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© 2017 John D. Brey. 

Jewish symbolism is a whole-cloth (tallit) and not a makeshift fabric sewn out of leftover parts. Therefore every single symbol or ritual is a necessary part of the whole-cloth every thread of which is required if the unwinding of each and every thread is going to faithfully reveal what lies beneath. Remove even one symbol and you can destroy the world.

Without belaboring the basics of metzitzah, the Jewish sage knows precisely what's being symbolized. And what's being symbolized has more relationship to our general being and spiritual well-being than often meets the eye. Needless to say, "metzitzah" is related to the "tzitzit."

Me-tzitzah מציצה comes from ציץ. ---- A mem prefix means "from," such that "m-tzitzah" means "from the ציץ."

As Rabbi Hirsch makes perfectly clear, "tzitz" ציץ  means "sprout." -----The tzitzit represent sprouts growing out of the whole-cloth given as a covering by God (see R. Hirsch and R. Kaplan on the relationship between the tallith and the garment given to Adam and Eve as their covering).

The tzitzah is a divine (techelet-colored) sprout-(tzitz) growing out of the whole-cloth (tallit) given to cover up man's nakedness. Rabbis Hirsch and Kaplan are explicit that the tallith implicates itself as a representation of the clothing given by God to cover man's nakedness after the sin. The tallith is a gift from God designed to represent, in some manner, the covering lost through the sin. -----It's a sign of God's grace and mercy to mankind that even though we gave up our spiritual heritage willingly, God knew we would, and had already provided a mechanism to fix what was broken.

Me-tzitzah is the key to understanding the whole meaning of the tallith, and the tzitzit "sprouting" from the tallith.

As Rabbi Hirsch points out in his Collected Writings, the prohibition of shatnez, which is part and parcel of the whole law, is related to the danger of grafting one tree onto the roots of another to create a hybrid that changes the taste of the fruit, making the fruit taste different from the root (Rashi). The fruit is supposed to taste like the root that’s the source of the tree:

Graftings of trees and mating’s of animals in the sense of the כלאים-law [law not to mix unlike things] would constitute a wanton interference by man with the God-given laws of nature (Collected Writings, p. 174).

The addition of the tree of knowledge to Adam's formerly perfect body (Gen. 2:21) constitutes the grafting of one kind of tree, animal life, onto the root of another kind of tree, i.e., Adam's formerly "perfect" and thus "divine" body. -----This particular grafting constitutes the creation of the incarnate manifestation of "satan," as was established in the essay: Creating the Phallus: Satan Incarnate. 

Since the phallus is the tree of knowledge "grafted" (Genesis 2:21) onto the tree of perfect life, Adam's prelapse body, the removal of the phallus, in the very ritual that's the foundation for the Abrahamic covenant, ritual circumcision, signifies, as Rabbi Kaplan often said, a return to the status of Adam prior to the Fall (see Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39, 47). In this vein, Rashi notes that the nature of the original sin, as it was paralleled in the curse of the plant world, was that the fruit of the tree didn't taste like the tree itself. When Adam sinned, the earth was cursed, and the nature of Adam's sin, hidden in the narrative, is revealed in the nature of the curse of the earth.

Asexual reproduction through basal-shoots (creating a genet, or clonal colony of genetically identical organisms), i.e., "sprouts," was replaced, through the grafting of the phallus onto Adam's asexual body, into sexualized trees who reproduce not through "sprouting," but through sexual reproduction that ignores the very nature of the root of man, and carries on above ground as though the root were unknown or unimportant.

Metzitzah occurs immediately after milah, and periah, signifying that once the tree of knowledge (grafted onto the original root) has been cut down, the Jew should be the first to eat of the produce of the original Tree of Life in the Garden.

Proof of this interpretation exists in those practices where enlightened Jewish communities had the mohel expectorate into a cup so that the blood of the ritual could be mixed with the wine of the bris participants so that everyone at the ritual, to include the circumcisee, could be the first to eat from the Tree of Life, which is the asexual fruit "sprouting" from the root of Adam's original tree, after the grafted tree, the phallus, has just been removed leaving a stump.

Any attempt to water down these rituals, to cover up this symbolism, can only come from those infected with the fruit of phallic-sex, death, and thus a lust for death ---thanatos --- the god of the phallic-cults. Thanatos is worshipped by those who glory not in their conception apart from that god, but who glory in their paternity, who practice rituals originally designed to demonize the phallus (ritual emasculation), but which they turn upside down so that they glory in the demonic flesh. 

The anti-Semitic attack on metzitah b’peh is an attack on not only the root-system that supports Judaism itself, but the root-system required to eventually defeat the phallus, and modern phallic-cultism, and return man to his divine beginning, thereby restoring the Kingdom of God on Earth. 

Metzitzah מציצה comes from tzitz ציץ, which Rashi (Isa. 28:1) says means a "young plant," a "blossoming fruit" and such . . . Rabbi Hirsch concurs: " . . . ציץ, the parts of a plant---twig, leaf, blossom---that have sprouted . . .." Rabbi Hirsch claims repeatedly that the tzitzit symbolize "branches" and "sprouts”:

All the `sprouts' [tzitzit] and forces that lie dormant within the human being should indeed develop and attain full bloom . . . [to] bring out the Divine in man . . . (Collected Writings vol. III, p. 124).

Furthermore, and more to the point, Rabbi Hirsch connects tzitzit directly with circumcision. He has an entire section in his segment on the tzitzit dealing with the similarities between tzitzit and circumcision, one of them being the fact that the tzitzit has eight threads, and is thus associated with the "transcendent," and another being that the tzitzit is not to be worn at night, but only during the day, even as circumcision can only take place during the daylight hours. He claims there's a direct connection between the two.

"Metzitzah" מציצה is the feminine singular of ציץ with a mem prefix meaning "from." Metzitzah is "from" the tzitzit.

The incorrect interpretation claims it comes from "sucking" מצה. But this is false for a number of important reasons, one of which is, as Rabbi Hirsch points out, that nothing about circumcision (milah, periah, or metzitzah) has, with apologies to Maimonides, anything whatsoever to do with health, or cleanliness, or any other profane purpose. The false interpretation claims that metzitzah is to seal the wound by sucking. But according to Rabbi Hirsch, and other meaningful sages, this interpretation is completely incorrect since all three stages of brit milah have spiritual connotations that have nothing to do with medical principles of cleanliness, or protecting a wound, or any such thing.

Those who teach such falsehoods play right into the hands of those who are attacking metzitzah b’peh, since there are today better methods of sealing and protecting the wound than placing a mouth on it and sucking (which has been known to transfer herpes). The claim that metzitzah is about "sucking" sucks, since it means metzitzah is no longer needed and can be eliminated. Which is what the secularists and reformers are trying to do.

Metzitzah doesn't come from the word for "sucking" as though it were a mere bandage on the wound. The blood of circumcision, far from being the blood from a natural wound, is considered ritually clean. It's being removed from the wound as a one of the most important symbols in Judaism, and is completely equal to milah and periah as the third member of a triune set of symbols.

The true etymology of "metzitzah" doesn’t comes from mem-tsaddi-heh מצה, "to suck.” It comes from the feminine singular from tsaddi-yod-tsaddi ציץ, which means a "sprout." -----If we take tsaddi-yod-tsaddi ציץ, add the feminine singular suffix, heh, we have tsaddi-yod-tsaddi-heh ציץה . Add the mem prefix meaning "from" and we have the word mem-tsaddi-yod-tsaddi-heh מציץה: Metzitzah. . . Meaning "from the tzitzah." 

Metzitzah is eating fruit from the root of the Tree of Life after the tree of knowledge has just been removed. Every meaningful interpretation of brit milah points to this truism.

To imply that "metzitzah" comes from "sucking," suggests that the ritual comes not to support the spiritual meaning of the ritual, but from the medical benefit (or lack thereof) which is at best a secondary phenomenon of the practice. Teaching that metzitzah comes from the word "sucking" and that the "sucking" is to stop bleeding, cauterize the wound, or any other practical medical benefit, places the cart before the horse. 

The primary purpose of every ritual is its spiritual meaning and not some secondary practical benefit that's at best a welcomed coincident of the primary meaning. To claim metzitzah is primarily about the benefits of "sucking," covers up the spiritual meaning of the ritual by putting the practical before the spiritual. Numerous articles on metzitzah b’peh point out the serious issues involved with the fact that the Talmud actually appears to claim something that may not be scientifically true, i.e., that sucking on the wound has practical medical benefits that would outweigh liabilities.

Why, or how, could the Talmud get something so fundamental so fundamentally wrong? ------By covering up the true etymology of the word in a manner that doesn't distinguish between the practicality of a ritual versus its spiritual dimension. ----- Why would the Talmud do that?

Rabbi Hirsch teaches over and over that every ritual has a spiritual dimension that’s its true purpose. Any other aspect of the ritual is, if not accidental, nevertheless at best coincidental. The wrongheaded attempt to make the accidental, or coincidental (the cauterizing of the wound) the primary etymology of the ritual, has backfired in that it's highly likely that the accidental benefit of metzitzah (associated with the practical aspects of the wound) is coincidentally not even scientifically sound.

Before addressing the blasphemous assertion that the Talmud got something wrong, scientifically wrong, and that they established the etymology of a sacred ritual (metzitzah) on a falsehood (so to say), it's probably best to reiterate what the ritual actually means that's so spiritually explosive that a questionable cover-up is involved in veiling the dangerous truth.

In Horeb, p. 535, speaking of brit milah, ritual circumcision, Rabbi Hirsch says: 

The מוהל [mohel] proclaims the full significance of the sealing of the covenant, which consecrates the whole human being to God: that he has sanctified the one that was from early childhood worthy of His love (Abraham) . . . who fulfilled God's command upon his own flesh, and also sealed his offspring with the sign of the holy covenant . . .. 

Almost as though Rabbi Hirsch is subconsciously involved in what's being discussed here and now, we have this immediately following the statement above: 

What is it that blossoms forth from the sealing of this holy covenant? That the living God becomes our only God, our Rock in all the battles of life. . . [The] last blessing is also said over a cup, from which a few drops are placed into the mouth of the child, the foundations of whose life are here consecrated.

Why should something "blossom" forth from milah and periah (ritual circumcision)? -----And why is Rabbi Hirsch emphasizing this "blossoming" in a discussion of circumcision? Why are a few drops from this particular "cup" placed into the mouth of the child?

The blood of circumcision is the fruit of redemption come from the root of the Tree of Life as that root existed before the tree of knowledge was grafted onto that root to produce the genitile species whose crowing head is Cain. The great Jewish sages of the mystical tradition (who are sometimes called kabbalists) worried out loud that Christianity had stolen the best gems from Israel while they (Israel) were being pummeled by the wrath of God such that they weren't free to quarry these stones from the Rock where they were embedded. Blood from the Tree of Life, extracted from the root, in the very act of cutting down the tree of knowledge, the act Rabbi Hirsch calls the "sealing of the covenant," produces the first-fruits from the Tree of Life, which Tree “blossoms” like the tzitzit, out of the stump provided by bris milah.

These first-fruits are supposed to be given to Israel?

But what if the very ones given the tools and the procedures with which to remove the tree of knowledge, grafted onto the roots of the Tree of Life, in order to get to the life-blood of the roots of the Tree of Life, turned the very ritual and procedure not into a means to remove the tree of knowledge, but a means to make the possession of the procedure nine tenths of the glory of anything that might be found beneath the orlah? What if they worried that if they truly unearth the Tree of Life everyone might get to eat from it, taking away the glory of the firstborn, which, in the absence of the Tree of Life, can be lorded over all humanity in the wrong-headed belief that nine tenths of the truth, if it keeps the glory in house, is better than the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Perhaps the interpretation that fancies Israel the "chosen ones" by their natural birth, from the tree they're suppose to remove on the eighth day, is a cover-up of an interpretation that implies that anyone willing to believe a false-hood (that's perhaps nine-tenths of the truth) could never be used to rule over those who will be born through a process, from a life-blood, that can only be obtained by someone who understands the worthlessness of any knowledge that suggests that nine-tenths of the truth is better than the whole cloth so long as the one thread that's being covered up, twisted and knotty though it be, covers up the fact that the alleged firstborn is an ungrateful thief.

In his book, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America, Professor Leonard B. Glick documents that:

After performing metsitsah, sucking blood from the circumcised penis, the mohel would spit some blood into the cup of wine from which he would place drops on the child's lips. 

Professor Eric Kline Silverman supports Professor Glick's revelation with a statement of his own from his own book, From Abraham to America: A history of Jewish Circumcision:

The third stage of the circumcision procedure is called metzitzah, or "sucking." The mohel briefly extracts blood from the child's wound, traditionally using his mouth. He then expectorates the blood into a goblet, which, as I discuss shortly, the boy and his parents sip.

Discussing these same procedures in some depth, another scholar, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman (Covenant of Blood), points out that the wine represents the blood. According to him, the wine is a surrogate for the blood. By his reasoning spitting the blood into the cup of wine is in order to situate the wine as a symbol for the blood.

But within the context of metzitzah b’peh, as discussed here, Rabbi Hoffman is incorrect. The nature of his error is related to not establishing the fundamental relationship that exists between the blood of milah, and the tzitzit, which "sprouts," in full techelet-color, as the third phase of a ritual circumcision.

The tzitzit (colored with techelet) rescinds the law of shatnez, which, the law of shatnez, stands or falls with the rest of the law. If shatnez is transcended by the sprouting  tzitzit, then so is the rest of the law. . . . Which naturally gives a Rabbi pause, since proceeding further in that direction might begin to infringe upon the foundations of his entire worldview (based as it is on the idea that the Law is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the Law guides the true course of mankind). 

Rabbi Hirsch points out that shatnez, which is a prohibition on mixing wool and linen, symbolizes the law against mixing things in a manner that transgresses a natural boundary set by God: 

Let us consider the prohibition against mixing wool and flax in our clothing in this context. By no means does this prohibition include all mixtures of materials in our clothing. The mixture of these two particular substances must have a very special relation to our purpose, must be especially relevant to our own "law of species;" i.e., our own purpose as human beings. . . Wool and flax are not different kings of one and the same species; they are not even different species of one kingdom. They are substances from two distinct kingdoms, and their relationship to one another is the same as between plant and animal (Collected Writings, p. 175).

The same relationship Rabbi Hirsch establishes between "plant and animal" exists when the blood of circumcision is mixed with the wine. The blood is from a living animal, and the wine is from a plant. -----The mixing of the two thus transgresses the law of shatnez against mixing elements from two different kingdoms. When the mohel, the circumcisee, and the bris participants, imbibe the techelet-colored blood from the root of the Tree hidden beneath the phallus, they're breaking the law of shatnez, the law against mixing elements from different kingdoms.

The only way blood and wine, animal and plant, can be mixed, is if the law of shatnez is transgressed, or transcended. And only the tzitzit, the techelet-colored sprout, transcends the law of shatnez. This implies that the very rituals associated with metzitzah, which is the final act in a ritual circumcision, requires that the members of the bris share in the transgression of the law against mixing elements from different kingdoms. ----By drinking the cup, the bris participant participates in the blood of a living Sprout, or Branch, which, who, by means of its, his, very conception, makes the law of shatnez inconsequential.

Professor Eric Kline Silverman goes as far as to compare the drinking of the cup associated with metzitzah to the Eucharist.

In the Eucharist, the participant knows that symbolically speaking he's drinking the blood of the Messianic Branch (Sprout) who, because of the nature of his conception, from the root of a singular and singularly perfect organism (prelapse Adam) is free from any possibility of transgressing the law against mixing unlike things. His conception can't possibly transgress the requirement that sexual unions not mix unlike parentage since he has only one parent and one root from which he Sprouts.

The Eucharist participant is secondarily aware that by drinking blood itself, he’s transgressing one of the most fundamental dictates of the Tanakh which is the prohibition against ingesting blood.

The Eucharist participant knows that only through his belief that the blood he's drinking is the blood of One who transcends not just the law against drinking blood, or the law against mixing things from different kingdoms, but the law itself, can he escape (through the mercy of the one whose blood he shares) the just sentence afforded all lawbreakers, which sentence afforded all lawbreakers, is death itself.

The participant of the Eucharist drinks the blood of the Messianic Branch knowing that only the One whose blood he shares can save him from the natural results of not only this transgression of this law, shatnez, and that transgression of that law, drinking blood, but from the inevitable result of the fact that all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the law of God. . . The Eucharist participant drinks this blood to be freed from death itself; the death that's eventually applied to all law-breakers no matter how nearly perfect they may have been during their natural born life.