Rabbi Moshe Trager was inspired to become a mohel after he witnessed an Israeli father, blade in hand, circumcising his own son. “Since that’s an actual commandment,” recalls Trager of the life-changing moment, “I thought that was the coolest thing I ever saw.”
So cool, he abandoned the restaurant career for which he had trained, apprenticed himself out to a venerated Jerusalem mohel and learned the ways of brit milah.
Fifteen years and 3,000 foreskins later, Trager, 45, has set up shop in Los Gatos, ready to perform the covenant as the Bay Area’s newest mohel.
His arrival comes about six months after the death at 53 of Rabbi Chanan Feld, one of the region’s longtime Orthodox mohels, who officiated at some 7,000 ceremonies over a 20-year career.
Trager knows of Feld’s reputation. “As I meet rabbis, midwives, people of all affiliations, everyone I talk to systematically looks down and sheds a tear over Chanan Feld,” Trager says. “He must have been an incredible guy.”
Though Feld is a hard act to follow, Trager looks forward to becoming part of the very small Bay Area mohel community. In fact, aside from several urologists and pediatricians who moonlight in the field, he is the only full-time mohel in the region. And though ordained Orthodox, Trager says he’s happy to work with any and all Jewish families.
The Boston native spent six months commuting here from his Philadelphia home before making the move permanent this month, drawn to the area by the weather and family in the region.
He says his approach when he performs the procedure is to help families understand the purpose of brit milah, even though it can be a wrenching experience for some parents.
“As a father myself, I understand the conflict any parent would have inflicting pain on their 8-day-old son,” says Trager, who has five children. “It’s my job to make that meaningful, so they appreciate more fully what they’re doing. It’s a chain of 3,000 years.”
The chain might have been broken for Trager, who grew up in a nonreligious Jewish home in Boston. His father and uncle were in the restaurant business, as was his grandfather, who opened Bean-town’s first nonkosher deli.
Trager intended to follow in their footsteps, attending culinary school and earning a bachelor’s degree in restaurant management. But in his 20s he visited Israel, stayed for 10 years and became religiously observant.
After witnessing the father fulfill the mitzvah of performing brit milah on his son, Trager became the protégé of an experienced Jerusalem mohel, who had performed 100,000 of the rituals over a 50-year career. “This was like learning to play guitar from Jimi Hendrix,” he says. “It was a really unusual opportunity for me, and I jumped at it.”
Covering both the physical and spiritual dimensions of the rite, Trager’s training took him from the homes of new parents to the sterile operating rooms of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital.
Even with all that experience, no mohel forgets his first official brit milah. For Trager, it was in Philadelphia, where he was living with his Israeli-born wife and children. With 200 people in attendance, Trager performed the circumcision flawlessly. Then came the baby naming.
“I picked up a Kiddish cup and started saying the blessings,” Trager recalls. “My wife told me afterward that my hands were shaking so badly she thought I would drop the wine.”
Chalk it up to opening knife jitters, something Trager has long since left behind.
As a mohel, he is prepared to travel far and wide to do his job, not only in the greater Bay Area but also beyond. He has gone as far as Nicaragua for a brit milah.
With his restaurant background, Trager still enjoys cooking, especially developing new kosher recipes. He also does consulting for food businesses seeking to kasherize their kitchens.
The former whiz with a paring knife still gets his fair share of ribbing, since he now wields a blade for a different purpose. Says Trager, “My restaurant customers joked that I really do everything, from soup to nuts.”
Rabbi Moshe Trager can be reached at (415) 366-6757 or by e-mail at [email protected].