A Segula for the Night Before a Brit Milah

A Segula for the Night Before a Brit Milah

“When any of you brings an offering to the L-rd, you shall bring your offering from the cattle, from the herd or from the flock.” (Shemot 1:2) In our time, when sacrifices in the Temple are no longer possible, one sacrifice nevertheless remains to us. As it is written in the Zohar HaKadosh, the father who performs a brit milah for his son is considered as though he has brought an offering to the Creator; the sandak – is compared to the altar. Just as one bringing an offering had to purify himself before ascending to the Temple and prepare properly, so too those who are to participate in the brit milah study Torah on the preceding night, preparing for this important and auspicious event. One of the first great rabbis of Tunisia, Rabbi Tzemach Tsarfati, suffered from severe pain in his legs and was bedridden for two years. One day, the rabbi suddenly rose to his feet, and the pain was gone as if it had never existed. To his astonished relatives, Rabbi Tzemach Tsarfati related that the prophet Eliyahu had appeared to him in a dream and said that if the rabbi undertook to go to every home in the city of Tunis to study there on the night before a brit milah, he would be healed of his illness. The rabbi agreed—and was healed! From then on, he began visiting every home where a brit milah was to take place and studying there until morning. This became the established practice—the custom of holding a “bilyada” on the night before a brit milah (it is said that this is an abbreviation of the words בן ילדה—the child’s father would host a meal, and the Talmud would be studied throughout the night). In time, a fund called the “Prophet Eliyahu” fund was established in Tunisia, from which parents paid poor Torah scholars who came to participate in the study, before the child entered into the covenant of Avraham Avinu. (From the book “Gates of the East,” Israel Spektor)