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© 2015 John D. Brey.

In the case of the Jewish male, the mark of circumcision is identified as the divine image (selem elohim) in virtue of which he is called adam, that is, the true nature of what is to be human is linked to circumcision, which empowers the Jew over the beastly nature of the other nations, who are not considered to be in the category of human in the fullest sense.

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret, p. 154.

Every genuine human being is a Jew. Though not every person is a Jew.

Unfortunately there’s a category of persons under the misimpression that they alone are Jews. For them it's uncomfortable (though necessary) to invert the truth that says every human being is a Jew, for a belief that only the Jew is a human being. They assume they alone are Jews, by reason of something other than being a human being. But if every human being is a Jew, then the question becomes what is a human being, such that being one, makes one a Jew? Otherwise, what is a Jew, such that being one makes a person a human being?

At first glance the distinction appears to be without a genuine difference. To establish the difference one must dig a bit deeper into what the category of people who think they are Jewish, and thus human beings, think it is to be Jewish. It’s precisely there that a fundamental difference rises (so to say) between thinking being Jewish makes a person human being, versus believing being a human being makes a person Jewish. What does the person who thinks his Jewishness makes him a human being think it is to be Jewish? ----- What does the human being who thinks he’s a Jew (by reason of being a human being), think a human being is, such that it makes him Jewish? Misunderstandings in this vein fuel the scourge of anti-Semitism, and establishes part and parcel of the disunity between the Jew and the Christian.

Often times people who think they're born Jews, through a Jewish mother (i.e., gain their Jewish identity through their Jewish mother), are uncomfortable with the idea that someone not born to a Jewish mother is not a human being.  Nevertheless, the Jewish sages imply something along these line, though it’s disturbing (and politically incorrect) even to those who would allegedly have gained their Jewish identity merely by being born to a Jewish mother. The problem is not that someone born apart from a Jewish mother is not a human being (although that’s the case), but that being born to a Jewish mother is not the source of Jewish identity. On the contrary, it's the reason someone is born to a Jewish mother that makes them Jewish, not the fact that they're born to a Jewish mother. The reason a person is born to a Jewish mother is that their father is circumcised from their conception and birth: the father is inconsequential concerning the conception and birth of a genuine human being (i.e., a Jew).

Only a person whose fundamental identity is freed from phallic-paternity is a genuine human being (and therein a Jew). ----So how is a person freed from phallic paternity? They must be born-again. Only a person who is born-again, not from phallic-paternity, but from a non-gendered conception and birth, is a human being. This is to say that to be a human being is to be born apart from phallic-paternity, i.e., to be born to a Jewish mother (her very "Jewishness" being related to the fact of her ability to birth offspring apart from phallic-paternal precedent). 

But this suggests that those people who think they're Jewish by reason of the fact that they're in the paternal line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (conceived through that phallic-line), miss the very point of what it is to be a human being, and thus a Jew, i.e., to be born outside of any phallic-lineage whatsoever (even Abraham's).  Nevertheless, there's a reading of the written Torah which appears to imply that being born in the phallic-line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the criteria for Jewish identity.

After pointing out that the Torah is the primary ingredient of creation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan says that the Torah was created solely for the sake of Israel:

The Torah was created for the sake of Israel. God's purpose in creation required that Israel accept the Torah. If not, all creation would have lost its reason for being, and would have ceased to exist.

Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39.

Rabbi Kaplan claims not only that the Torah is the primary ingredient of creation, but that the Torah was created for the sake of Israel . . . not humanity in general . . . mind you . . . but Israel. ------- All other persons are inconsequential. All other humans must pray Israel accepts the Torah or else they're all SOL:

If Adam would have been worthy and would not have sinned, then all of his descendants would have been worthy of the Torah. If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel.

Ibid.

All of the human race fell with Adam except for Israel. All humanity are sinners but Israel. All the human race became animals at the Fall, through Adam's sin, but Israel remained "human beings." ----- Israel didn't fall into the animal domain with the rest of humanity. In some sense Israel didn't partake in the Fall of Adam. --------This isn't the ramblings of a rogue Rabbi since anyone who reads Rabbi Kaplan will see that in both quotations he backs up his statements with serious sagely texts a plenty. He's not making up unorthodox doctrines. He's voicing sagely texts that many Jews don't know or care about; texts that teach that death, and the fall into the animal realm, came about through the first, or "original," sin. Therefore on at least that basic level even orthodox Judaism teaches original sin as the cause of death, in, and to, the human race, the death of the human being:

If Adam would have been worthy and would not have sinned, then all of his descendants would have been worthy of the Torah. If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel. 

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39.

Again, this is not the statement of a rogue Rabbi. Rabbi Kaplan gives numerous references to Jewish scripture that support the idea above. The idea is that somehow Israel, Jews, didn't take part in the Fall of Adam. Further to this point Rabbi Kaplan says (in the same book): "To some degree, circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin." ----Circumcision makes Israel, Jews (i.e., the true descendants of Abraham), like Adam prior to the Fall. Jews are not like those born to a fallen Adam, stained with Adam's sin. Jews are not like animals, which Adam became after the Fall. Jews are not born sinners (born into sin, death, and the wild kingdom), like all of Adam's offspring. . . . And why are they not like their Gentile peers? -------Because of circumcision.

If the original sin was phallic-sex, which most Jewish scripture takes for granted, then all of Adam's offspring are born of phallic-sex, and are thus condemned and contaminated by the very means of their conception -- phallic-sex --- that is, the original sin. ------ But not Israel. Abraham symbolically emasculates himself to establish the Jewish pedigree. Moses says the Jewish firstborn must open the womb with his hand (Ex. 13:2) to sanctify his birth as a Jew. The womb must therefore be closed for the Jewish firstborn (i.e., unopened by the phallus) in order for the Jewish firstborn to open it himself, and therein sanctify his birth as a Jew. His mother must be unsullied by the original sin of phallic-sex prior to his birth.

The Jew is not part of the fallen world for the clear and simple fact that at least symbolically, ceremonially, Jews are not born of the original sin: phallic-sex. The organ through which sin and death came (so to say) is the target of the foundational ceremony associated with Abraham and his offspring: circumcision.

Rabbi Kaplan says (with the full force of Jewish thought and scripture) that Jews are not like those born to a fallen Adam. Thus, through the ceremony of circumcision, Jews are like Adam prior to the Fall. Which is to say, they are like Adam prior to his having engaged in phallic-sex (the original sin). They're conceived by the breath of God (metzitzah), not through the original sin of phallic-sex (remedied through milah), such that a Jewish hand opens the womb (periah). The animal flesh (the very flesh of the serpent) is ceremonially targeted for extinction in the foundational ritual of the Jewish people: circumcision (i.e., ceremonial emasculation):

In the case of the Jewish male, the mark of circumcision is identified as the divine image (selem elohim) in virtue of which he is called adam, that is, the true nature of what is to be human is linked to circumcision, which empowers the Jew over the beastly nature of the other nations, who are not considered to be in the category of human in the fullest sense.

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret, p. 154.

Prior to the Abrahamic covenant everyone is born through phallic-sex which is actually the original sin. Death comes from the original sin (the first case of phallic-sex). This isn't merely Christian doctrine. It's taught throughout Jewish scripture that death came from the original sin, and that the original sin is phallic-sex. Judaism teaches that if not for the original sin, Adam would never have died. And if Adam never died, then neither would his offspring have died.

But then his offspring would have needed to be conceived through some means other than phallic-sex, since the first case of phallic-sex is the original sin. The scripture implies that there's a means for offspring to be born apart from phallic-sex, and God suggests to Abraham that a unique son will be born through him (and it’s not Isaac) who will in fact be conceived in the non-phallic manner through which all men were originally designed to be conceived, prior to the original sin of phallic-sex.

But Adam and Eve partook of phallic-sex, brought on the Fall into the animal body, and death, which then spread to all their offspring, who, after the Fall, are all, conceived through the same mechanism that brought on death, such that they're all born with a death-sentence hanging over their head. The Abrahamic covenant is the end of the death-dealing phallus. It's dealt death in the very foundation of the Abrahamic covenant. And yet Jews, having conflated the sign and its reality, make the performance of the sign the full reality, such that they know nothing of any reality related to the death of the reign of death, by means of a pregnancy freed from the phallus.

Had Jews not turned the ritual into the reality they would have appreciated Jesus' non-phallic birth, known he was the true spiritual offspring of Abraham, the first actual Jew, who, the first actual Jew, was only ritually and ceremonially represented by Isaac, such that they would have known Messiah had arrived, and the world today would be a far different place.

This is less redefining Rabbi Kaplan's statements in a Christian light, and more obviously redefining both "Christian" and "Jew" to fit the statement made by Rabbi Kaplan. ----- In other words Rabbi Kaplan is correct. The "Jew" really is, post circumcision, like Adam prior to the Fall. The "Christian" really is like Adam prior to the Fall. Since Rabbi Kaplan is correct, it's a matter of understanding in what way a Jew or Christian is like Adam before the fall into the animal nature, and the animal body?

Jewish scripture suggests that animals are created male and female, while the human being was created without that distinction. That distinction came with the addition of the phallus on the body of the first human being, the adam. Prior to the addition of the phallus, the human being was genderless. After the creation of the phallus (Gen. 2:21) the human being fell into sin and became an animal (gendered, a Gentile). The phallus is the additional flesh that makes a human being an animal. Bris milah is the "symbolic" removal of the flesh that transforms a human being (genderless) into an animal (male and female). (In Genesis chapter two, which is a different creation account than Genesis chapter one, the human is not male or female until after verse 21.)

Jewish scripture states candidly that circumcision (ritual emasculation) is performed specifically, and thus importantly, on the organ that distinguishes gender. It's the removal of the organ that distinguishes gender, such that Abram has the heh added to his name, therein unmanning him (since a heh is added to the Ish, to transform the word into Ishah), while Sarai has a dalet added to her name restoring her virginity such that the veil opened by Abram's gendered flesh is closed back up after Abram's original sin organ is removed (ceremonially).

Abram and Sarai, in being transformed into Abraham and Sarah, become the prototypes of Joseph and Mary, such that Isaac is, ceremonially, ritually, like Jesus of Nazareth: born apart from the organ that distinguishes gender and conceives animals, and to a mother whose dalet is intact at the moment of his birth.

  

The reality of circumcision is not the cutting off of the foreskin since that’s the "sign" of the reality of circumcision and not the reality itself. As a "sign," cutting off the foreskin signifies in a clear and unambiguous way what the reality of circumcision is. Something about cutting flesh off the phallus "signifies" the reality of the Abrahamic covenant. Cutting the flesh of the foreskin off the phallus does not cause, or create the Abrahamic covenant's fulfillment. It only gives a sign, whose significance, will be related to the actual fulfillment of the covenant, when the "sign" of the covenant becomes a reality, clearly and unambiguously related to cutting flesh off the male body that wasn't there when the first human was originally created prior to the original sin.

 

Rabbi Hirsch teaches this with no small fear and trembling knowing full well that most Jews don't make circumcision into a sign of the Abrahamic covenant (by finding out what the sign signifies), but instead turn the sign into the cause, the very significance itself, the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Bris milah for most Jews is not a sign looking for a significance, but an almost cult-like mitzvah that incorporates sign and significance into one event that is both the sign of itself and itself itself (sic).

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, with many Jewish sages, speaks of the Tetragrammaton as the source of all things that are or ever will be. . . To play on another of Wolfson's ideas, the beginning human, the adam, was supposed to birth the original human, the Tetragrammaton. Wolfson says "the origin is hidden in the beginning." The Rosh, head, firstborn, is hidden in Bereshit.

Rabbi Kaplan speaks of the Jewish idea that after circumcision Jews are like the first human before the original sin. If the first human was pregnant with the tetragrammaton, and the first human was, then apart from the original crime of the angelic-scroll maker and lawgiver, which led to the original sin, phallic-sex, the tetragrammaton, Yahweh, would have been born of an emasculated pregnancy, or at least a pregnancy conceived without the still non-existent (Gen. 2:21) phallus (the biological scroll). Rabbi Samson Hirsch taught that the letteral symbol of circumcision is represented by removing the dalet from over the yod in the letter (ligature) heh. When the door of the dalet is pulled off the mark of circumcision, the yod, the word "di" (dalet-yod) results (a heh is the ligature of the circumcised letters dalet-yod).

As fate would have it, pulling the dalet off the yod in the word for the "Lamb" of God produces the word "Shaddai," while doing the same thing for the Tetragrammaton, i.e. pulling the dalet off the mark of circumcision, produces the word Yehudai--- Jew. . . The Lamb of God, El Shaddai, is the first actual Jew.

The person who realizes that Yahweh was hidden in the first human, that Yahweh was the original covenant between God and human-kind, isn't too far from realizing the crime of the scroll-maker (Gen. 2:21), which led to the original sin, phallic-sex, which aborted the first covenant between God and human-kind, conceives the murderer Cain, and justifies Rabbi Hirsch's belief that the covenant established between God and Abraham, was not a new covenant, but a renewal of the original covenant rescinded at the conception and birth of Cain.

Isaac is a symbol of Yahweh. Sarah has her virginity restored and Abraham has his manhood removed, so that the two of them are representative of the one human (adam) prior to the creation of the biological scroll, and the birth of Cain. Abraham has no phallus and the curtain of Sarah's body is intact at the birth of Isaac. Isaac is a representation (a sign) of the birth of Yahweh rather than Cain. Midrash Rabbah gives a dialogue between two sages who explain that in strict Hebrew exegesis Eve claims not to have conceived a son through Yahweh, but, literally to have conceived and given birth to Yahweh. The sages scratch their head since they haven't the context to understand how Eve could think she conceived and bore Yahweh.

Whereas Isaac was a "representation" of Yahweh, in the flesh, i.e., the firstborn whom Eve thought she bore, another child, the child born in Bethlehem, of a virgin pregnancy, wasn't the representation of anything. He was the firstborn of all creation, the true Yahweh, born of a circumcision, such that he is, at his birth, Yehu-di, the first, and only actual, Jew:

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 16       For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17       And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. 18       And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 19       For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; 20       And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

Colossians 1:15-20.