There are those who plan to have the circumcision take place on a Sunday, because of conveniences, though it may actually be before or after the eighth day. They fail to understand the importance of the eighth day:

Kabbalah explains that there are positive energies and negative energies in this world. These negative energies are called kelipot, shells, being that they obscure the light of G-dliness and do not allow it to shine in the world.

Negative energy, however, is only able to derive its strength from whatever positive energy it can capture. Thus, wherever holiness is present, unholy forces strive to dwell there as well.

Prior to the eighth day, the soul of the child is not yet fully within the child. Therefore, the negative energies have nothing on which to feed. On the eighth day, however, when body and soul unite, the total energy arrives.

The greatest concentration of the positive energies comes to rest upon the male organ, being that it possesses the potential to create life.

Since there is now an opening for positive energies to flow, the negative energy then comes and tries to attach itself to that opening. In this case, the concentration of the negative energies is in the foreskin, thus making it the embodiment of negative energy in the child.

This being so, only when the brit is done on the eighth day, is the greatest concentration of negative energy removed from the child forever.

If, however, the brit is performed before the eighth day, when the body and soul are not yet completely united, all that is being accomplished is the removal of a useless piece of flesh. At that point, there is no great concentration of negative forces in the child that can be removed along with the foreskin. Then on the eighth day, when the negative forces do actually come, there is no longer a removable vessel to which they can attach themselves. The negative energy then remains in its potential state and gives its negative feedback to the child.

Table Of Contents | next - Circumcision as immunization against life's problems