Bris Milah
וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי יִמּוֹל בְּשַׂר עָרְלָתוֹ. (ויקרא יב, ג)
And on the eighth day, he shall circumcise the flesh of his foreskin. (Vayikra 12:3)
Five Times Techiyas Hameisim
Bris Milah sets the foundation for all of life. How so?
Atah Gibor, the second blessing of the Amidah, mentions Techiyas Hameisim no less than five times. It says: מחיה מתים אתה וגו‘ מחיה מתים ברחמים רבים וגו‘ מלך ממית ומחיה וגו‘ ונאמן אתה להחיות מתים, ברוך אתה ה‘ מחיה המתים.
What is this all about? Five times in one berachah?
It says in the Seforim Hakedoshim that there are five parts to a person’s soul. They are nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah.
There are pesukim that serve as a source for all these names of the soul. But they are not just five names for the same thing. They represent the five different levels of the soul.
Accordingly, we could say that the five times that Techiyas Hameisim is mentioned correspond to the five levels of the soul. We will explain.
Five Stages in Life
A person’s life divides into five periods.
From the moment of birth until about the age of three, a person is completely exempt from fulfilling the Torah. He has no connection to doing mitzvos. At this stage in life, he doesn’t understand what is going on. He doesn’t know what he is doing.
He doesn’t have to keep Shabbos, he doesn’t need to recite the pasuk of תורה צוה לנו משה, which is the first little bit of Torah that a child is taught. He doesn’t need to do anything Torahdik. Similarly, nothing he does is considered an aveirah. This is the first period in a person’s life.
The second period begins when the child reaches the age of chinuch, the age at which he can be educated. This is approximately the age of three, and it continues until the age of thirteen (for boys). Chazal describe a child at this stage by saying “הבל שאין בו חטא” – “The breath coming out of his mouth is untainted by sin.” Any deeds he does cannot be considered sinful, but on the other hand, due to the mitzvah of chinuch, he is required to perform certain mitzvos, and his father teaches him Torah.
The third period is from the thirteen to twenty. At this stage, a person has an obligation to fulfill the mitzvos of the Torah, but he is not subject to full punishment at the hands of Heaven for failure to do so. Hakadosh Baruch Hu will not apply the term rasha to him. As far as the Sanhedrin is concerned, if he would desecrate Shabbos deliberately, in front of witnesses, he would be liable for the death penalty, because he is fully obligated to keep mitzvos. But Heaven will not decree death upon him at this stage in life.
After the age of twenty, a person stands firmly on his own two feet. If he does aveiros, he is fully culpable, and could be subject to the Heavenly punishment of kareis. And if he does mitzvos, he will be blessed with longevity. This is the fourth period in life.
The fifth period, which not everyone merits coming to, is as follows. He fully rectifies his soul and transforms himself into a tzaddik, into a holy and pure person with great Torah knowledge and understanding.
These are the five stages in life in brief. Now we will go a little more into depth.
Milah is Constant Connection to Hashem
Let’s talk about those first three years of a person’s life.
The Chasid Yaabetz writes that when a person is born, since he is a Jew and Hashem places in him a pure neshamah, he is automatically bonded to kedushah and has a portion in Olam Haba. If he would die as a baby, chas v’shalom, he would go straight to Olam Haba, since Olam Haba is the place of connection to Hashem, and he is fundamentally attached to Hashem.
Hashem breathed into him a pure neshamah, and Chazal say that “When one breathes out, he is breathing out something from his very self.” The source of this child’s life force is in the inner realms of kedushah, so he is intrinsically connected to Hashem and automatically has a portion in Olam Haba.
If so, why did Chazal say that a child has a portion in Olam Haba only from the time that he starts to answer amein?
Because that is talking about a higher level of Olam Haba, which the child attains due to his deeds. But even without any good deeds at all, he is fundamentally bonded to kedushah. And not because he is incapable of sinning, due to his lack of mental capacity. The reason he is free of sin is because of the great kedushah within him, he has a Jewish neshamah. He is totally perfected. He is a tzaddik gamur.
Even if his parents are resha’im gemurim, right now he is a tzaddik gamur and we must desecrate Shabbos for him if he is endangered. Since he is in a state of perfection, he has no need for Torah and mitzvos. This is why he has no connection Torah and mitzvos until he grows older.
Despite all this, there is one mitzvah that he does have a connection to, and that is bris milah. So let’s talk about this very unique mitzvah of bris milah.
David said “שֶׁבַע בַּיּוֹם הִלַּלְתִּיךָ” – “I praised You seven times a day.” But when he entered the bathhouse and found himself unclothed, he said, “Woe to me, for I am ‘unclothed’ of mitzvos [at this time, since I cannot engage in Torah study].” Then he noticed that he has a bris milah, and he began composing a praise to Hashem over it, as it says regarding the musician – “לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל הַשְּׁמִינִית” – “To the musician, regarding the [mitzvah performed on the day of the] eighth.”
When a baby is born, he is bonded to kedushah due to the very fact that he is a Jew. This is why milah is the only mitzvah fitting to this age. It ties the person so strongly to kedushah that wherever he is and whatever the situation, even if he is in the bathhouse, even if he is eating or sleeping, he always bears the seal of Hakadosh Baruch Hu on himself.
Hashem has many ways to bestow chesed on people. There is the chesed of great wealth, which not very many people attain. And there is the chesed of parnassah, of having enough to subsist. Most people have this. Yet, there are poor people who don’t have the bare minimum, and there are those who even die of starvation.
Another chesed of Hashem is air. This is something everyone gets to benefit from, tzaddikim and resha’im alike. Hashem’s chesed is so great that there is almost no way for a person not to have air to breathe. Nevertheless, it is still possible for a person to die due to lack of air.
The greatest chesed of all is that called makom, “place.” Everyone has place, has room. There is no one at all who doesn’t have place. Even resha’im in Gehinom have a place to be. This is the peak of chesed that we can conceive of, and it is granted to all beings, without exception. There is no one without a place in which he exists.
There are also mitzvos like this. There are mitzvos that are so wonderful that they are part of a person’s very life and are inseparable from him, and one of them is the mitzvah of milah. A Jew who was fortunate enough that they once did with him the mitzvah of bris milah will be connected to Hashem forever. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do.
Even if he chas v’shalom desecrates Shabbos, even if he eats on Yom Kippur, the Name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is still on him. It is like the chesed of place. It is something you have by virtue of the fact that you exist.
There is another mitzvah that resembles bris milah, and that is the mitzvah of Shabbos. On Shabbos kodesh, a Jew doesn’t need to do anything. Nothing needs to come from him. The seventh day of the week has been designated as Shabbos from the time of the Six Days of Creation, and a person observes it without having to go and do anything at all. And when he keeps Shabbos, Shabbos sanctifies his very being, just like it sanctifies all other creatures. (Even Gehinom observes Shabbos.)
Yom Tov is not like this. Its kedushah depends on us. The Jewish people renders Yom Tov holy. [In former times, the Sanhedrin would determine the date of the Yamim Tovim based on the sighting of the new moon, and they set the calendar that we follow to this day.] If the Jewish people would not sanctify Yom Tov, it would not be Yom Tov.
There are no other mitzvos like this. Only Shabbos and bris milah.
This is the first stage in a person’s life. In this stage, his very soul is attached to kedushah.
Coming of Age
The second stage in a person’s life is when he reaches the age of chinuch, of education. At this age, he enters the lowliness of this world to some extent, and begins to have some relationship to negativity and impurity. He still has no connection to aveiros. “The breath coming out of his mouth is untainted by sin.” But he can bring a lot of harmful influences into himself. He can get in the habit of desecrating Shabbos, he can develop the trait of anger, he can even learn to kill, chas v’shalom.
So at this stage he needs Torah and mitzvos, and “His father teaches him Torah.” But since he is unable to commit a sin, he also has no obligation to fulfill mitzvos. He only does them for the sake of chinuch, education.
When a person reaches the age of thirteen (for a boy), now he is living in this world, and in order to protect him, he needs the Torah Hakedoshah to clean him up and refine him, to urge him to serve Hashem. He needs to work hard, day and night, in order to remove from himself all the tumah and bring kedushah into himself.
At this age, mitzvah observance is incumbent on him. He does mitzvos as an obligation. But still, due to the bond to kedushah that he has from the day of his birth, he is exempt from kareis. Heaven will not take away his life and his soul will not be cut off, because he still has a strong tie to kedushah.
That was the third stage. The fourth stage begins when he reaches the age of twenty. Now he is deep into the life of this world, and he needs to stand on his own two feet. Therefore, he is now liable for death at the hands of Heaven.
The fifth stage, for those who merit it, is essentially a return to the first state. It entails total attachment to kedushah. This fits with the general rule that “the end is contained within the beginning.”
A person’s goal in life is to return to his beginning point, to the kedushah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu granted him in the very beginning, when He breathed his neshamah into him. The Rambam expressed this idea when he wrote as follows about a person who dedicates himself to Torah learning:
And not just the tribe of Levi, but every single individual in the world whose spirit moved him… and he conducts himself with straightness, as G-d made him… he acquires supreme sanctity.
In other words, such a person returns to the “straightness” that was his in the first years of life, and then “he acquires supreme sanctity.”
This is a person’s life goal. This is what he aspires to his whole life: to get back to where he started. It is our desire to leave the world in the state we were in when we came here. However, there is one difference. At the end of a person’s life, when he goes back to that total attachment to kedushah, it is coming from his own avodah, his own work.
Even at this stage, there is such a thing as losing one’s life, there is such a thing as death. And it is the harshest death of all. It is the worst of all fates. As it says in Sefer Mesilas Yesharim, “There is no evil greater than that of a lack in perfection and of being far from Hashem.” This is the worst death of all.
Levels of Soul
These five stages of life correspond to the five levels of soul we mentioned before: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah.
In the first stage of life, a person is totally bound to kedushah and is inseparable from it. This is the level of yechidah, in which a person is totally connected to Hashem and there is nothing else at all. Hashem is yachid for him.
“אַתָּה אֶחָד וְשִׁמְךָ אֶחָד” – “You are One and Your Name is One.” The truth of this is self-evident, but here is the amazing thing: “וּמִי כְעַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל גּוֹי אֶחָד בָּאָרֶץ” – “And who is like Your people Yisrael, one nation in the world.” The Jewish nation, too, has this type of kedushah. They are one, they are only tzaddikim, there is nothing else. There is no other side to the coin. As it says, “וְעַמֵּךְ כֻּלָּם צַדִּיקִים לְעוֹלָם יִרְשׁוּ אָרֶץ” – “Your people are all tzaddikim; they will inherit the earth forever.”
It is inherent to a person’s soul that he is attached to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and this is felt mainly at the time he is born. He is holy; he is pure. A baby is a tzaddik. Besides the fact that he doesn’t speak lashon hara, because he doesn’t know how to speak, he is fundamentally alienated from speaking lashon hara because of the great kedushah inside him.
The second stage of life, from the age of three to thirteen, corresponds to the level of soul called chayah. At this age, a person could do a lot of aveiros, but he still is not culpable. Beis din will not put him to death. So this has the aspect of chayah, because he is alive, he is chai, and not dead. He is perforce alive.
The third stage of life, from thirteen to twenty, corresponds to the level of soul called neshamah. Because at this age, a person is still attached to kedushah. He might commit sins, and if he does, he is culpable for them. But Heaven will not put him to death. His soul will not be cut off because he is still attached to kedushah. His neshamah is his.
The fourth stage in life, from the age of twenty on, corresponds to the level of soul known as ruach, “spirit.” There is a spirit of purity and there is a spirit of impurity, and it is up to a person to choose which kind of ruach he will have. He is no longer inseparably and inherently bound to kedushah, to the Source of life, like he was in earlier stages. Thus he is now liable for death at the hands of Heaven.
The fifth stage of life, in which a person goes back to being a tzaddik, to being holy and pious and pure, corresponds to the level of soul called nefesh. The nefesh is the lowly part of a person. It is physically oriented and is responsible for eating, drinking and other physical functions.
An animal, too, has a nefesh, as it says: “וּמַכֵּה נֶפֶשׁ בְּהֵמָה יְשַׁלְּמֶנָּה” – “He who strikes the soul of an animal shall pay for it.” However, the nefesh of a person comes from Heaven, from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, while the nefesh of an animal comes from the earth. But in the end, a nefesh is a nefesh.
It is possible for the lowly part of a person to never become bound up with kedushah. It might never see the light. There are a lot of people who lived out their whole lives, and the nefesh, the lowly part of them that eats and drinks, never became attached to kedushah.
A person’s goal is to connect his nefesh with the other parts of his soul, so that also the nefesh will be completely holy. And someone who does this has rectified himself completely. He has attained total sheleimus. As it says in Sefer Mesilas Yesharim:
Torah scholars who are holy in their ways and in all their deeds are truly like the Mikdash and like the Mizbeach, because the Shechinah rests upon them like it rested upon the Mikdash itself. Someone who draws close to them is like being brought on the Mizbeach, and filling their throats [with drink] is like filling the cups that were on the Mizbeach, in which wine libations were poured.
This is the goal: to connect the end of life with its beginning, to connect the lowliest part with the most sacred part.
Back to Bris
When a baby has a bris milah, we bless him as follows: כשם שנכנס לברית כן יכנס לתורה ולחופה ולמעשים טובים – “Just as he has entered the covenant, so shall he come to Torah, marriage and good deeds.”
A Jew’s aspiration is to be inherently connected to kedushah at every stage in life, until the final stage, called nefesh, just as he was originally attached to kedushah in a total way. The goal is that even his eating and other bodily activities should continually be bound up with kedushah. Not that sometimes he gets up in the morning for davening and sometimes he doesn’t, that sometimes he learns and sometimes he doesn’t, that sometimes he goes up and sometimes down, but that “his end is contained within his beginning.” That every stage should be a continuation of the beginning.
He began life by entering into a covenant with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This rendered him fundamentally and inseparably connected to Him. Even if chas v’shalom he eats pork on Yom Kippur, he remains a circumcised Jew and nothing in the world can separate him from kedushah. So it should be also in the second stage, and the third, fourth and fifth. He should always be inherently tied to kedushah.
This is actually the aspect of ruach, which is connected to Torah. To fundamentally be a ben Torah. Not that he happens to learn sometimes, but that his essential being is that of a ben Torah. And if he merits attaining even the level of nefesh, he will be so bound to kedushah that even his eating and sleeping will be part of kedushah. Every movement he makes is all part of one great kedushah. This is the spiritual peak that a person is capable of reaching.
The truth is that all these qualities exist within a person throughout his life. They are not just stages that come one after another, but are always present in him. There is a point inside a person where he is connected to kedushah due to the very fact that he is a Jew. A person can commit every aveirah in the Torah and he will still be a Jew. There is a point within him to which he is always connected, at which is always alive.
Now we can understand why Techiyas Hameisim is mentioned five times in the blessing of Atah Gibor, as we mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Hakadosh Baruch Hu grants life to a person in five stages.
In the first stage, it was possible for a person not to have been born at all, and even after he was born, the kedushah of yechidah comes by means of milah, through which Hakadosh Baruch Hu grants him life and connects him to kedushah, to true life.
Afterwards, in the second stage, when a person is capable of bringing impurity into himself, Hashem continues to grant him life. And so it is in all the subsequent stages.
This is why we bless the baby at the time of his milah by saying כשם שנכנס לברית. It expresses that he is inherently connected to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And we continue the blessing by saying כן ייכנס לתורה לחופה ולמעשים טובים, meaning that at every stage in life, he should be fundamentally tied to Hashem, just as he was connected to Hashem at the beginning of his life through bris milah.
