ABSTRACT
Jewish history is a tapestry of textual bodies woven together with the thread of milah – circumcision. Circumcision is also a process in that life itself is process – continuous, alive, and lived. We are ever changing, ever growing, ever learning. This chapter suggests that we think of Jewish ritual of circumcision as writing and that we think of milah as a state of being. It seeks to extend this understanding of the livedness of circumcision to the debate between advocates and intactivists. The question of writing in regard to circumcision refers not only to substance and content, but also to surface, to body. While the corpus of Jewish canonical texts is occupied with the question of circumcision, and its significance for Jewish culture, for non-Jews, just as for Jews, circumcision can be thought of as writing and can be read.
