Cameron's Bris

Well, Cameron survived his bris yesterday. A bris is a jewish religious ceremony performed eight days after a male child is born, in which the child is circumcised. Sounds like lots of fun, huh?

All in all, it was actually pretty painless (I know, easy for me to say huh?). The mohel who performed the bris, Cantor Sam Pessaroff, was excellent - and quite a character. He was 100 mph from word one. He was very informative and had a great sense of humor to help allay the fears of mom and dad. We were both pretty nervous, the whole thing happened pretty quick. The one thing that threw me off, was about five minutes into the ceremony, the mohel turned around to me very quickly with the knife pointed at me. The first thought that came into my head was, "wait a minute, you're about 28 years too late..." The reason for turning the knife on me - tradition states that the father perform this ritual on his son - and handed me the knife. I couldn't get rid of that thing faster, except the mohel wouldn't let me give it back to him for about five minutes. I could then give the knife back and give him the authority to perform the ritual.

Cameron was outstanding. He didn't cry much more than if you were changing his diaper. That might have had a little to do with the fact that the mohel's finger was dipped in Manischewitz wine and planted firmly in Cam's mouth. And actually, as the mohel explained, there is very little pain for the child. Eight days after a child is born is an ideal point in time because the nerve endings aren't developed enough yet for any significant pain, but their blood clotting is still high enough to efficiently deal well with the proecedure. Cameron was in good hands and is recovering nicely.

Here are some photos from the day, and again, all photos are from a very stomach friendly point of view: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbuG7Jw0ctGLpY