page_title: Brit milah
section_title: Uncovering, priah
hierarchical_section_title: Brit milah / Ritual components / Uncovering, priah
caption_attribution_description: English: Circumcision cushion, Jewish Museum of Switzerland
context_page_description: The brit milah is a Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony performed by a mohel on the eighth day after the infant's birth. The brit milah is followed by a celebratory meal.
context_section_description: At the neonatal stage, the inner preputial epithelium is still linked with the surface of the glans.
  The mitzvah is executed only when this epithelium is either removed, or permanently peeled back to uncover the glans.
  On medical circumcisions performed by surgeons, the epithelium is removed along with the foreskin, to prevent post operative penile adhesion and its complications.
  However, on ritual circumcisions performed by a mohel, the epithelium is most commonly peeled off only after the foreskin has been amputated. This procedure is called priah (Hebrew: פריעה‎), which means: 'uncovering'. The main goal of "priah" (also known as "bris periah"), is to remove as much of the inner layer of the foreskin as possible and prevent the movement of the shaft skin, what creates the look and function of what is known as a "low and tight" circumcision.
  According to Rabbinic interpretation of traditional Jewish sources, the 'priah' has been performed as part of the Jewish circumcision since the Israelites first inhabited the Land of Israel.
  However, the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, states that many Hellenistic Jews attempted to restore their foreskins, and that similar action was taken during the Hadrianic persecution, a period in which a prohibition against circumcision was issued. Thus, the writers of the dictionary hypothesize that the more severe method practiced today was probably begun in order to prevent the possibility of restoring the foreskin after circumcision, and therefore the rabbis added the requirement of cutting the foreskin in periah. The frenulum may also be cut away at the same time, in a procedure called frenectomy.
  According to Shaye J. D. Cohen, in Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism, pg 25, the Torah only commands circumcision (milah.) David Gollaher has written that the rabbis added the procedure of priah to discourage men from trying to restore their foreskins: ‘Once established, priah was deemed essential to circumcision; if the mohel failed to cut away enough tissue, the operation was deemed insufficient to comply with God's covenant’ and ‘Depending on the strictness of individual rabbis, boys (or men thought to have been inadequately cut) were subjected to additional operations.’
caption: Circumcision cushion, Jewish Museum of Switzerland
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