A Global Awakening: Why Jews Around the World Are Choosing Circumcision

For nearly twenty-five years, Mordechai Zvi Solomon, a mohel with the Brit Yosef Yitzchak organization, has been performing circumcisions — traveling across the globe to circumcise Jews who wish to enter the covenant of the Jewish people and inscribe that bond upon their own flesh.

Over the years, Solomon has witnessed countless deeply moving scenes during his travels: young children who chose to undergo circumcision, soldiers who discovered their Jewish identity and decided they wanted to enter the covenant, and even elderly people who, just before leaving this world, realized they did not want to forgo circumcision. Yet the phenomenon he has been witnessing since the massacre that occurred on Simchat Torah, is unlike anything he has seen before.

“Something extraordinary is happening,” he says with emotion. “Since the massacre and the outbreak of war in Israel, I’ve been receiving constant calls from all over the world, asking me to come and circumcise people who want to fulfill the mitzvah. It’s incredibly moving. Usually, people who want to undergo circumcision have a significant psychological barrier — they hesitate, they struggle with the decision, and I completely understand that. But now the requests are coming one after another. People aren’t hesitating at all — they’re actually urging me to come as quickly as possible.”

A Global Journey

Solomon is a veteran mohel who has been in the field for many years. He began his path in circumcision when he was just 17 years old, while studying at a yeshiva in Russia. There he met Rabbi Chaim Rubin, one of the senior mohelim of the Brit Yosef Yitzchak organization, who taught him the profession. During those years, he connected with Brit Yosef Yitzchak, which specializes in adult circumcisions, and he often had the opportunity to perform circumcisions through the organization.

“Today I live in the United States,” he explains, “but I travel anywhere in the world where people ask me to perform a circumcision. Sometimes these are adult circumcisions, which require great skill and are not something just anyone can do. There are also places I go to circumcise young men — often because there is no other mohel living nearby. Frequently, these are families who know me from circumcisions I performed in the past and specifically want me to come. It’s not uncommon that after a circumcision, additional people approach me to ask about it. Sometimes they call me months or even years later and say, ‘Do you remember we met? Can you come circumcise me as well?’”

He adds that he makes a great effort not only to perform circumcisions, but also to inspire interest in the mitzvah. Whenever he meets Jews who have not yet been circumcised, he tries to speak to their hearts and explain the profound importance of the commandment. “Sometimes they’re convinced that very day and go through with it. Sometimes it takes a few months, and there have been cases where I waited for years until the moment finally arrived. But I never forget any of them. I keep them all on a list, I pray for them often, and I long for the day when we’ll merit that they, too, fulfill this important mitzvah.”

An Unimaginable Awakening

Immediately after the war broke out, Solomon reached out emotionally to every person on his list, personally asking them to reconsider fulfilling this mitzvah — to add merit for the Jewish people, for the success of the soldiers in the war, and for the swift return of the hostages.

“I was completely stunned by the overwhelming wave of positive responses,” he says. “Since then, I’ve been on a mission. Already the day after Simchat Torah, I received several requests from cities in Germany. One of them moved me in a very special way. It was a Jewish man I first met ten years ago at his nephew’s circumcision. When I realized he himself wasn’t circumcised, I explained the importance of it and encouraged him. He was very interested, but at the last moment he pulled back out of fear. Over the years I returned to Berlin several times, and each time I visited him — and each time he postponed again. But when he learned last month that I was coming to Berlin, he decided within a short time that he wanted to go through with the circumcision. He did so bravely and without hesitation, saying simply: ‘For the success of the Jewish people.’ Personally, it moved me deeply to see a Jew who had postponed circumcision for ten years out of great fear, and ultimately what enabled him to overcome that fear was the desire to strengthen the Jewish people.”

After Berlin, Rabbi Solomon continued on to several other locations in Europe, and then traveled to Russia, stopping at various points along the way — including a visit to Siberia.

“It turned out that in Siberia there was a young man I had met some time earlier when I was in the area, who had refused circumcision then,” Rabbi Solomon recounts. “This time, in order to help our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land and to help the captives, he agreed. His friend, who was with him, was also moved by the moment and expressed his willingness to undergo circumcision as well — and that very day we merited to circumcise him too.”

From Siberia, Rabbi Solomon traveled to Kaliningrad, where three circumcisions were waiting for him. From there he drove to Poland for another circumcision, then continued by train to Warsaw to circumcise a Jew he had met just a week earlier in Germany, who asked to undergo the procedure near his home. Only recently did he finally return home to the United States — after performing additional circumcisions in Alaska, Los Angeles, and other locations across the country.

How do you explain this tremendous surge?

“There’s no explanation other than the fact that war causes people to strengthen themselves in an extraordinary way,” he says. “Even those who previously hesitated and weighed whether or not to undergo circumcision are now receiving a special inner push and are simply rushing to fulfill the mitzvah. May the Holy One, blessed be He, see in Heaven this great awakening among His children — some of whom may appear outwardly very distant, but whose Jewish hearts are so warm and so close.”