JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Bris competition: How many foreskins ya got?

By Uriel Heilman · February 3, 2012

Back in August, we ran a news item about a mohel in Ukraine who performed his 4,500th circumcision. According to Chabad, which was the source for the story, the mohel, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Yaacov Gaissinovitch, performed 22 in a single day at a Jewish summer camp in Dnepropetrovsk (on Jewish boys who had never been circumcised as infants).

Initially, I was skeptical that the total number was accurate, and before we ran the brief I engaged in a flurry of back-and-forth emails with Chabad. Eventually, I was convinced (the mohel recorded each bris in a notebook, and I was sent a copy of one of the pages).

Now comes a report from The New York Times that puts the 4,500 number to shame. Philip L. Sherman, a mohel from White Plains, N.Y. who circumcises only infants, says he's cut an estimated 20,000 foreskins.

Wow. That's a hell of a lot of bagel-and-lox breakfasts.

The Times says Sherman's figure is his own estimate, and his daily record is nine. Sherman performed his first bris in 1978, which means that, to reach 20,000, he's had to perform an average of 1.6 brises a day for the last 34 years.

Know anyone out there who can beat that?