Um, well, I’ve been lurking in this thread for a while, and after reading all the arguments, I’d have to say that if I had a son, I’d leave him uncircumcised.
But I can’t say that your arguments have swayed me. Mandatory genital inspections? Foreskin replacement insurance? Public shaming of parents? Purported links to autism? You’ve gotten shrill, man, and your arguments are veering into tinfoil hat territory, I think. For example, I’m circumcised, but I don’t feel like I’ve been mutilated, nor am I unhappy about my penis, nor resentful of my parents. I do vaguely wonder what my sexuality would be like if I still had my foreskin (would I sleep with the covers over my head?), but it’s not the burning issue that it obviously is to you.
The argument that resonated with me was the equivalence of FGM and MGM. And the needless violation of a boy’s bodily autonomy. I’d support Broomstick’s ban on non-religious circumcisions, but it’s not a hill I’d die on.
Yeah, I don’t think any anti-circumcision arguments are going to get anywhere by denying the fairly self-evident fact that most penis-havers, whether circumcised or not, are basically okay with their foreskin status and their penises basically work fine.
What gives me pause is just the realization that there are an awful lot of smallish pieces of body parts that we could surgically remove from infants as part of a customary ritual and get the same outcome. The vast majority of the infants would heal physically and psychologically from the surgery, they’d be basically okay with the status of their body parts, and the body parts would still basically work fine.
I guess I feel that if an infant were part of a culture where it was traditional to remove one of those small body parts, and their parents felt it was culturally important to do so, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of them. I am restricting my “I’m okay” to surgery that still leaves everything basically working fine. Infibulation does not pass that test, for instance, and I am happy it’s not allowed in the US. But if we came upon some remote tribe that ritually removed every infant’s left little toe, I’d say “my, how odd”, not “OMGWTFBBQ, we must stop that!”
Yabbut, the question then becomes: how do we define “everything”? For example, obviously subjects of IMC as currently practiced don’t still have their foreskins working fine, because their foreskins are gone.
If I cut off the tip of a finger, my hand and finger would basically still work fine (once healed), but my finger would not be quite the same as it originally was nor work in exactly the same way, and of course the tip of that finger wouldn’t be “working” at all any more.
Can we come up with a consistent criterion for drawing the line between “still basically working fine” and “not working fine because amputated”?
I tend to feel the same way. The thing about IMC (and to a lesser extent FGC), though, is that we in modern societies have to decide whether we think it’s okay to allow it for children in our own culture, not whether we get to stop the remote tribal people from performing it on their children.
Poor example. The pinky toe metatarsal is one of the three bones of the tripod of foot bones that provides balance while walking and standing. I’m on my phone, so can’t post links to the sites I just Googled to check my facts, but they did say that while you can learn to walk and run with just four toes, you’ve definitely lost a functioning and important part of the body.
Hmm, maybe it’s not a bad analogy after all - a child who grew up without a left pinky toe wouldn’t miss it anymore than a cut man misses his foreskin; nevertheless, he’s been denied the use of a small but not unimportant part of his body, and his autonomy has been violated without his consent. And he’s been hurt, unnecessarily.
Yes, well, Jews are a tribal people living embedded in a larger surrounding culture. The most Americanized observant Jew still belongs to a Jewish culture that is separate from the mainstream even if it is next door and not on the other side of the world.
Why allow a tribal group in, say, New Guinea, continue their practices without restriction while denying the Jews their tribal customs? Yes, you get to decide for YOUR culture… but unless you’re a Jew Jewish culture is not your culture, it’s someone else’s.
And when someone tells him that he is a victim of abuse, that he should be sue his parents for said abuse, and that he is fundamentally less able to enjoy life because of said abuse, he’ll rightly get his back up.
That may, sadly, be true, but it’s not like there has been some sort of slow, steady trend away from halachic observance that continues unabated to this day. There was a big break in the 19th century with the founding of Reform, the effects of which are what you described above. But Reform wasn’t the first movement to abandon halachic observance, and halachic observance tenaciously outlived the previous ones, and shows no signs of dying out in the present era either…if anything, the current trend is growth. That is strength.
I would never exclude non-Torah-observant Jews from my (which is the same as halacha’s) definition of “Jew.” Granted, since Reform changed their definition of Jew to include those born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, there are quite a number of modern Americans who consider themselves Jews whom I would not. I doubt that they yet constitute a majority.
My assertion is that if there were some form of official pressure to end Jewish ritual circumcision, that there would be, in 50 and 100 years, a very significant number (e.g., in the millions) of Jews who would not abandon the practice. I stand by that statement, which has nothing to do with the practice being “important to Jewish identity” or who “claims” or “defines” it.
Another of those academic speculations with no true foundation. The fact is that there are several indicators from scripture itself that point to the mother’s religion as determinative of the child’s in a mixed-parentage situation.
NAF1138:
How do you figure? Determining who is a Jew (although I suppose during low-intermarriage periods of history it had less application) is something that matters in halacha on a daily basis. A non-Jew couldn’t count as one of ten men for a minyan (public prayer quorum) to give one example.
As someone born of a gentile mother to a Jewish father, it’s possible to consider oneself descended from Jews and ethnically Jewish (that is, with Jewish ancestry) while not considering oneself as a “Jew”. Which is pretty much where I am.
The Orthodox are happy to acknowledge there’s a relationship there of some sort, and I’m welcome to associate with the community and participate in a lot of things, but there are religious things that I am not part of because I haven’t undergone the process to be admitted as a member of the tribe in the religious definition. Which is fine with me. If I wanted to be such a member I know how to go about it, I’m just not interested/motivated to go through the process.
So yes, I’m “Jewish” in some sense, but also not Jewish (it’s sort of Schrodinger identity - I am and am not Jewish at the same time). There’s no need for me to keep kosher or circumcise my male offspring. But I think there are a quite a few gentiles who’d point to someone like me and say “But SHE’S Jewish and SHE doesn’t keep kosher or keep the Sabbath or circumcise her son so she’s PROOF that this can change.” No, I’m not. To gentiles I might be Jewish, to Jews I am not a member of the tribe in a religious/ritual sense. I am related to the tribe, but not of it. I have no obligation to keep all those extra rules the Jews follow.
In other words, I think a lot of people are confused, uninformed, and making assumptions that just aren’t so.
And yes, there are some of us “hybrids” who do consider themselves Jewish. I don’t speak for them, or determine whether or not they’re acceptable to any particular community they associate with.
I’m curious how many of the religious defenders of circumcision here believe in Divine Revelation. Do you believe that God literally came down from Heaven and communicated with Moses and/or Muhammad, and the Torah/Quran represent the perfect and infallible word of the Creator of the Universe?
As an Atheist and Secular Humanist, I’m operating under the assumption that all these religious scriptures were written by fallible human beings, and don’t represent actual commandments from God.
My grandmother on my mom’s side tells me that my great-great-great-grandmother was Jewish. It would be quite fascinating if I could verify that information. If this is true, then as the direct matrilineal descendent of a Jewish woman I would automatically be 100% Jewish, even though I’ve never once set foot in a synagogue. I’d feel a bit silly trying to claim that I was Jewish though, like Elizabeth Warren talking about her Native heritage.
I’m not sure why a 5 minute doctor visit sounds like such a radical idea. Is it because it’s the government doing it that makes it bad? Because I don’t think anyone would bat an eyelash at a parent taking a child to the doctor, where the child has to disrobe. It’s no big deal.
Why shouldn’t parents pay for it? Why the hell should I have to pay for my own restoration surgery, to repair a wound that was inflicted on me without my consent?
Reparations need to be made for the millions of men who are the survivors of systemic sexual violence against children. The government should put massive amounts of money into tissue regeneration research and development. When scientists succeed at regeneration, this should be covered by public health insurance.
The Constitution prohibits Ex Post Facto laws, but going forward into the future parents who insist on circumcising their children should pay a fee to reimburse the public for the costs of restoration.
I realize this technique sounds extreme, and it will definitely ruffle some feathers. Sometimes it takes extreme measures to get into the public eye. It’s a non violent protest technique, with an end goal of working towards a more peaceful future for humanity. A future where children will be protected from unnecessary violence.
Published in a peer reviewed journal. More study is needed of course, I will concede that. But we should treat this seriously and not just brush it aside. We know that traumatic experiences are bad for a young brain in other contexts. Try to put yourself into the vantage point of the newborn: he is undergoing a very painful experience and he has no idea what the hell is going on. He doesn’t understand that this is a sacred ritual or cultural tradition. For all he can understand, it may as well be a wild animal biting into his penis.
Because prior to the creation of Israel if someone came to town and said they were a Jew people more or less just believed them. No one was walking onto Shtetels pretending to be Jewish so they could participate in the bad end of pogroms.
I am arguing the cultural importance, not that a divine revelation from God is what is driving most parental choices. But of course the answer will vary from person to person.
To get back to that elephant. I* chose to circumcise my son because to fail to do that would have cut him off from being a Jew. He was a child of two Jewish parents, I intended to raise the children Jewish (Reform) and everyone would expect my son to be Jewish, for both good and ill. But if he wasn’t cut, he wouldn’t actually be accepted as a Jew.
I had some concerns, and I wouldn’t have done it had I not been Jewish. I even asked the mohel to cut as little as possible. (And my son does have some residual foreskin, unlike the son of a co-worker. Said co-worker freaked out when he realized that his son, who was circumcised on the 8th day, still had a little foreskin, and called the mohel back to take care of that. I gather the second procedure was more painful and unpleasant for all concerned than the first one was.)
But I wanted him to be accepted as a Jew among Jews.
And, in fact, my son ended up marrying a fairly traditional Jewish women who probably would have been uncomfortable dating an uncircumcised man. They seem happy.
As I said above, I have many regrets about parenting choices I made. Circumcising my son is not one of the choices I regret.
*I know my husband supported that decision. I don’t know if he would have cared the other way. I wrestled with it, said I’d like to have it done, and he said “okay, I’ll buy the food for the party.”
How would anyone know? Long ago, when I went to Jewish services and Saturday School, I can assure you no one saw my penis nor asked about it. I doubt very much it was on any form my parents had to fill out (but maybe I’m wrong)
