Through humor, recollection and reckoning, ‘Circumscribed’ offers insight into family, fatherhood and personal choices
'How do we reckon with the memory of somebody who you really love, even though they're not around, and even though you're in a very different place than you were when you knew them'
As a child, Noam Osband used to bury foreskins beneath the “Orlah tree” near his Brookline, Massachusetts, garage. It wasn’t until arriving at college and mentioning the practice to others that Osband recognized its oddity.
The son of a mohel, physician and Torah teacher, Osband, 45, addresses the story in “Circumscribed: A True Tall Tale of One Father, Two Sons, and Thousands of Foreskins,” but the anecdote is just a bit of what the Philadelphia-based writer, producer and documentary filmmaker seeks to convey in his live performance.
Speaking with the Chronicle by phone, Osband said the show is “fundamentally about somebody just reckoning” with pieces of their life.
Osband’s father died almost 25 years ago. The former chief of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Michael Osband was a “respected member of the community,” his son said. Along with helping Boston “get an eruv, he was on the Chevra Kadisha.”
Digital tributes and memories showcase the late physician’s role in the community, but Osband said that only reflects part of the picture.
“He also was known for having this very good sense of humor — and it’s part of him that I totally take after — like crossing the line as far as he could without making people unhappy.”
For example, Osband said, his father would “anonymously write and self-distribute a satirical newspaper called ‘Not the Torah World.’” Published before Purim, hundreds of copies would be “put in all the Orthodox shuls in the Boston metro area.”
That irreverence created an impression.
It’s enjoyable “pushing people a little bit out of their comfort level, without making people actually feel bad,” Osband said.
“Circumscribed: A True Tall Tale of One Father, Two Sons, and Thousands of Foreskins,” is a perfect vehicle for doing so.
“It’s very moving for me to have a show where I get to celebrate that part of him,” Osband said. “It’s not generally the part that when we get together on his yahrzeit that we’re all necessarily celebrating. But for who I am as a person, that’s very much the part of him that really lasted with me, resonated with me, and that I hold very dear.”
In the years since his father’s death, Osband graduated college, earned a doctorate in anthropology and worked as a media producer, musician, teacher and street performer.
Creating “Circumscribed” was spurred in part by his own entrance into fatherhood, Osband said. “In many ways, it’s less a show about circumcision, and it’s much more a show about family and family relationships.”
Such is the reason for its broad appeal — “Circumscribed” received the Audience Choice Award at the 2025 New York Fringe — he continued. “We all have eccentric relatives, and we all wrestle with dealing with family expectations for us, and maybe choosing not to be exactly who our parents thought we were going to be.”
Growing up, Osband’s personality so closely matched his father’s he was often called “Mini Michael.” As an adult, however, Osband chose not to be religious — a central quality of his father’s life.
The choice is one example of a universal experience, Osband said.
“We all have relatives who we love dearly, and maybe served as role models for us, but not completely, and there are parts of their life that you choose not to incorporate, and that can be difficult,” he said. “We try to reckon with what the parts you want, the parts you don’t want, and how that feels.”
The show is deeply personal, yet offers a singularly relatable quality, Osband continued. “How do we reckon with the memory of somebody who you really love, even though they’re not around, and even though you’re in a very different place than you were when you knew them?”
“Circumscribed: A True Tall Tale of One Father, Two Sons, and Thousands of Foreskins,” runs March 20-21 at Bloomfield Garfield Activity Center. Tickets available at Pittsburghfringe.org. PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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