Foreskin – $9.98

Abraham was promised to be a leader of a great nation. All he had to do was leave his fathers house without a map. People underestimate the strength it takes to leave the familiar for a promise of something better. He was not told the exact location, the difficulty to be endured, the risk inherent in the travel or the scars the journey may leave.

None of us leave our fathers home without some scars. Of all the scars left on Abraham, one was deeply personal. Before he undertook his journey, god insisted on a covenant between them. This was no simple terms of service you click through without reading. This covenant was much more personal. The divine plan established for Abraham included risking the very organ needed to accomplish the task of being the father of a great nation. This is not to be taken lightly.
Of all the things god asked of Abraham, circumcision was the covenant bond. This expression of submission to the lord, who in return promised to elevate the barer of this deepest of scars to a direct connection to the divine and the creation of a great nation. This covenant required a man to take the knife to his personal holiest of holy. Abraham consecrated his member, gave it divinity and set himself and all his male progeny apart from the nations of the world. I have to imagine that this practice raised a lot of eyebrows in pre antibiotic Middle East. Not just for its obvious danger to the health of the human end of this covenant but because, well, frankly IT HURTS. A-lot. Really. ITS THE PENIS CRYING OUT LOUD!

Mind you, Abraham was not an 8 day old boy. He was a grown man. Moreover, he did it himself. Even stranger, there were no medical books for the procedure so success of this first of its kind operation was not nearly as guaranteed as one would hope. But successful it was. And so was Abraham.

He left his fathers house, undertook a perilous journey in which he nearly lost his wife, did lose his nephew Lot and nearly sacrificed his son to the cause. But the reward for fulfilling the hero’s journey was worth it. We know that god kept his promise because the vaccine for polio was invented, e=mc2, History of the World Part 1 was made, Chigall’s The Kissing hangs in the Guggenheim, and Oppenheimer captured the power of the sun. His children may not be as numerous as the stars in the sky or sand on the beach, but their impact touched all of humanity and continues till today. So perhaps it was worth the price of such a deep and painful cut.

When Abraham’s children who toiled under the yoke of the Sickle and Hammer were given the chance to flee their fathers homes, they gathered their belonging and left. Like Abraham, the path was not clear, the challenges daunting and fraught with danger. They left to pursue freedom, economic and social, at great personal cost. They left with the scars of the Tzars pogroms and Stalin’s purges and gulags. They left with scars of the destruction of their culture and the day to day humiliation of the casual and not so casual anti-semitism that permeated the USSR. They left with the same uncertainty of the promised land, the same fear of failure but unlike Abraham many of their men left with their foreskins intact.

I reached the promised land precisely the way I was born. Tonsils, appendix and foreskin intact… The way that god and 4+ billion years of evolution designed me. I was a spitting image of my father who, thanks in large part to the teachings of another Abrahamist with a bushy beard and an idealistic view of the world, was spared the painful cut to the holiest of holies in the pursuit of the opiate of the masses. Jews in our own skin but with an intact foreskin.

As a child, having seen my father naked, I knew that I was normal.. assuming he was normal. I also happened to catch a glimpse of a few other members of the members of my sex during the first 9 years of my life. By all account, I seemed to have established one certainty pertaining to the my privates; I looked like everyone else. Perhaps smaller and without that awful hair, but definitely normal. It had never occurred to me that there were cosmetic variances to the male genitalia nor that there would be any reason to alter the the aforementioned through surgery. I never read the Bible never saw anyone in the changing room who looked different. As far as I was concerned we all had what looked like ant eaters of various shapes and sized. Done and done.

I also had no real idea of what the purpose of the penis was other than to a) urinate and b) spontaneously stiffen at the wrong time. The worst of these times was when I was on the metro. I am not sure why, but for some reason the Kiev metro would wreak havoc with my erections. This one particular time my family was off on a visit to some relatives via metro when all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, hydraulics engaged and I had a massive ( by 7/8 year old standards) erection pointing uncomfortably toward my shoes. This was a terribly excruciating. Both pants and underpants were constrictive and there was simply no room for the little Gena to pop into a more reliably comfortable position.

“What is to be done?” The great Tolstoyan question. I was in my Sunday best sitting on a very busy metro car. I shifted and squirmed in my seat. My mother noticing my discomfort asked if all was alright. Of course it was. One does not tell mama about things like this… does one? No…. One certainly does not.

After several moments of writhing in my seat it dawned on me that the current situation can be alleviated if I simultaneously reached into the pocket of my pants, place my hand just underneath my seemingly autonomous member, lean back, stretch out my legs fully and wedge the uncooperative beast upwards.

The plan, like all plans, seemed solid on paper. Like all plans, however, it does not take into account every variable. In this particular case the unforeseen variable was simply the lack of room in the crotch area in my pants to allow for a full rotation of the penis towards the belt buckle. As I executed the move, which seemed so simple and straight forward in my head, I found myself fully reclined, stretched out completely like a plank, with an unbearably visible tent sticking in my pants.

It turns out that I was the 4th person to notice this. The first two were the people who sat across from me. I knew they were the first because the were laughing, very loudly I may add, and I was not sure why. The third person was my mother who, though not someone who typically makes a fuss in public, was yelling “Гена, что ты делаешь? / GENA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING”.. it is at this point that I became aware that I was the fourth person to notice what was going on. Persons 5 -70 will remain nameless, but I felt every one of their 140 eyes on me almost instantly. Luckily for all but me , my mother quickly solved the problem by a) placing her very heavy bag in my lap and b) quickly yanking me by my arm pit and sitting me up. We got off 4 stops short of our destination and presumably the denizens of the Kiev Metro were able to return to their regular and uneventful commute unharmed if not entertained. The next time my penis was the subject of family discussion was just a few years later in the land of giant phallic skyscrapers and with a bushy bearded Abrahamist of Yeshiva Be’er Hagolah.

I have never been able to understand why my parents chose to send me to a Yeshiva. We were not religious. My father had tattoos from the army, we ate pork, shrimp by the metric ton at Beefsteak Charlies, never discussed god or the torah, knew nothing of the prayers or practices and short of speaking a little yiddish and and making Giffilte Fish, were nearly indistinguishable from Ivan Ivanovich Ivanovs of the world. I suppose we they were sold on the idea that Yeshiva would offer a better education, but that neither panned out nor could I reconcile it with the fact that my sister was sent to South Shore High in Canarsie. They simply ignored the public school 247 which was LITERALLY across the street from me and sent me to Yeshiva…

My foreskin, my parents and I sat in the Rabbis Germains office as he explained that the newly formed Yeshiva Be’er Hagolah was going to be of new marvel of education where a young child would learn both the mysteries of judaism and the secrets of the universe. This was going to be a grand exercise of pedagogical wonderment where the soul and the mind would be nourished. A place where the a young jewish mind would be able to learn about its heritage as well all it would need to attend Harvard. This place would save the Jewish child from having to share the school yard with the unwashed and uncouth masses of Americans who would most likely kill said child, if not physically than definitely spiritually.

Be’er Hagolah would be a Gymnasium of the first order… yes there were some small challenged such as the fact the the school was in the windowless basement of an existing yeshiva called Ohel Moshe. Yes, your child would have to walk 10 blocks every day instead of crossing the street to attend school. Yes, the teachers were unqualified and unlicensed. And of course, yes, emphasis would be on making the child an Orthodox Jew and not a free thinker BUT…. Its not public school where drugs were being injected by blacks into every one and Jews were beaten daily.
The best part of the school, as articulated by the Rabbi, was that it was a free Private School education. With an offer like that , it would be hard to say no. And so without so much as a thought my parents were excited to give their shy and sensitive young son a private school experience without breaking the bank.

“There is one thing that we need to talk about” said the rabbi. “ Does he have a Bris?”

I had always been a lover of language. I was a precocious speaker and loved hearing other languages. I knew several phrases in Ukranian and even was able to understand my grandmothers when they spoke Yiddish. But I had never heard the word Bris. I was fairly sure that I did not have one only because I had never heard of one. Surely if I had one, someone would have mentioned it by now.

My father, who incidentally also brought his foreskin to the meeting, informed the Rabbi that I, in fact, did not have one. This was of no great surprise to me.

“Well, we are going to have to get him one before he starts the school year. It’s very important. We can’t allow him in the school without one. Here is the number of a Mohel we recommend”

That seemed simple, I thought. We’ll just get me one. I wonder if they are expensive.

“And you, Mr Ortenberg? Do you have one?”

My father blushed a little and said, “ Rabbi, I’m too old to get one.”

This made perfect sense to me. After all my father was done with school and judging from his almost allergic aversion to books I was sure it would be wasted on him.

“ You should think about it… you’re a Jew. You need one.”

“I’ll think about it Rabbi”

“ Papa, mama, what’s a bris” I asked after the meeting.

“Its nothing dear.. just have to go to the doctor and they have to do something.”

“Why do I need to go to a doctor to go to school?”

“Its just something you have to do… it will be fine… it’s like a little operation but it won’t hurt and it’s quick.”

“Papa, why don’t you have it?”

“I’m too old. I don’t need it anymore.”

“Gena,” said my mother. “Its a small operation and I tell you what, when you get it I will take you to the toy store, the one on Brighton Beach and you can pick any toy you want?”

“ I WANT THAT MAGNETIC DART SET.. you know the one I showed you when we went visit Aunt Dora and Uncle Marik? The one with the red white and blue board.. can we go now, please? I love it, please?”

“When you get the Bris. Ok.. I promise. I will bring it to you at the hospital.”

“Can we get the bris tomorrow?”

“ We have to call the man who does it…not tomorrow but soon. I promise”

The nurses at the hospital were really nice. I got lots of apple juice the night before the bris… I think I began to understand to some degree that the bris must on some level have something to do with the penis because while the nurses took my temperature and gave me juice, the doctor who was going to do this bris thing was practically consumed with the mine.

“ Genotchka,” said my mother “ we will see you in a little bit… the doctor will take you to a room and you will go to sleep. And when you wake up I will give you the dart board you wanted”

Fluorescent lights swim by above my head, the wheel of the hospital bed is making a little squeaky noise as it moves down the hall and a nurse is smiling at me. She is pretty. I’ve never been to a hospital like this. Its much bigger and smells much better than the one I spent a month in when I was 4 or 5. I am wheeled in to room, people are speaking to me or near me or at me, it’s hard to judge.. a doctor comes over with a mask. He tells me that he will put the mask on my face I will go to sleep…

“Just start counting backward from 100” he says.

“100, 99, 9 8…..”

I remember my first words after surgery.. they are as crisp and clear to me now as the cry of my first born. They are as powerful today as they were some 40 years ago. Words which rattled in my brain for years and words which I, at that groggy anesthetized moment, hope would ring in my parents ears for an eternity…. “ I DONT WANT THAT STUPID DART BOARD… WHY DOES MY PEESHKA HURT”

The toy I chose was on sale at the toy store on Brighton beach avenue for $9.98. Only the sale of Manhattan was a worse deal..

Post Script:
My circumcision healed well and quickly. The first 3 or four days were painful. Especially day 3. I hated the stitches they itched. And they looked weird, like my penis had whiskers just below the glans.

Shortly after my surgery we went to visit Aunt Dora and Uncle Marik. They were wonderful people who had emigrated a few years prior to us. I loved their house. They had two children whom I worshipped as a child. My cousin Ira was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I would stare at her as if she were a painting. She was incredibly kind to me and I still hold nothing but wonderful memories of her. Her brother Eric was the coolest thing… He was Arthur Fonzarelli who spoke Russian! I wanted to be him. He spoke English with almost no trace of an accent, had a skateboard and PONG. Pong that magical video game I could play for days on end… All I wanted to do was be as cool and as American as he was.

The day we came to see them in their Brighton Beach apartment was going to be amazing. PONG-A-PALOOZA. A song by Andy Gibb was playing when we walked in. My father and I entered the apartment and Eric greeted us. Eric who was a few years older than I had gotten a circumcision in the United States and in the eyes of my father this made Eric ( who was perhaps 16 or 17 at the time ) an expert on all things penis.
“Eric, can you take a look at Gena’s peeshka to see if its healing properly”

Eric could not have been nicer. He looked quickly and gave his professional opinion. “Looks great.”

It’s been 40 years, I still have a hard time looking Eric in the eye. Dad ruined Pong forever.