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Hi – I’ve always wondered how women can say the following line in benching: “al brischa shechasamta bevsarenu” – on the covenant that you circumcised on our flesh. Obviously this is not relevant for women, why is this included in our benching as well? How are we to understand this?
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Private answer
Indeed, some authorities, including Tosafot (Berachot 20b) and Rema (187:3), maintain that women do not recite this line of birkat ha-mazon. Tosafot there even suggest that women's inability to say it raises the possibility that birkat ha-mazon is not obligatory on a Torah level for women! Rav Yosef Karo, however, does not express any hesitation about women saying it in Shulchan Aruch (OC 187:4), and Mishna Berura there says it is common custom for women to recite it. How can reciting it make sense? Three main possibilities: 1. Mishna Berura writes that a woman has in mind gratitude for the gift of berit mila, taking “our flesh” in a broad sense. Though it is performed on men, it is relevant and meaningful to all of us. 2. Beit Yosef writes that a woman expresses gratitude for berit mila because a man and wife are as one flesh. (He doesn’t explain what this should mean for an unmarried woman.) 3. Magen Avraham cites a Talmudic suggestion (A”Z 27a) that women “are considered as though circumcised,” and for that reason can say it. On this last reading, the absence of a foreskin may be seen as an inherent circumcision for Jewish women, who enter the covenant from birth and are grateful for it. See more Q&A here. Marked as spam
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