Is this the generation that rejects circumcision?
There
is no Jewish death penalty. There are no rabbinic executioners, or people who
amputate limbs for violations of Jewish law. Ritual circumcision is the only
act of physical harm that remains.
A debate has come into being
quietly here about the place of Brit Milah (the ritual circumcision of Jewish
baby boys on the eighth day after birth). The debate is not taking place
abroad, not in “anti-Semitic” Germany, but here in the State of Israel. When
one mother refused to have her son circumcised, the rabbinical court tried to force her
to do so,
and theHigh Court of Justice countered the
rabbis in
the name of liberty.
This topic, which vanished
when the fighting in Gaza broke out, could have toppled governments at
other times. I think the issue runs much deeper than a legal battle.
On the day that my fourth grandson
was circumcised, I wondered whether the institution of circumcision would be
the next one to fall. Observance of the Sabbath, kashrut (Jewish dietary laws),
mikveh (family purity laws), and the religious prohibitions against same-sex
relations have not been obligatory social conventions for quite some time. They
became the preserve, and means of preservation, of a diminishing minority. Will
the same processes cause circumcision to follow suit?
Something about the institution of
ritual circumcision is no longer all that convincing for young parents of this
generation. In my family, all the males were always circumcised, without
exception. My parents never thought about it. My own heart was pained at my
sons’ circumcision, though it was no more than a young father’s heartache over
the pain of his newborn baby. The discourse is different among my children.
“Maybe we won’t do it. What for, anyway?” they have asked themselves four times
already. The first time we talked about it, I realized that many of their
friends had the same questions. Although they did it in the end, their
questions are still real and require thought.
I approached the topic with a great
deal of curiosity, and conducted a kind of man-in-the-street poll for several
weeks. I asked my questions with care and got detailed responses. The many
answers I received all pointed in a single direction: that the institution of
circumcision is coming to an end. Or, to be more precise, the institution of
circumcision has no real hold among the segment of the Israeli population that
is not conservative and religiously observant.
On what basis do I make these
statements? Let us begin with the explanations that people give themselves and
that were given to me. “It’s healthy.” “It’s hygienic.” “It’s aesthetic.” “Half
of American Christian men are circumcised.” “So the kid won’t stand out.” “So
he won’t be embarrassed in the shower, at the pool, on the annual school trip,
in the army.”
My innocent question, “Is any one
of these answers sufficient reason to maim a child?” was met with silence. I
asked, “Would you take out a child’s appendix soon after birth? Or implant a
pacemaker in his body in order to play it safe?” The answer, with an
embarrassed smile, was, “Oh, I never thought about it that way.” Nobody, but
nobody, cited religious obligation as justification for the act.
But the only reason to harm a
defenseless child in that way is the religious reason: the covenant between God
and the Jewish people. Besides all the difficult restrictions I mentioned above
(the Sabbath, dietary laws and the Jewish family that does not contain only
Jews or only heterogeneous relationships) that are violated in public, we would
do well to take note of the common thread that underlies many of these
nullified commandments, whose examples include an eye for an eye, the Jewish
death penalty, the sorcerous ordeal whose purpose was the public humiliation of
a woman suspected of adultery. They are all concerned with the physical aspect
of the religious conventions.
Generations of Jews have lived
since those ancient commandments were almost completely abolished. Here are the
facts: there is no Jewish death penalty. We do not put out eyes or cut off
hands. There are no rabbinic executioners, or people who amputate limbs for
violations of Jewish law. All that are left are the mohalim – those who are
specially trained to perform circumcisions.
Ritual circumcision is the only act
of physical harm that remains. For how much longer?
The acts of physical harm I enumerated
above, and many others, fell into disuse as the social and cultural conditions
in which the Jews lived changed. Is our generation the one that is ripe for the
abolition of ritual circumcision?
A challenging opponent has arisen
against the ancient rite of circumcision: the concept of rights. Recent
generations have deepened and broadened the discourse of rights – the rights of
a human being to his body and dignity.
Rights and liberties are the true
strength of Western society. This is a society that fights with all its might
against female genital mutilation, which is customary in other parts of the
world and still widespread among immigrants who refuse to assimilate and
internalize the values of the new world to which they moved.
The fight against female genital
mutilation is highly complex; the woman’s right to do as she pleases with her
own body, her right to enjoy sexual relations at least as much as her male
partner does, the freeing of the woman from any form of ownership by men (such
as her father, brother, husband or pimp).
The way the fight against female
genital mutilation radiates to the struggle against male circumcision is well
known and extremely significant. After all, what exactly is the difference
between them?
The difference is that male
circumcision has positive branding compared with female genital mutilation,
even though the issues are no different. On the one hand is the parents’ right
to raise their children according to their faith. On the other is children’s
inborn rights over their own bodies. On the strength of that right, violence
against children was prohibited, and corporal punishment at home and in school
utterly condemned.
It is likely that many people will
continue circumcising their sons for religious or behavioral reasons, and many
will look for other ways to express their membership in the Jewish collective
without compromising on universal principles, which include the child’s right
to an intact body.
Let us conclude with a paradox. An
important part of the religious argument against abortion is the fetus’ right
to life. According to this argument, the fetus is a living creature in every
way. And, they claim, every child – inside or outside the womb – has the right
to be born and to live.
So if the fetus, which is connected
to the placenta, already has rights within the womb and may not be harmed for
religious reasons, how is it possible to harm him, for religious reasons, from
the moment he is born?
