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Oct. 21, 2005
The life of a travelling mohel
Story of ritual circumciser is featured in new documentary.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
They used to call him "the Microsoft Mohel." David Bolnick,
travelling mohel or moyl (ritual circumciser), spent
11 years as a product manager for the Seattle software giant. These
days, Bolnick earns his keep on a variety of other projects –
but his most important duty is performing brit milah for families
around the Pacific Northwest. The ceremonies he oversees are the
subject of Moyl, a new documentary airing this week on KCTS.
The film's director, Moti Krauthamer, once worked alongside Bolnick
at Microsoft, making technologies more accessible to people with
disabilities. The pair also collaborated on the award-winning film
Enable: People with Disabilities and Computers, which received
worldwide distribution and recognition from both the television
industry and the United Nations.
Moyl was a change of pace for Krauthamer, a former editor
for major news networks such as the BBC, CNN and CBC (for whom he
worked in Jerusalem). The native New Yorker met his wife in Israel
and they eventually relocated to her home town of Seattle. While
he was making Moyl, he was also filming fashion shows for
a television network.
"It was really funny," he said in an interview with the
Independent, "because I was covering the big fashion
of New York, and in many cases of the world, at the same time that
I was making Moyl. I would spend two weeks in New York and
two weeks in Seattle. I could literally be at an event with Donald
Trump and Paris Hilton one day and working on Moyl the next
day."
The inspiration for Moyl came from following Bolnick around
to assorted brit milah.
"I saw this really warm feeling of families and connections
between families," Krauthamer observed, "and that's what
I really wanted to convey. A lot of people outside the Jewish community
have really been moved by [the film], because I don't think that
they ever get a chance to see a lot of Jewish practice which actually
takes place in the home."
The documentary features interviews with Bolnick and with several
families for whom the mohel is performing a bris. Although it's
designed for a general audience (the Torah portion in which the
convenant of Abraham appears is read aloud as explanation for the
practice of ritual circumcision), Krauthamer said there was an added
level of understanding for Jewish viewers as well.
"I think when it's part of your own community, you kind of
take certain things as second nature," he said. "You've
seen it before. I think the film, for the Jewish audience, lets
them be an observer to what their own tribe does and lets them actually
gets into that emotional and spiritual sense at these things –
which they might not have noticed because they were rushing from
work to go to a bris and then they were thinking, 'I'll give the
present and go.' "
Travelling with Bolnick from house to house in Seattle, Victoria
and Juneau, Ala., Krauthamer said, "You really see the difference
that this ritual makes in people's lives. What's going on is for
some people that's a moment where they're saying, especially when
it's their first child, 'this is going to be a Jewish house,' and
... a lot of the people in the film, they start crying when they
say the blessing, that you've entered into the convenant of Abraham,
and it surprises them that they start crying at that moment. It's
a very strong connection between something that's been going on
for almost 4,000 years. It really hits home at that very moment
when it's happening. You definitely feel it in the room. I'm filming
that and I am a participant. Even though I tried to stay back and
be the fly on the wall, I'm saying 'Amen' along with them also."
The emotion surrounding a bris is apparent in the film. Krauthamer
interviewed several fathers who "made the cut" themselves,
with the help of Bolnick – and each talked about the responsibility
of doing so – personally welcoming their child into the Jewish
community and carrying on an age-old tradition. He also has Bolnick
explain the background of the bris and how it differs from a medical
circumcision. Viewers see the tools of the trade and watch the blessings
up close.
"A lot of people, when they think of a bris, they say circumcision,
which is a procedure," Krauthamer noted. "This film, while
it talks about the procedure, is really about the whole other part
of it, the covenant, the connection of family, of community, introducing
the baby into the community, the naming, the family's history, the
connection between now and back then. That's the part that I think
gets overlooked a lot."
Moyl airs on Oct. 20, at 9 p.m., and Oct. 23 at 1 p.m.
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