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Family Is All That Matters 98 telephone company looked at the schedule and said a technician would arrive on a certain date in six years. "Morning or aernoon?" Boris asked, "Because I have the plumber coming that morning." In the 1970s, the Soviet Union began allowing Russian Jews to leave the country. It started as a trickle, but soon many Jews were leaving, usually for Israel or the United States. Iosif knew that before he could leave the country, two things had to happen. First, his son Lev would have to leave. Second, Iosif would have to retire om active duty as a military officer in the Air Force and wait at least three years to safely leave the Soviet Union. And that was only to travel to Eastern European countries under the authority of the Soviet Union. To travel to the West, a military officer had to wait at least five years aer retirement. At the height of the Cold War, the KGB was not going to let officers with useful information wander around. The Soviet Union applied a number system to those with security clearances. There were five levels: zero to four. Those who had a zero level security clearance had the broadest access to secure information. Iosif 's security clearance was a zero. He accepted that he must resign om the military to let the clock start ticking against the day he would be allowed to leave Russia for good. It wasn't easy, but Iosif was eventually discharged om the Air Force at the rank of colonel engineer. When he submitted his resignation, Iosif 's superiors were baffled and tried to talk him out of it. Iosif recalls: "They said, 'Think what you are doing! Why do you want to retire? The officers we are forcing to retire are begging to stay in the Air Force, and you're volunteering to leave?" His superiors couldn't understand, and what they didn't understand, they feared. The bureaucratic mindset is to oppose any volunteer activity. First came the bribes; his commanding officer told Iosif that papers to promote him to full colonel were in the works. When those failed to get the desired results, the bribes turned into threats. The staff tried everything to persuade Iosif to stay. Of course, Iosif could not state the true reason why he was making this decision. He explained that his pension For 3,500 years, since the time of Abraham, the Jewish people have observed the ritual of circumcision, known in Hebrew as Brit Milah, as the fundamental sign of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The Covenant of Circumcision is considered much more than a simple medical procedure. Brit Milah is considered the sign of a newborn child's entry into the Jewish tradition. For millennia, in every country where Jews have lived, they have always practiced this ritual, sometimes at great personal sacrifice. Perhaps more than any other ritual, Brit Milah is the ultimate affirmation of Jewish identity. Traditionally, the Brit Milah of a healthy baby is done on the eighth day aer birth, even on Shabbat or Yom Kippur. But the ceremony may be delayed if the health of the baby is in question or, as in Lev's case, if a properly trained and certified ritual circumciser is not available. This person, called a Mohel, is formally trained in circumcision techniques as well as in Jewish law and tradition. Jewish law sees the moment of Brit Milah as having a great spiritual impact upon the child. The Mohel, therefore, must also be a person of great piety and religiosity. He must be a God-fearing, practicing, Shabbat-observant Jew, who performs the Brit Milah in accordance with the intentions as well as the methods of Jewish law. Finding such a person in Soviet Russia took some time, but when Lev's circumcision was performed it was completely kosher. The Ritual of Brit Milah The Ritual of Brit Milah Above: Lev in Moscow, 1960.

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