Editing Brit milah (section)

=== Visible symbol of a covenant ===
[[Saadia Gaon|Rabbi Saadia Gaon]] considers something to be "complete" if it lacks nothing, but also has nothing that is unneeded. He regards the foreskin as an unneeded organ that God created in man, and so by amputating it, the man is completed.<ref>{{Cite book
  | first1     = Saadia
  | last1      = Gaon
  | author-link = Saadia Gaon
  | last2      = Rosenblatt
  | first2     = Samuel (trans.)
  | title      = the Book of Beliefs and Opinions
  | publisher  = Yale Judaica
  | year       = 1958
  | chapter    = article III chapter 10
  | isbn       = 978-0-300-04490-4
  | title-link      = Emunoth ve-Deoth
  }}</ref> The author of [[Sefer ha-Chinuch]]<ref>2nd commandment</ref> provides three reasons for the practice of circumcision:
# To complete the form of man, by removing what he claims to be a redundant organ;
# To mark the chosen people, so that their bodies will be different as their souls are. The organ chosen for the mark is the one responsible for the sustenance of the species;
# The completion effected by circumcision is not congenital, but left to the man. This implies that as he completes the form of his body, so can he complete the form of his soul.

Talmud professor [[Daniel Boyarin]] offered two explanations for circumcision. One is that it is a literal inscription on the Jewish body of the name of God in the form of the letter "[[yodh|yud]]" (from "yesod"). The second is that the act of bleeding represents a feminization of Jewish men, significant in the sense that the covenant represents a marriage between Jews and (a symbolically male) God.<ref>Boyarin, Daniel. {{"'}}This We Know to Be the Carnal Israel': Circumcision and the Erotic Life of God and Israel", Critical Inquiry. (Spring, 1992), 474–506.</ref>