When Dr. Amy Brown, a pediatric pulmonologist who lives in Irvington, New York, and is Jewish, found out she was expecting a son, she started asking friends and family about mohels. Traditionally a mohel is a rabbi, a cantor or another religious leader who performs the brit milah, or bris, a circumcision ceremony, on an 8-day-old Jewish boy.

She found the options for her son’s bris less than appealing.

“I learned about one man who had a license plate that said, ‘SNIP IT,’ and I was like, ‘No.’”

A month before her due date and still without a mohel, Dr. Brown read an article about Dr. Dania Rumbak, a pediatrician and a mohel, and felt huge relief, she said, thinking that Dr. Rumbak, as a woman, would bring empathy to a procedure that so often is rote. “Men have this tone of, ‘This is how it has been done,’” she said.

For centuries, the role of mohel was dominated by male religious leaders. As most rabbis and cantors have been male in the past — the Rabbinical Assembly, a Conservative Jewish association, didn’t let women become rabbis until 1985 — men have performed most of the rituals involved in Jewish life.