By Mordechai Schmutter

A bris is one of the most chilled simchas for everyone involved, except the baby. And maybe the mohel. (And probably the sandak.)

There’s a lot less pressure than with most simchas. With weddings, your entire life before that, everyone keeps asking, “So, when are you going to start dating?” “So, when are you getting engaged?” And even after you get engaged, it’s like, “So, do you have a wedding date yet?”

Look, it’s not like we’re getting engaged but not married. You’ll get an invitation. Or probably you won’t.

But with brissin, at most they’re bothering you for eight days. Also, they’re usually not. The date of the bris is a given, or there’s a medical situation where everyone understands that they will not help the situation by continuously asking.

I like going to family brissin, because they’re so casual. You show up, and you’re astonished to see other people you know. It’s a nice surprise. (“Oh, I forgot that he’s my sister’s uncle, too!”)

And it’s not just other relatives. You’re at your sibling’s shul, and you’re surprised, like, “Hey, it’s all those people that I met that time that I came here for Shabbos!”

Wow.

You’re not awake yet, so it didn’t occur to you that they’d be at the regular shul that they go to every day. Meanwhile, they’re all prepared to talk to you and continue that one conversation you had that time, because they’re wide awake, as this is their regular minyan. They didn’t wake up an hour and a half early to get here. They knew your sibling was making a bris, so they figured you were coming.

Whereas you’re exhausted, because you woke up earlier than you’re used to so you could drive to an entirely different city for Shacharis, because the bris is trying to be over in time for everyone to get to work. This baby still has a full day ahead of him.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law made a bris, and I was totally shocked to see that my brother-in-law’s brother was there, too.

“Hey! How do you know your brother?”

And that’s the other thing: Because it’s the morning, and people have work, if you don’t make it to someone’s bris, no one holds it against you. If you leave early, no one holds it against you. In fact, the minhag is to not even formally invite anyone to a bris, because the halachah is that if you’re invited, you’re obligated to come, and we don’t want to obligate anyone. Though I don’t know why this bothers us. It’s not like if you’re invited to your sibling’s wedding, you’re not obligated to come.

Point is, though, that a bris is so chilled that the ba’al simcha says, “No, please don’t put yourself out to come. You are literally not invited. I’m going out of my way in how I’m phrasing this announcement to make it clear that you’re not invited.”

But the fact that you can’t invite people also means that you don’t have to print invitations! Which is great, because I know when it came to our sons’ bar mitzvah invitations, I wasn’t allowed to pick anything out myself—I had to have my wife come in with me and look at font types and paper stock and all the different variations of white—and when it comes to the week after you have a baby, your wife’s availability for this kind of thing is limited. So someone decided to take full advantage of this “no inviting people” idea to the point where it’s become the most widely accepted minhag Yisrael.

That said, since there are no invitations, there is no one who must be there. If you don’t make it to the bris, people understand. Unless you’re a grandparent. Or a parent. Or a mohel. The mohel is really the only one who has to RSVP. In fact, if there’s a mohel you really want to hire and you want to lock him in, you can actually invite him to the bris and he has no choice. Though he probably knows more halachah than you.

But since there’s really no one who has to be there, there is really no specific person that you fully expect to see. Anyone you see, in your overtired state of looking around a strange shul during Shacharis, is a surprise.

Another stress of making other simchas that is taken away at a bris is the stress of giving out kibbudim. At a wedding, there are a specific number of kibbudim, and you have to distribute them evenly among your family, the other side’s family, your rabbis, and the other side’s rabbis. And this is impossible, because, for example, there are seven berachos. That’s a prime number. And if someone doesn’t show up, you have to redo the whole list on the spot, during the wedding, and somehow communicate that to the chassan’s friend who’s going to call out the kibbudim and who doesn’t know what any of these people look like. But with a bris, besides making sure the two grandfathers are included, you can give out as few or as many kibbudim as you like. If the people you expected don’t show up, you can give most of the kibbudim to the same two people, and if more people show up, you can literally make up kibbudim. And that way you can make your guests feel important, like, “I’m the guy who takes the baby off the chair and gives him to the guy who passes him to the guy who holds the baby while the other person is naming him!”

“Nice. I held the bottle during the kri’as shem.”

As it turns out, holding the baby for various lengths of time is a kibud. At least at a bris. This might have come from an effort to avoid a situation where the mother has to come into the empty shul afterward to retrieve the baby from the kisei after all the men forget about him and run downstairs for bagels.

“So where’s the baby?”

“Oh. Uh…”

And she finds him all alone on his pillow, quietly sucking on a napkin.

The constant passing, I think, comes from the ancient minhag that a man can’t hold a baby for more than a minute.

So everyone’s passing the baby around on the pillow, and by the way there is no seatbelt on that thing. The secret, I have found, is to just tilt the pillow toward your body, and then when you pass it to the next person, tilt the pillow the other way and watch the baby roll over to the other guy’s chest before you let go. By the time the mohel gets him, he’s like, “Why is the baby on his stomach?”

“And where’s his sock?”

I don’t know where the minhag of the pillow comes from, because it makes us ten times more likely to drop this baby. I know how to hold a baby, but it’s never on a pillow with my Tefillin on. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years; you’d think these pillows would have a five-point harness by now.

Sorry; four-point harness.

There is even a specific person who is mechubad with somehow getting the baby out of the ladies’ section.

“Me? Um … Can’t they just throw him down?”

“You’re going to throw him back up at the end? How many tries will that take?”

And then there are even more surprise kibbudim at the end that you can give out, because of the sheva-berachos-type HaRachaman ceremony during bentching. Most people don’t know about this, because they have never stayed to the end. So it usually doesn’t occur to the ba’al simcha to figure out who’s getting them ahead of time. Nor is there a point to doing that.

In a lot of ways, a bris is a good beginner’s simcha to make not long after you get married. Even food expectations are not that high, because everyone knows you’ve only had a week to put this together, and you did just have a baby. You weren’t even sure until two days ago that the bris would be today. And also because it’s the morning.

That said, I’m thinking maybe there should be more morning simchas, such as weddings, as the food standards are lower, and also that way the chassan and kallah don’t have to fast as long. You can probably make a gorgeous chasunah at sunrise on the seashore or something. With half the guests sleeping. But for some reason, I do not remember ever catching an impromptu Shacharis in the hallway after a chuppah. I also don’t know what time anyone’s going to have to wake up for makeup. But it’s the morning, so who cares if the makeup is not done professionally? No one gets professionally done at a bris. I figure everyone would be so tired that they’d just be surprised to see the kallah.

“Hey, it’s that girl from the vort! How do you know the chassan?”

“I already told you this story: My friend from seminary married a guy whose brother’s roommate…”

“Forget it; I don’t have the head for this right now.”

Another great thing about brissin is that when you show up to a vort, you’re always immediately wondering, “OK, so which one’s the chassan?” At a bris, you’re never like, “Which one’s the baby?” The guest of honor has a very distinct cry. Also, he’s the one on the pillow. No one else is carrying a baby on a pillow.

There are other great things about brissin that we’re going to have to talk about in next week’s article. I would have prepared more for this week, but I wasn’t even sure you’d show up. n

Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.

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