"No tips"

We had another midwife appointment today, to which I grudgingly took the bus.  The bus!  I hate taking the bus!  I don't really mind streetcars, which I took several times last week in Toronto where I attended a library conference.  Streetcars, somehow, are not so bad.  Maybe it's the predictable track, the smooth ride, and the easy suspension.  Buses in Ottawa also smell like sweat I find.  

Back on track.  We got to hear the fetus' heart again today.  It's a sound you just want to listen to forever; they always turn that dopler thingie off too soon.  Rose's sister, who now has two great kids, rented her own dopler and listened to her first baby's heartbeat every night in bed.  Something soothing about that.

But the real topic of this post is circumcision!  Hurray for circumcision!  I'm not here to engage in a debate about circumcision.  In my case, anyway, nobody asked me and, also, nobody asked me if I wanted to be Jewish.  If we happen to have a boy (or a girl, for that matter), our child will face some choices, later in life, about his religion.  It'll be up to him to question and ask himself, and others, some questions and come up with the answers that will suit him.  But I'd like to set him off on his life's journey the same way that I, my father, his father, and the rest of the fathers in my paternal lineage all the way down to a decisive day near Mount Sinai, have been started off: with a snip on the eighth day of all our lives.  Rose and I have had this discussion a long time ago and we're in agreement on this.  

Now a few months ago, around May of last year, I started taking Torah classes.  Which is to say that, once a week, more or less, I sit down with a learned Rabbi and we study the Torah, the five books of Moses.  We read it in Hebrew, line by line, and look at the commentary.  This Rabbi also happens to be a mohel, a person who performs ritual Jewish circumcisions for a living.  So it seemed natural to me that this wonderful, gentle, kind, and soulful man (not much older than I and with four children already!) whose work is really cutting edge, will circumcise my son in due course.

What I forgot to consider is my Rabbi's own position on this question.  My son (or daughter), you see, will not be, halachically-speaking, Jewish because Judaism is passed down through the mother.  So it is not so natural for my Rabbi to circumcise someone who is not born of a Jewish mother.  Also, it is also not so natural to Rose to be around when this happens, because of the Rabbi's reservations. 

So I gave my Rabbi some time to consider.  And the next time I brought it up, he said that, on important matters such as this, he consults with his own Rabbi. 

I'll keep you updated.