash) of danger is insufficient grounds for neglecting the performance of the commandment of circumcision. After all, circumcision always entails some level of risk, and the Torah nevertheless demands it! He therefore concludes that the Jews in the desert had actually acted improperly by not circumcising their sons, and he notes that we are in fact told that the tribe of Levi did practice circumcision in the desert.
The Beis Yitzhak (Yoreh De’ah 2:90), on the other hand, assumes that the Jews were within their rights to refrain from circumcision due to the danger, but that the members of the tribe of Levi were also within theirs to volunteer to brave the danger and circumcise their children. He infers from this that the mitzvah of circumcision legitimizes the voluntary risking of not only one’s own life, but even that of one’s child (but cf. Avnei Nezer ibid. and #326).
Several years ago, I recorded a lecture on the general topic of the performance of circumcision in dangerous circumstances (previously posted here).