I'm not Jewish and don’t live in a heavily Jewish area (although the front door to my house has a mezzuzah on it, since I believe my neighborhood was a more Jewish area back in the day). I have never attended a bris, although I did go to the baby naming for a friend's daughter, and we didn’t circumcise our little dude.
So I found this interview with a mohel (the Jewish official who performs the bris, or ritual circumcision, of Jewish babies) really interesting.
I didn’t know that the ceremony takes 21 minutes, which includes the circumcision procedure, special prayers and a blessing over the baby, and the announcement of the baby's name.
Part of the ceremony involves giving the baby sweet wine to suck on, which has both religious significance and a practical use. Babies like the sweetness and it acts as an analgesic. Mohel Sam Pessaroff actually carries backup wine in his car, because sometimes parents purchase a nice dry something they like instead of the sweet stuff that does the trick.
He also carries special instruments used in ritual circumcisions, cloth diapers, bacitracin ointment, Vaseline, and skullcaps.
And the vanity plate on that car reads "MOHEL." Which is just funny, any way you slice it (sorry, really, I couldn't resist).
