ruling in haste.”^65 The halakhic ruling in such cases was that the first person
to whom the honor was promised should receive it.
Another issue that surfaced in these discussions concerns a case in which
the mother of the newborn promised someone the honor of ba’al brit. The
sources emphatically state that the task of choosing the ba’al brit is not hers.
Even in cases in which the father is absent, some sources suggest that the
mother should not make this choice. Rather, she should allow the people ap-
pointed in the father’s stead to decide.^66 This issue, however, is raised only in
sources from the fourteenth century, and I would suggest that the objection to
women’s choosing of the ba’al brit was not prevalent during the Middle Ages,
and probably became more pronounced in the second half of the thirteenth
century. I will return to this point later.
The Origins of the Role. One of the biggest questions concerning the role of
the ba’al brit is when this role was first established and when it became im-
portant. While Ashkenazic sources from the twelfth century onward mention
the role, there is little reference to the ba’al brit in earlier literature. In tracing
the roots of the role, we must also take note of its additional name—sandek.
This name, which derives from the Greek (suvntekno~), is found in earlier
sources from the tenth and eleventh centuries.^67 Although it was not used as
often as the term ba’al britduring the High Middle Ages, it became the ac-
cepted term in late medieval and early modern writings, and has remained so
in modern Judaism. The earliest source in which the term appears is the
Midrash Shoh·er Tov on the Book of Psalms. The author of the Midrash ex-
plains chapter 35 of Psalms in which David exclaims, “All my bones shall say:
Lord who is like you” (35:10). The author enumerates all of the different parts
of David’s body, which give praise to God, and when he speaks of the knees he
states: “With my knees, kneeling at prayer; with my knees I am a sandikenos
for children who are circumcised on my knees.”^68
This Midrash is difficult to date, since it is compiled of sections belonging
to a variety of periods.^69 It has been suggested that the Midrash can be dated
to the tenth century in Italy. The passage that mentions the sandek, however,
appears only in a thirteenth-century manuscript from Ashkenaz. In addition,
as Buber remarked, the author itemizes all the parts of the body that thank the
Lord and brings one example for each body part. Only in our case does he men-
tion two reasons for praising this specific part of the body, the knees. Buber sug-
gested that this is evidence that this passage concerning the sandek was a later
addition.^70
The earliest source mentioning the sandek that we can date with certainty
is Sefer haArukhby R. Nathan b. Yeh·iel of Rome (1035–1110). He explains
the term by way of the example from Midrash Shoh·er Tov.^71 The term sandek
appears in Midrash Shoh·er Tov and in R. Nathan b. Yeh·iel’s book, while we
find it in Ashkenaz along with the term ba’al brit, I would suggest that this prac-