Bris of Zev Matthew / Ze'ev Matityahu

Zev makes his first visit to Nana's house a week after he was born. Many thanks to Paulette for hosting and organizing, not to mention baking tons of desserts :) Thanks to Ann, Bob, and Grandma Mac for sponsoring the food at the bris, and to everyone who could come for sharing our simcha with us!



Daddy, Great-Granddaddy, and the mohel Rabbi Miara perform the circumcision. Mostly Rabbi Miara, but Josh did officially appoint the mohel as his agent first:

Great-gram holds Zev as we explain the meaning of his name--see below:

Ze’ev Matityahu is named after our respective maternal grandfathers: Ze’ev, Hebrew for wolf, after Martin Wolfgang Jeremias and Matityahu after Matthew Sylvester Davis. We hope that our son will embody the best characteristics of his great-grandfathers, who share a core set of values that we hope to instill in him.

Martin Jeremias, or Grandpa, was a true renaissance man. His knowledge spanned many disciplines—music, geology, literature, science—and he loved to share this knowledge with and educate his family. I fondly remember trips to the zoo, strawberry picking, going fishing, or climbing the crabapple tree in his backyard with him—each outing fun, but also a learning experience.

Matthew Davis, or Granddaddy Davis, was also a man who believed in the importance of education. An optometrist by training, he was just as comfortable quoting Shakespeare, Karl Marx, the Torah—or making up his own language—as he was explaining his models of various human body parts to his family. Sara particularly enjoyed going to her grandather’s office and learning the parts of the eye from him in a hands-on fashion.

Some of you may have already noticed that our son’s Hebrew middle name is also seasonally appropriate for a Chanuka baby, as Matityahu was the patriach of the Maccabees, and played a key role in the resistance of the Jews against their Greek oppressors. We hope Zev also will come to know when to stand up to authority—as long as it isn’t ours.

Our grandfathers’ breadth of knowledge, love of family, and sharing knowledge with others, is something we respect in the highest regard. We hope our son, Zev Matthew Korn, has a long, happy and healthy life, full of a thirst for knowledge—and eventually becoming a fountain of insights in his own right. We will look to the examples from our grandfathers for inspiration as we work to raise him along a path of Torah study, marriage, and good deeds.



We also want to take just one moment to thank my Mom, for hosting, setting up, and organizing the brit, and Sara’s parents and grandmother for sponsoring the seudat mitzvah that follows, and my Mom, grandmother, and aunt for the plethora of desserts. We also thank my grandmother and grandfather who made the shlep here to celebrate this day with us. We are indebted to them all—along with our grandparents who unfortunately are no longer with us, including Zev Matthew’s two namesakes, and my father. We wish they could be here with us and always have them in our hearts.