Circumcision of Jesus foreshadowing of Christ's Passion to come in the context of the "Circumcision". Having borrowed the large architectural setting in the Temple of the "Presentation", later scenes may show the high priest alone holding the baby, as he or a "mohel" performs the operation, as in the St Wolfgang altarpiece by Michael Pacher (1481), or Dürer's painting (right) and his influential woodcut from his series on the "Life of the Virgin". This reflected what had by then become, and remains, standard Jewish practice, where the ceremony is performed in the synagogue and the baby is held by the seated rabbi as
If This Is a Man (German for "sub-humans"), and to Levi's examination of the degree to which it was possible for a prisoner in Auschwitz to retain his or her humanity. The poem explains the title and sets the theme of the book: humanity in the midst of inhumanity. The last part of the poem, beginning "meditate", explains Levi's purpose in having written it: to record what happened so that later generations will ponder (a more literal translation of "meditare") the significance of the events he lived through. It also parallels the language of the "V'ahavta", the Jewish prayer that commands followers to remember and