Named Misspelled on Bris Certificate

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MrsMarmite

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 6:06 pm

I got one for my first son and thought it was so cool and put it in his baby book. Son # 2 was given a bris by the same rabbi but he didn't do it then so I asked for it. by the time I got to sons #3 & 4, I hardly do any baby books any more so wasn't too fussed when I didn't get it!. its just a momento, I wouldn't bother with it. (Also, weird thing to have framed and hanging if you ask me!)
and I cant imagine any school asking for it - they'd much more likely ask for your kesubah or something.

amother

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 6:16 pm

I was asked for it because my son's bris was delayed for medical reasons. He wasn't healthy enough to have one until he was 5 months old and some yenta spoke LH and told my new DH's Rabbi that he never had one.

greenfire

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 6:32 pm

my brother has a bris certificate ... that's how we can prove he has a lot of names LOL

now I never knew this until recently and I'm wondering why I don't have one for my sonny boy

maybe some mohel make one - maybe others do not

but if you have one with the name misspelled - kindly have the mohel change it NOW before someone asks to see it Cool

greenfire

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 6:36 pm

maybe the mohel gives it to the men cause the women are too busy crying and fussing over baby ...

amother

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 7:14 pm

amother wrote:

Why is someone who is MO less likely to be halachically jewish than someone chassidish? Am I missing something here?

And I have never heard of a bris certificate. Not in my MO world, for sure. We do have a ketuba, being halachically jewish and having a halachic chasunah, ya know.

Maybe you're getting confused with MO and non orthodox, like conservative or reform movements. Rolling Eyes

OP here. Oh no, I'm so sorry I did not mean that at all. I reread what I wrote and I see how it could look like that's what I meant. What I meant was, if we (or our children, or our grandchildren, etc) decided to move from one community to a verrry different one where the rabbis don't all run into each other all the time, it seems like they might want something to certify that whomever it is in question is for sure halachically Jewish. So say our kid becomes Satmar and wants to get married but he was raised MO, maybe the easiest thing to do is to show a document. Or if there is somethign with school and we (or kids, or grandkids, whatever)) are in a different country in a different type of community , maybe the easiest thing to do is show a document instead of saying oh call this person and this person says call this person.

I apologize for offending you and anyone else! I should have been more clear with what I meant.

amother

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 8:19 pm

We got married in quite a different community from the ones we were raised in. We were both asked for our parents' kesuvot, and when DH's parents didn't have one (secular marriage only) he was asked for something documenting the bris or the name of the mohel who performed it. This seriously never happened to anyone else who switched to radically different communities? Or to BTs, geirim? You can just switch to a completely, totally different community, or become frum when you weren't before, become a part of the community and get engaged, and no one asks you for anything to make sure that you are halachically Jewish before the marriage? It's not even about not trusting the people, it's about making sure the marriage will be Jewish and the children will Jewish. Before two Jews get married don't rabbis like to make sure those Jews are actually Jews? Then, if the kesuvot or bris documents are not Orthodox (and I mean any type of Orthodox- MO, yeshivish, chassidish, whatever), the rabbi can call someone or talk to parents, grandparents--there are ways of figuring this stuff out.

amother

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 8:47 pm

A kesuba and a get is what rabbis use when verifying someone's status before marrying them.
My husband has been the mesader kiddushin for a number of couples with interesting backgrounds and he's had to do investigations into their family background.
Parents and grandparents kesubos are most commonly used. If necessary he will call rabbis who he doesn't know, but would know the family to find out what he needs to know.
There are specialists who deal with families of Russian background who don't necessarily have any documentation. It's really fascinating work that they do.

But I also know a couple of people who knew from their families that they were Jewish but had no documentation of anything, no proof of Jewish burial or headstones or anything. And in order to be counted as a Jew they had to go through giyur.

amother

Mon, Feb 09 2015, 9:05 pm

OP here. Thank you everyone for your input. From what I gather the bris certificate doesn't really matter. I don't think I want to call and ask for a new one because I truly hate talking on the phone, have a bit of an accent and it gets frustrating. BH we are having a baby soon and if it is a boy we want to use the same mohel, he was very good and kind, so if we make a bris I will just ask then for a new one for my son and make sure we write out how our name is spelled in Hebrew so there is no confusion. Everything is spelled right on our kesuba and it seems that is all anyone would want to see in any event.

sped

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 2:34 am

I know a mohel who does bris certificates for non-Orthodox families with the idea that when teh baby grows up, there will be something to possibly interest him in Judaism. (As an aside, if the father is a non-Jew, he writes "Akum" for the father's Hebrew name.)

watergirl

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 7:45 am

One of my sons has a certificate. The others dont. Nbd. Its for cuteness sake.

Ruchel

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 10:50 am

It's a thing, in certain countries.

Here, you prove it with ketuba, or maternal line ketuba, or a Judaity certificate.

librarygirl

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 6:12 pm

My son got one and the mohel said it is a legal document. I think I could have used it for proof when I got his ss card, though I couldn't find it at the time.

zaq

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 6:46 pm

I suspect that some enterprising soul got the idea for this certificate--which is not really worth the paper it is written on, legally speaking--from the baptismal certificate, which IS a recognized legal document that can be used as proof of identity when applying for certain things like a learner's permit or enrolling in school. This may vary by state. I also suspect that the baptismal certificate was accepted as proof of identity because in poor rural areas where home births without benefit of physician were the rule, official physician-attested birth certificates were few and far between.

The bris certificate has neither halachic nor legal force. So, Op, keep it as a family joke but maybe attach a Post-It note stating the real spelling of your family name. Otherwise, a few generations hence, some descendant will say "We spell our name Cohain, Kaf,heh, nun, but it's really supposed to be Kaf, heh, tzvei yudden, nun. I know because that's how it is on my great-granddad's bris certificate."

A Jew is a Jew whether he has a bris or no. When researching a person's background, the documents that matter are ketubot and gittin.

Orchid

Tue, Feb 10 2015, 7:12 pm

librarygirl wrote:

My son got one and the mohel said it is a legal document. I think I could have used it for proof when I got his ss card, though I couldn't find it at the time.

I really strongly doubt that a "bris certificate" could have been used at the Social Security Administration.

Rodent

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 7:06 am

My grandfather in law has a bris certificate and he's 98 so they're hardly a new thing.
That said, the mohel who did our first 5 didn't give one. The mohel who did #6 did. And it's spelt wrong but we're not the least bit concerned.

Ruchel

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 8:19 am

Mohelbuch is very old. Certificate, I didn't know.

sweetpotato

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 8:48 am

sped wrote:

And I'm sure that will help the Jewish kid feel very warm and fuzzy about Judaism someday.

silbergirl

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 9:07 am

It can be worse, in Hungary the Orthodox mohel didnt care if the kid was halachically Jewish.... Sad

Gave everybody a bris, didnt check anything, accepted neolog (reform) convert mothers, even supposedly gave a kid of a gypsy mother (non converted) and a jewish father a bris. They also are big on bris certificates... it doesnt mean a thing.
dunno why you need that anyway?

sweetpotato

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 10:33 am

silbergirl wrote:

It can be worse, in Hungary the Orthodox mohel didnt care if the kid was halachically Jewish.... Sad

Maybe the rabbi had a specific heter or instruction that it this context, it was preferable not to be excessively stringent in making parents "prove" the credentials of their children in order to have a bris? Or maybe there's a position that it's better to circumsize the baby of a Jewish father in case he ends up wanting to convert someday?

Living for awhile in a very non-frum, highly intermarried community abroad, I saw a few instances where the mohel was very demanding that the parents (in these cases, not-frum Jewish mother, non-Jewish father) prove that the mother was actually Jewish before performing the bris. It involved having to try to track down ketubot and get relatives from the U.S. and Israel call and testify that the mother was Jewish, and in some cases the "proof" was only satisfied the night before the bris. At the time, I was worried that it could turn the parents off completely from having the bris in the first place--after all, they weren't religious, and were already going to great expense and effort to ensure their son had a bris (traveling from faraway cities, in some cases). It seems like it would be far worse to end up NOT circumsizing a Jewish baby, than to accidentally circumsize a non-Jewish baby.

(Besides making a bracha levatela, what is the issue with circumsizing a non-Jewish baby?)

Ruchel

Wed, Feb 11 2015, 10:36 am

Non Jewish baby in a conversion process gets a bris. If there is nothing happening, the problem is marit ayin.

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