A few more thoughts (since I was gone all day, and came back to a major BOOM here in this thread):
I do see a qualitative, if not quantitative, difference between medical circumcision done on infants without benefit of, or inadequate pain relief, versus those done with adequate pain relief. Of course, it is impossible to ask infants what they experience where pain is concerned, but we ca*n measure cortisol levels in their blood (which rises considerably in response to pain), grimacing, vocalizations, and struggling. I have no idea how it is that mohels manage to be more humane (though the distinct lack of a circumstraint, etc, and the parents holding the child during the procedure may be part of that benefit) but they do seem to be.
I see no, zero, absolutely never an excuse for medical circumcision without benefit of analgesia. The pain shown by infants isn’t irrelevant even though they won’t consciously remember it. If that were true, doctors would still simply paralyse babies to do other surgeries on them…this is no longer the case. Babies feel pain. They have a right to have their pain eased.
As for the experiece being a ‘neurology-altering thing’ (I’m trying to quote from memory), this is, actually, possible: We know that babies who are left to cry uncomforted for long periods of time do experience a physical change to their brains because of the stress hormones they produce when they become upset. There is some chance that the experience of circumcision without analgesia does in fact alter the neurology of the infant because of the stress hormones involved. I have no idea if this has ever been studied. I do know that cortisol levels have been tested and found to be very high.
You know, it’s very sad that I want to cite medical studies, and I keep thinking “Why should I bother? They’re just going to tell me this study, or that study, is utterly irrelevent or has been discredited or that author so-and-so had an affair with somebody and got divorced and so his study should be tossed out anyway.” There are studies out there that show circumcision to be PAINFUL and that its pain has measurable long-term affects on infant behavior. That the babies don’t have conscious memory of it later doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic. We know infants who suffer traumatic events as infants can exhibit altered behaviors later in life. Hell, I have a daughter like that myself - 1 open heart surgery, 2 stomach surgeries, several intubations in the first 18 months of her life. She remembers none of it consciously and recently asked me why she has a scar on her chest and stomach…but it’s taken me 5 years to get her to learn to eat orally. It’s taken her this long to learn to trust things going in her mouth. And this is very common among premature infants or babies with medical problems at birth who must suffer invasive procedures. They remember something, even if it’s at a subconscious level.
Babies deserve not to be hurt. If parents are going to have their sons cut, they really ought to be demanding, absolutely demanding, real pain relief. No parent out there would allow skin to be cut away from any other portion of their baby without it, and this skin should be no different.
I thought I had an insight into Jewish ritual circumcision being something of a sacrifice on the part of the parent, but I suspect I was conflating the whole Isaac-as-sacrifice thing that happened later. Oh well.
There are several reason why we don’t build the Temple today (barring the problem of the mosque on the Temple Mount). In short order, they are the lack of ritual purity (because of the lack of the Red Heifer), which prevents any Jews from going on the Temple Mount; the lack of the knowledge of the exact location of the Altar; and the fact that the Talmud states quite clearly (and the opinion is later ratified in many other works of Jewish law) that rebuilding the Temple is the task of the messiah and must await his coming.
While all the commandments are important to us, and we wouldn’t give up any of them, this one is particularly important for several reasons:
Firstly, as you mention, it is one of the few commandments that pre-date the revelation at Sinai. It wasn’t given to us as a nation, but to one individual and his descendants after him as a sign of love and devotion.
Secondly, there have been very few rulers throughout the ages who have tried to prevent us from sitting in a sukkah on Sukkos. Not too many earthly tyrants care if we shoo away a mother bird before taking the eggs. But yet, this particular commandment has been the target of people who have tried to wipe us out. The ancient Greeks for example wanted to wipe out this practice. (And don’t tell me that they were protecting children – these were the same people who had no trouble leaving malformed or unwanted children to die of exposure.) This mitzvah has come to signify the struggle against our oppressors.
Thirdly, this particular commandment is the one where we welcome our children into our extended family of Judaism. This is the earliest ritual whereby the child is recognized to be a part of our people. It’s nice and well for people to posit that the child may not want to grow up to be Jewish and may reject his membership in the Jewish people. But, as far as Judaism is concerned, that is simply not possible. Once a Jew, always a Jew. We take positive steps to show that this child is a member of our family and will always remain so. To do otherwise, we might as well just not bother. After all, why send my kids to a yeshiva when they might reject Judaism (God forbid) and then they’ll resent me for having wasted all that time in their childhood? Why feed them only kosher food when they might resent me for not having given them the chance to taste pork and shrimp? Why bother raising my children at all with any religious upbringing which they might reject later on?
The reason is because the transmission of our values, of the Torah and of Judaism to our children is of central importance to Judaism. Judaism isn’t a universal religion like Christianity. We don’t hold that everyone should be Jewish. Judiasm is a family religion - we’re an extended family - and the transmission of the Torah, it’s teachings, values and mores, is of central importance to us. If I do nothing else in my life, I’ll consider my life a success if I teach my children to grow up being good human beings and good Jews who follow the Torah and keep the mitzvos. And if I fail in that, then nothing else I do in my life can make my life a success. Yes, it’s THAT important. Raising your children to be Jewish and to follow our laws and traditions is of paramount importance. That cannot be overly stressed. As such, this particular mitzvah takes on added importance. It’s the mitzvah whereby we welcome newborns into our family of Jews.
My sister had a son two weeks ago. The bris will be in about eight hours from now (Sunday morning). It is at this ceremony that he will be welcomed into our people. It is at this ceremony where he will be given his identity among his people (Jewish babies are named at the bris). It is at this ceremony where he will be given the traditional blessing “Just as you entered into the covenant, so too you should enter into the Torah, the [marriage] canopy and good deeds.” It is at this ceremony that my sister and brother-in-law will reaffirm our Jewish identity in a manner that stretches back thousands of years to our great-great…great grandfather. It’s a ceremony that signals the birth of another generation of Jews and their following of God’s commandments.
First, painful or no, circumcision is a very quick procedure. Boy is put in zaide’s (grandfather) lap. Boy is circumcised. Boy is handed to bubby (grandmother). Boy is handed to mom. The baby is being held and comforted even during the circumcision.
I will buy the comparison to ear-piercing (which I oppose for infants and any child incapable of understanding what the process entails, willfully accepting the pain he or she will feel, and caring for the results). But hair-cutting? Hair is composed of keratin and has no nerve tissue or blood supply at any point above the root. This argumentum ad absurdum does not strengthen the argument for infant circumcision being utterly harmless. It’s a very poor parallel indeed.
Now, if you were suggesting that people routinely have their hair removed by pulling them out at the roots, I would oppose this. There would be no justification for the pain involved, unless the person doing the pulling was the owner of the hair.
The only thing I have to ask at this point is why I should even attempt a serious answer when people in this thread are intent on nothing more than calling me stupid, arrogant or batshit insane?
If you refuse to take me seriously, why the bloody fuck would you expect me to take you seriously?
upon reading cecil’s column, i feel a little more comfortable with the issue. Especially since he seems to have done his homework, and come up with actual data about the medical benefits of circumcision. Thanks for the link spooje.
So catsix, if you’re going to continue insisting that the procedure is medically useless, yes, i reserve the right to not take you seriously.
And i agree that the haircut analogy is pretty bad. Perhaps this is a better one:
Lets say the kid has a small lump on his arm. The doctors speculate that there may be a small chance that it could cause problems in the future. The drawback is that the kid will always have a scar there. They leave it up to the parents to decide whether it’s removed or not.
Seems to fit the profile: Small operation on an item that probably doesn’t present a serious medical hazard, and has mild side effects, left up to the parents discretion. Would anybody still object to the parents choosing the operation in this scenario?
And I don’t know why no one will accept this at face value - most guys just don’t care - so why is it to be assumed that they’re not really having the sex they should be, or they’re traumatized and just don’t know it? I don’t understand this attitude at all.
You might be thinking about something I said; I know I mentioned neurology.
The context I mentioned it in was how the differing sensations of a circumcised penis might influence brain development - and of course, we just don’t know. But human experience does influence brain development.
As for cortisol levels, they can have a profound impact on the brain. However, every study I’ve heard about was studying chronic conditions. If cortisol levels are extremely high during circumcision, then it’s a relevant concern, but again, not one with any evidence behind it yet.
However, I suspect that, given the descriptions of bris given above, the trauma of a Jewish circumcision must be considerably less, which is an important factor to consider.
If I have given the impression that I would disregard medical studies, let me assure you that I wouldn’t. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed hostile to you at all in this thread, Chotii (and I suspect I have.) My goal in this discussion is not a win-at-all-costs, use-logic-to-make-'em-cry kind of argument. I don’t enjoy those. It’s more to learn about the issue and discuss it - with people who are willing to engage in real discussion.
I couldn’t speak to the veracity of each individual study, of course, so I wouldn’t be able to discredit any of them unless they had very obvious methodological flaws anyway.
My interest in scientific proof, though, is just because I think there are serious problems with self-reported data - and I don’t mean to say that every guy who’s upset about it is nuts. (I do, however, think there are a few nutcases. In fact, Weirddave’s above link to JDT is proof that there’s at least one! :)) The guys who are having problems are the ones motivated to seek relief, and there ar a hundred different reasons why a person could have sexual troubles, or low sensation. And no guy really knows for sure if that’s why. So real, objective study of lots of men is needed to understand it fully.
I don’t disagree with this in the slightest. And I think it should only be done in a painless manner.
Wow, that’s hard to deal with. My hat is off to you for being able to deal with that. But I don’t think circumcision is anywhere near that bad, and real research has to be done to quantify its effects. A major, major traumatic event is different not just quantitatively from a minor event - there has to be a certain amount of pain to trigger a traumatic disorder at all.
Absolutely.
Again, Chotii, you’ve written something interesting that’s given me a lot to think about. I think I was kinda nasty to you earlier, and I shouldn’t have been. You don’t deserve it; you’re willing to discuss it, and look at the entire issue, and it’s helping me to do the same. Thank you.
I don’t take you seriously because you don’t seem to be willing to say anything besides “it’s their body, and they should have the right!” - when the issue is a complex one. Black-and-white morality is easy, but it’s not useful to me. A lot of things seem clear cut from my perspective, which generally makes me look at it from both sides so that I can try to understand why the other person would disagree. It doesn’t always change my view, but often it leads me to believe that we shouldn’t try to control others’ behavior very closely.
You, however, seem to be clinging to one point, and refusing to consider any others. You maintain, over and over, that circumcision isn’t really all that important to Jews, and they could give it up. You indicate that you don’t even consider it whether it’s actually harmful or not an issue, and you called us “liars” when we wouldn’t take one third-hand anecdote as proof enough that circumcision should be banned.
If you are being serious, then you really need to start looking at the whole complexity of the issue, because it really is complex. But to continually deny the truth about Judaism and insist instead that you understand it better than the Jews in the discussion, to believe adequate understanding of the issue can be obtained from one shrill sentence (“It should be the baby’s decision!”) without looking at any of the other aspects of it - well, to me that shows that you’re batshit insane. And it makes me disinclined to take you seriously.
However, Zev is (as usual) far more tolerant than I, and his (her?) capacity for dealing with the batshit insane is obviously much greater than mine. So there are some folks who take you seriously. I would like to see you acknowledge what Zev has said about Judaism and take that seriously.
What about things that are entirely cosmetic? Extra fingers? Mild cases of cleft lips (some are mild enough not to impact feeding)? Should those be left until the kid decides? There’s not a medical reason to do them.
Of course, circumcision and removal of sixth fingers is much easier on a little kid. The body is far more primed to heal without further injury when you deal with them that young. Does the slim possibility they’d be upset mandate waiting to resolve it? If it does when you’re clipping a kid, why wouldn’t it here?
I think it would be better to adapt this scenario slightly (I am being somewhat free with ‘facts’ because I don’t know the numbers involved, but please bear with me for the sake of argument):
Imagine that the majority of children are prone to being born with tonsils at the back of their throats. Doctors report that on the average, 10% of these will eventually require removal for medical reasons anyway (obstruction of breathing, sleep apnea, recurrent throat infections, etc), and there is a very small possibility (1 in 100,000) that many years down the road, they may turn cancerous. They are superfluous, the surgery is minor and safe, and the kid gets to eat all the ice cream he wants. For a great many years, removal of the offending lumps of tissue is the norm.
Then somebody discovers that hey, tonsils actually perform a function, and medical policy becomes ‘wait and see’, with surgery being done to address a diagnosed problem, rather than prophylactically.
…
I had mine out twice. But it’s just not done anymore. The minimal benefits no longer really justified routine surgery, though surgery is certainly called for when the organs in question present a problem.
Removing the prepuce because there is a 10% chance it might need it anyway, discounts the 90% chance that it will not. Removing it because there’s a 1 in 100,000 chance it will lead to, or be associated with penile cancer, discounts the 99.999% chance it will be healthy.
I dunno, folks.
When I handed my daughter over to the pediatric cardiac surgeon to repair her heart, I knew there was a chance she might die in surgery. But I also knew she couldn’t live without it.
When I handed her over to the pediatric gastric surgeon to repair her stomach, I knew there was a chance she might die in surgery, but she would have no quality of life otherwise. The risk was high but the benefit was higher. And the odds were on our side - we have a little girl with scars from the hollow of her throat to her belly button, but she’s healthy.
I can’t see anything that involves cutting into and altering the tissue of the body as minor, or insignificant. If it fails to provide a significant, demonstrable health benefit to the individual in question, it seems even harder to justify as a routine procedure.
To answer theckhd’s specific question, however, I think society would be fairly forgiving of such a cosmetic surgery. But thoughtful parents might ask questions like, "What harm will the lump do if it does ‘cause problems’? How might those problems be addressed non-surgically? What are potential consequences if an infection occurs as a result of the surgery? What are the chances my child might be impaired in some way or suffer minor nerve damage in the arm? What benefits are to be gained by its removal?
Armed with as much information as possible, the parents can make a better informed choice about whether it’s worth it to go ahead and remove the lump, or wait and see if it’s actually going to be a problem.
Now I suppose you can tweak the scenario, and say ‘There’s a very small chance the lump will be a problem, but if it is, it will be one of those skin cancers which spread to the whole body and kills within weeks or months’’. If THAT were the case, I don’t know ANY parents who would leave it. Not a chance. So it’s all in the details really.
Actually, many extra fingers are not properly tied into the skeleton and as such are likely to suffer damage down the road. The fact that hands are used for EVERYTHING makes them even more vulnerable, plus how do you wear gloves? I would consider the removal of a non-functional sixth finger a matter of safety. As for a hare-lip…Well, the thing about 6th fingers and harelips is that the represent errors in the development of the fetus. The prepuce is a normal part of the male anatomy.
You may well argue, and I see your point, that none of these are strictly necessary from a medical standpoint. But your average kid with an uncorrected harelip will be a societal outcast (like most other people with physical deformities - always being stared at, and then avoided). Your average kid with an extra finger might be. But I’m not sure the same argument can be made for a child with an intact penis versus a cut one.
Also - since I do know a family whose child was born with an extra finger - his surgery was delayed until he was a year old, he had general anaesthesia, and he had appropriate pain medication afterward. The finger was basically a very large skin tag, very vulnerable to being caught on things and torn, no one would say it was merely a cosmetic surgery in his case - but what’s really important to me is that his pain was treated as relevant even though, at the age of 1 year, he wasn’t going to remember it either.
What a thread this is. Unbelievable.
I do not understand the obsession in the US with this practice, as I do not see why people would circumcise their sons when it is not a requirement in their religion.
Frankly: I did not even know this was done so frequently in the USA until I started to read US based message boards. You do not see this anywhere in Europe for as far as I can tell.
For those who mentioned FGM:
This has nothing to do with Islam, it pre-dates Islam and it is done all over the world. Of course, people always manage to make a link between a religion they happen to follow and a practice that is part of their cultural backgrounds and traditions. This only gives a proof that they have no sound knowledge of their religion. I don not know of any religion that has a command for FGM.
The same counts for “honour killings” and sometimes it is not the woman, but the man who becomes the victim. Or even a member of the family who has in fact nothing to do with the perceived crime that is felt as a stain on the family’s honour.
** I do not know of any religion that has a command for honour killings.**
For those who in this thread manage to make any comparison between FGM and male circumcision:
You clearly have no insight on what you talk about. To gain some insight and understanding I would recommend you the reading of the book “Desert Flower” by Waris Diri. She speaks of her own experience with the practice.
Read, learn, and please do not act as if the circumcision of a boy has even remotely something to do with what women all over the world must endure. Even when there is only a millimetre of skin sliced of the clitoris, the intend behind it has no other meaning then denigrating the gender of the child/woman and make her aware of it that she is in one way or an other "not right” up to “unclean” when this practice is not done on her.
It is a way to make her a subject of male expectations by making her aware of that her virginity must be kept * because she must be the untouched bride for her future husband*. Circumcising her is intended to “help” her with that because she is considered as not able to act independently and to have responsibility over her own body and her own nature.
Circumcision of male children is intended to make them aware that they are male, that they received their place as a male in the community and in case of religious inspired circumcision; it is the proof that they entered the covenant between God and humanity. As a man = NOT as an object of male lust that must receive help to keep its virginity.
Do you see the difference of or do you need an oral lecture?
The above is also one of the reasons why I do not understand the intend behind the habit in the USA to circumcise children who are not Jewish/not Muslim (one can argue about the question if yes or no circumcision is really a command for a Muslim, yet that falls outside this debate).
In the beginning of this thread someone gave a link to a website talking about FGM. Much of the information there is accurate. I have objections though to the use of the word “sunna” because that implies that it has something to do with the sunna way of life of the Muslim.
** FGM has nothing to do with the sunna way of life of a Muslim**
There is also some inaccuracy when they talk about the occurrence of the practice in the MENA region. There is still a great problem in Turkey among isolated communities, there is still a problem in countries like for example Morocco where women sometimes risk to get circumcised after marriage because of the cultural influence on the family she enters. The same counts for many other communities in many other nations, Islamic or not. Even when it is not frequent as it is when it is ingrained in societies where women themselves encourage it yet FGM * still happens even when it is illegal.
Catsix:
Your stubborn refusal to even start getting yourself at a point where you can begin to have an understanding of Judaism, even after what you have read in this thread, tells me the following
You think the world turns around you.
You think an ancient religion must be altered -and by this indeed destroyed in its origin which is hence its core belief - because you do not like it.
You think you are not ridiculous with this attitude.
Well, the simple truth is that the world does not turn around you, that Judaism is not going to change its core belief and command because you want it to and that you are absolutely ridiculous in your childish attitude of spoiled little girl who screams whenever something she wants does not happen.
Clairobscur:
You want every religion to disappear. May I whish you good luck in trying to fulfil your dream.
You say that people have no right to educate their children in a religion.
May I ask you: What gives people the right to educate children in the belief that there is no God?
As for the argument that circumcision of boys is done without their consent.
Indeed, that is a good argument and indeed there is a little bit of risk (I don’t know if there is any research done about this that is able to provide for trustworthy information on how great a risk this is).
For all those who come up with this argument:
How many children die or develop serious complications as result of vaccinations? Do you have an idea how grerat a risk vaccinations are for children in third world countries, who are not as strong and well fed as children in for example the USA? Yet, the WHO continues to inject medication into little babies because it is their goal to “eradicate” certain diseases. Where is the influence of these babies (and even of their misled parents) on this mass-vaccination that is done on them without them even knowing it?
Do you know how many children die in regions where hygienic conditions and the access to clean water is problematic, but where the tradition of safe and natural breastfeeding gets corrupted by the aggressive advertising tactics of companies like for example Nestlé. They promote the use of their products in locations where there is no clean water and no adequate sterilisation of the bottles possible. What have the children there to say about this?
Do you know how many little children are born with HIV in the US alone as result of irresponsible behaviour of their parents? What have the children to say about this?
Do you know how many children are born as drug addicts for the same reason?
Do you know how many children are aborted and hence don’t even get a life, for the same reason?
What have these children to say about this?
The list of situations where children have no impact at all on the decisions made by parents, yet who affect the baby personally is endless.
So where do you get your fundament for throwing the line “the child has nothing to say about it” into this discussion?
I do not say you have no point. Yet it can be applied every situation where a decision made by parents (or even not by them) affects the baby and his further life directly.
Now onto the coments of being “deprived” of something that is - by those who are not deprived of it - perceived as being something absolutely necessary to have a normal sexlife.
For the ladies involved in this discussion:
What on earth do you know about this? What can you know about it?
For the uncircumcized men:
Same questions count, yet with the difference that you have a ground for imagining things you have no experience with.
Well, the answer is very simple:
Your sexlife is what you make of it, circumcised or not.
As for the questions how men who changed the experience by having a circumcision as adults: I have a few first hand records to share with you.
They all involve people I know. A few did it because they became Muslim, an other one did it because of a medical problem, an other one did it at request of his wife because for some reson she always ended up with infections, even if there was no “hygiene problem” at his side ever.
They all say it did not change one little bit their ability to have a normal sexlife that was as good as before. Some even claim that being circumsized improved their sexlife and that of their partner. (I don’t think I must give you detailed explanation about how that can be).
Speaking for myself, being a member of the Poor Unwhole Millions: Upto now there are no locked doors and also no objects flying towards me whenever I enter a place… with well known intentions
I also have no need for viagra or other stimulating products. (I don’t want to die (young) caught in an unstoppable act of producing life.)
Excalibre, there is a desperate GQ question answered for you ( Read: A chance for admiring for my Natural Wisdom is once more available on the GQ Forum).
