ritual
circumciser
מוהל · גוזר · רופא · אומן
Bottom line
Mohel is the circumciser. Gozer is the cutter, the older title, which in a name carries a second sense, halachic decisor. Rofeh is a physician who performs the circumcision, uman a practitioner or bloodletter who does; neither means "circumciser" as such. Rabbi Yissachar Tamar's rule sorts them: a man who did only circumcisions was a mohel, one who also bled and healed a rofeh or an uman.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| מוהל | mohel | circumciser | the specialist, circumcision his whole profession (Rabbi Yissachar Tamar) |
| גוזר | gozer | cutter | "cutter"; Onkelos's word for milah, and also "decisor" (Rashi; Rabbeinu Chananel) |
| רופא | rofeh | physician | a doctor who circumcises, or the surgeon acting as one (Rashi) |
| אומן | uman | practitioner, bloodletter | a craftsman or bloodletter who circumcises among his trades (Rashi) |
Where the authorities disagree
Whether mohel comes from the root of milah. The Biblical verb is mal, root מ-ו-ל, with no hei; mohel has a hei that behaves like a root letter, pointing to מ-ה-ל, which occurs once in Tanach, a hapax legomenon at Yeshayahu 1:22, "your wine is mahul in water." One approach keeps the two apart. Scholars have already pointed out that the hei is not part of the Biblical root for circumcising but a new feature of Rabbinic Hebrew, a point made at length by the Maskilic scholar Solomon Dubno (Tikkun Sofrim to Bereishis 17:13, printed in Netivos HaShalom alongside Moses Mendelssohn's Beiur), who holds that the two roots simply exist in two different strands of the language. (As an aside, the article notes that Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces mal and milah to the biliteral מ-ל but mahul to the biliteral ה-ל.) The other approach bridges them. Shadal (to Yeshayahu 1:22) observes that in both Arabic and Latin idiom one is said to kill, slaughter, wound or cut wine when one waters it, since watering cuts its sharpness and potency, and on that thematic affinity he holds the roots for cutting and for diluting to be etymologically related, so that the post-Biblical mohel is after all the agent noun of milah; the article adds that the German linguist Wilhelm Gesenius and Dr. Alexander Kohut accept this approach as well. Shadal also brings several Semitic roots in Hebrew and Aramaic that are semantically interchangeable, one form with a middle vav and the other with a middle hei, though the article judges that none of his examples is that clear-cut. Both approaches agree on what mohel means, so the Bottom line need not choose; for a derashah, Shadal's reading makes mohel a cutter and Dubno's does not.
What rofeh means in the sugya. Rashi to Menachos 42a and the Mainz commentary attributed to Rabbeinu Gershom: rofeh there is the surgeon serving as circumciser, so the word does duty for "circumciser." Rashi to Avodah Zarah 26b: it means a physician who also knows how to perform one. Follow the second where the passage separates the man's trade from the act; it is the more careful statement.
Why two thirteenth-century Ashkenazi authorities were called HaGozer. Rabbi Yissachar Tamar first suggests continuity, an Eretz Yisrael usage preserved in early Ashkenaz, then withdraws it: no other medieval source titles a circumciser gozer, and Rabbi Yaakov HaGozer and Rabbi Gershom HaGozer call the practitioner a mohel throughout their own works. His conclusion: gozer had lapsed and was revived for these two as a literary honorific playing on both senses, since they were circumcisers and also the decisors who codified the laws of milah.
Distinctions
mohel (מוהל)
The Torah's own verb for the act is yimol (Vayikra 12:3), and words for circumcising appear about thirty times in Tanach, mostly in Bereishis (ch. 17, 21:4, 34:15-22), Shemos (12:44, 12:48) and Yehoshua (ch. 5). The agent noun mohel is in neither Tanach nor the Mishnah. The Aramaic mohala appears in Shabbos 156a, where one born under Maadim is destined to shed blood but chooses whether that means bloodletter (umana), robber, butcher, or circumciser. The verb mohalin appears in the Mishnah (Shabbos 19:2, 19:5); one Mishnah (19:6) uses the shorter mal, the Biblical form (Devarim 30:6; Yehoshua 5:4, 5:7), and the article says outright that it does not know why that Mishnah uses a different verb.
Alongside the mahul of Yeshayahu 1:22, the Mishnah has comparable words for diluted, watery liquids: michal (Demai 7:4) and mochal (Taharos 9:3, Mikvaos 7:3-4, Machsirin 6:5), which some versions read as mohal. Similarly, the reddish liquid that comes out of a piece of meat after it has been salted as halachah requires is called mohal, and does not have the halachic status of blood (Shach to Yoreh Deah 69:79).
gozer (גוזר)
Root ג-ז-ר, "cut," and by extension "decree," whence gezeirah. Rav Hoshiya put a question about circumcision to Rabbi Yehudah HaGozer (Shabbos 131b; Yerushalmi Shabbos 19:1), whom Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel identify as a circumciser; the Yerushalmi (Rosh Hashanah 3:9) has Rabbi Yehudah Guzraya. Targum Onkelos regularly renders words of milah with words of gozer, and renders Tzipporah's vatichros (Shemos 4:25) as ugzeras; some sources call the mitzvah mitzvasa digzeirasa, the commandment of cutting (Koheles Rabbah 3:2). Rabbi David Zacut Modena: he is called gozer because his physical action chops down the spiritual forces of impurity that otherwise possess the uncircumcised. A posek is likewise literally a cutter, which is what lets gozer mean decisor; the article adds that the English decisor belongs to the same family as decision, scissor, concise, excision, precise, incision, incisors and circumcise, all of them cutting words.
The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 84:7, Tanchuma Vayeishev 9 and Naso 30, Shocher Tov to Tehillim 115, and more) has the Splitting of the Sea come about in the merit of Yosef, who held himself back from Potiphar's wife, so that it was his guarding the holiness of milah that brought the last step of the Exodus. Since one of the verbs for the sea's splitting is gozer (Tehillim 136:13), Rabbi Dov Kook of Teveryah writes that the gematria of ג-ז-ר is 210, an allusion to the 210 years the Jews were in Egypt.
rofeh (רופא) and uman (אומן)
Roots ר-פ-א, "heal," and א-מ-נ, "craft." A talmid chacham may not live in a city that has no rofeh and no uman (Bava Basra 21a; Sanhedrin 17b); Rashi there takes rofeh as a circumciser for Jewish children and uman as a bloodletter or barber. Where no Jewish circumciser is at hand, the Gemara weighs an Aramean rofeh against a Kusi one (Avodah Zarah 26b; Menachos 42a). Umana is a bloodletter in Taanis 21b but plainly a circumciser in Shabbos 133b, which is why it counts as a fourth term.
Rendering guidance
- מוהל: "mohel" in a frum register ("circumciser" is clinical), and "circumciser" only where the contrast with the other three is the point.
- גוזר: "cutter." Where it is a title (Rabbi Yehudah HaGozer, Rabbi Yaakov HaGozer) leave it transliterated and gloss it once; "the Circumciser" throws away the decisor sense the honorific was chosen for.
- רופא: "physician"; אומן: "practitioner" or "bloodletter" as the sugya requires. Do not render either "mohel."
- Trap: English "circumciser" will absorb all four, and in Bava Basra 21a and Avodah Zarah 26b that is exactly the mistake, since the question there is what the man's trade was. Keep rofeh and uman in their ordinary senses and let the context supply that he circumcises.
- Where milah and gezeirah name the same mitzvah in one passage, render the second "cutting," not "circumcision"; the Aramaic is making a point.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Tazria: The Cutter," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 Nissan 5784 (2024-04-13): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/tazria-the-cutter; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11342-tazria-the-cutter.md. Primary loci cited: Vayikra 12:3; Bereishis ch. 17, 21:4, 34:15-22; Shemos 4:25, 12:44, 12:48; Devarim 30:6; Yehoshua ch. 5, 5:4, 5:7; Yeshayahu 1:22; Tehillim 136:13; Mishnah Shabbos 19:2, 19:5, 19:6, Demai 7:4, Taharos 9:3, Mikvaos 7:3-4, Machsirin 6:5; Shabbos 131b, 133b, 156a; Bava Basra 21a; Sanhedrin 17b; Avodah Zarah 26b; Menachos 42a; Taanis 21b; Yerushalmi Shabbos 19:1 and Rosh Hashanah 3:9; Bereishis Rabbah 84:7 with Tanchuma Vayeishev 9, Naso 30 and Shocher Tov to Tehillim 115; Koheles Rabbah 3:2; Shach to Yoreh Deah 69:79; Shadal to Yeshayahu 1:22. The article's non-traditional citations are reported here as it gives them: Solomon Dubno's Tikkun Sofrim (to Bereishis 17:13, in Netivos HaShalom), and Wilhelm Gesenius and Dr. Alexander Kohut as accepting Shadal's approach.