| | The Case for Brit
without Milah |  |
"A voice from heaven should be ignored if it is not on the side of justice."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
"...the wise men who wrote the Talmud believed it was okay to argue with God, be angry with God, wrestle with God."
- Barbra Streisand
Policy Statement
For the record, the author of these pages is firmly opposed to all infant circumcision, the Jewish variety no more or less than any other, and has no issue with any
other aspect of Judaism. The Jewish traditions of rationality and
compassion will ultimately prevail over physical circumcision.
- HY
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Different from others?
Strange Company |
Numerically, Jewish circumcision is a very small part of circumcision worldwide.
About 500,000,000 male Muslims, more than 100,000,000 gentile
USAmerican boys and men, and some scores of millions of Filipini, South
Koreans, older men of England and the Commonwealth, African tribesmen,
Polynesians, Australian aboriginals and others are circumcised, but
only about seven million Jews - so that circumcision completely fails
to set Jews apart today. (That would still be true, to a lesser extent,
even if the total number of Jews had not been so savagely curtailed by
the Holocaust.)
Psychologically, Jewish circumcision pushes its way to the forefront
of the Western imagination, though, and even where Routine Infant
Circumcision (RIC) is still commonplace, circumcision is presented as
uniquely Jewish. This is very much the case on US TV Sitcoms
and dramas. The misperception is widespread, even among goyim who are
themselves circumcised, that only Jews circumcise (with jokes like,
"His pants were so tight you could tell his religion.").
A special case?
It might seem that those who condemn infant circumcision in general
should make a special exemption for Brit Milah, because of its
relatively long history (but see the Chronology
for its novelty in the long term) and its immense significance within
the religion and community. Some do. Some want to make a special
exemption to avoid even the appearance of antisemitism. Yet a small but
growing number of Jews are opposed to it. This page is written to
support them.
"Giving Up Brit Milah" - Kahal stand at a Tel Aviv baby fair, March 2007.
A small but growing number... A recent internet survey of Israeli Jews found 3% had not or would not circumcise their sons.
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The most compelling argument against treating Brit Milah differently
from other infant circumcision is that since genital modification is a
human rights issue (as it clearly is for girls), to oppose circumcision
only for non-Jews would be to say that "Jewish babies have fewer human rights than other babies." From this point of view, it is clearly making an exception that would be anti-Semitic.
Literalism
To people who believe that the Creator of the Universe literally
commanded that Abraham circumcise himself, his family and their heirs
forever, there is not much one can say, except that it is an
extraordinary belief from any point of view.
- Would the Almighty (and All-wise) really ask such a thing?
- The commandment to Abraham to circumcise clearly runs parallel
to the commandment to sacrifice Isaac – just a test of his faith: the
willingness was all.
- The story has the same historical credentials as a literal Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark.
- Modern Jewish scholars doubt that Abraham was even an
historical person – and if he was, the story that he nearly butchered
his son Isaac, again because he "heard voices", hardly inspires
confidence in his authority. Perhaps we should respect and revere the
ideal that Abraham represents, rather than particulars attributed,
perhaps erroneously, to him.
- What kind of covenant is it that is marked on the body of a third party, who has no choice in the matter?
- Modern perceptions of human rights, within the framework of Jewish thought, supercede any demand to override the bodily autonomy of another person.
According to modern scholars, circumcision is not even mentioned in
the either the earliest, "J", version of Bereshith ("Genesis") nor the
next three rewrites by other authors. Most importantly, the story of
Abram is there in its entirety, except the part about the
Covenant being "sealed" with circumcision. The parallel Covenant story
of "a smoking kiln and its blazing torch" passing between the halves of
animals and birds sacrificed by Abram is in J. Many biblical scholars agree on this point, and it is in accord with the mitzvot against desecrating the body.
N 41 Not imprinting any marks on our bodies
N 45 Not making cuttings in our flesh
- 613 Mitzvos according to Sefer Hamitzvos of Rambam
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It has even been suggested that early Judaism forbad circumcision!
See The Book of J by David Rosenberg (ed. Harold Bloom) and Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism by Lawrence A. Hoffman.
Jeremiah 31:31-3 suggests that the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision was not forever:
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Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah,
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day
that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt;
which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them,
saith the LORD:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and
they shall be my people.
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Identity
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If you have circumcision being the thing that defines you as being Jewish, then you've missed what being Jewish is really about.
Brenda Birch in the Vancouver Courier, July 5, 2004
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It is generally agreed that being circumcised is not a condition of
being Jewish. Girls obviously do not need to be circumcised. A boy is
Jewish if his mother (and/or his father in the Reform tradition) is
Jewish, from the moment he is born. In fact,
- A boy may be excused circumcision permanently if his health would be endangered by it, for example if he has haemophilia.
- Jewish boys in countries where routine circumcision is not
common, such as the Netherlands, may be left intact and yet remain Jews
in good standing;
- In Sweden, only 40% of Jewish boys are circumcised.
- Reportedly many babies born in Germany in the 1930s were left intact to protect them from the Nazis. One at least remained proudly Jewish and intact life-long.
- Many Soviet Jews, left intact for fear of communist persecution, have chosen to remain so; and
- (contrary to some opinions) an intact boy may have a Bar Mitzvah. As one rabbi simply put it, "We don't check."
The claim that circumcision is essential for the survival of the
Jewish people therefore can not stand. Unfortunately the magnitude of
the consequence overshadows its lack of substance - who dares risk the
fate of the whole community by leaving his son intact? This fear needs
to be faced and conquered.
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The eminent philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) is widely misquoted
as saying the survival of the Jewish people depends wholly or mainly on
genital cutting. In fact,
Spinoza said:
As
to their continuance so long after their dispersion and the loss of
empire, there is nothing marvelous in it, for they so separated
themselves themselves from every other nation as to draw down upon
themselves universal hate, not only by their outward rites, but also
the sign of circumcision which they observe most scrupulously.”
- Tractatus Politico-Theologicus 3:55)
Male genital cutting is an afterthought, an additional (concealed) reason Jews are
hated. They survive, Spinoza says, by their separation, of which
antisemitism is just a consequence. |
Habit
Many people invoke the power of "tradition". Yet no-one would deny
that some traditions, such as slavery, segregation and female
circumcision, are bad traditions, that traditions can change*, and that
bad ones should. (And a literal reading of the Torah by Christians was
used to justify slavery only 150 years ago, and segregation only a few
decades ago. A literal reading of the Greek scriptures / 'New
Testament' is also one of the roots of the tradition of antsemitism, of
course.)
*There is some evidence that radical circumcision - periah
- was not instituted until the second century CE, to prevent Hellenised
Jews from concealing their status. Some say prior to that, Milah was
much milder, only the removal of a sliver of foreskin from the tip of
the penis. (Others say that periah was the custom from the
beginning, and it was only codified in writing in the second century.)
Metzitzah – sucking the baby's blood from the wound by mouth – was a
long-standing and essential part of the ceremony until about the end of
the 19th century, when it became clear that mohels with TB or STDs were
transmitting them to the babies.
To break such an old habit may seem like "wasting" all the
circumcisions of the past, but that is not so: what value they had was
to the people of their day. It is not inherited or bequeathed. It is much harder to break a communal habit than an individual
one, but there is a first time for everything, and it seems that for
many, the custom has been carried on solely because it has been carried
on - no reason at all. For others it has been carried on out of fear,
specifically fear of disinheritance, but also a more general fear of
deviation from a community norm. No-one knows how great the opposition
to circumcision within Jewry is, but it is certainly much greater than
is made public, because its opponents stay silent and so fail to
communicate with each other.
History
The fact that Jews have resisted enforced attempts to stamp
out circumcision can always be a source of pride. (That they did so to
the point of death is more problematical, and that they thereby brought
death to their children is very much more so.) In those days,
circumcision was not conspicuously inhumane among all the other
inhumanities that were then prevalent. That is no longer the case.
Some think that the traditions of Chanukah, remembering
resistance to the persecution by Antiochus IV, mean Jews must maintain
circumcision too, in memory of that resistence. That is a fallacy.
People everywhere honour and remember their war dead by dedicating
themselves to peace, not war. Voluntarily renouncing something
(especially in the face of considerable pressure to maintain it) is
itself an act of courage and strength, quite distinct from renouncing
it by way of submitting to oppression. It is cruelly paradoxical to
honour those who resisted enforced non-circumcision by enforcing circumcision on baby boys.
An article by a Jewish woman doctor concludes:
| ...I
suggest that our tremendous historical suffering does not negate or
justify the continuing pain of our baby boys. Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan
Sacks, interviewed on the BBC [Radio 4, 19 Sept, 1992], stated that the
purpose of circumcision was to 'sanctify sexuality'. When asked how it
could do so, he replied, 'It's not causal, it's symbolic'. However, in
the final analysis, circumcision is not symbolic for the baby; it is
horribly real. - J. Goodman
Jewish circumcision: an alternative perspective
British Journal of Urology Intenational
(1999) 83, Suppl. 1, 22-27
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Loving kindness
Two of the great strengths of Judaism are its rationality and its
commitment to learning and scholarship. Another is the tradition of gemilut chasadim,
acts of loving kindness, and the prohibition on deliberately causing
pain. (There are also the mitzvot against imprinting any marks on one's
body or making cuttings in one's flesh.) Cutting part of a baby's
genitals off flies in the face of all of these. (A sop of wine or even
modern anaesthesia during the operation is no solution to the pain
problem. The wound continues to sting whenever urine enters it, until
it heals, 10 to 14 days later.) The claim that Brit Milah is quicker
and more painless than surgical circumcision is comforting but has no
basis in fact.
Healing the World
“A central purpose of Judaism is tikkun olam,
repairing the world. Much of the pain in the world is a result of
repeating old harmful patterns of behaviors. By breaking a chain of
pain, forgoing circumcision contributes to our healing. As we heal from
this pain, we will be better able to heal others and reach our ethical
and spiritual potential.”
- Goldman, p11
Other claims
Many Jews, especially the less religious, circumcise their sons -
sometimes without ceremony, soon after birth - in part for the usual
(but ever-changing) "medical reasons". These, such as urinary tract infections, penile cancer and HIV,
are dealt with - and disposed of - elsewhere on this site. The great
sage Maimonides (Rambam) condemned mixing motives - hedging your bets -
like this: "No one ... should circumcise himself or his son for any
other reason but pure faith; for circumcision is not like an incision
on the leg, or a burning in the arm, but a very difficult operation."
The argument that Jewish babies have a "right" to have part of their
penises cut off before they are old enough to give or withhold consent,
because to do otherwise would deprive them of their heritage, is
unimpressive. It may seem at first to insult one's ancestors to do
other than what they did, but it is equally an insult to our own
intelligence, and to the intelligence of our descendents, to cling
blindly to customs of the past. "Heritage" here means no more than
"doing what we have done." If the boys decide to be circumcised later,
that is said to be fully efficacious in marking the Covenant, just as
it is with converts, or babies whose circumcision had to be delayed for
health reasons.
Equally, halacha provides the ceremony of hatifat dam berit
(shedding of a token drop of blood) for babies who can not be
circumcised at all. This is deemed to be fully efficacious in marking
the Covenant.
The Talmud itself admits that circumcision can be fatal.
Other ill-effects are listed in Reasons Not to Circumcise on this site.
At the Jewish Museum in Melbourne, guides say:
- "It's not as if we're doing it to someone else: we do it to ourselves." But the baby is
someone else. He is an individual, his own person. This is a relatively
new concept in Western thought, but in every other context it is well
understood.
- "We do it to welcome him into the community." A strange welcome, to cut off part of his genitals.
- "The foreskin is lifted and a drop of blood is taken." That is a description of hatifat dam berit, not Milah. Here are pictures of what is really involved.
- "A little brandy in his mouth and he doesn't feel it." (As someone said, "Sex, violence and drugs!") At least some mohelim "prepare" the baby in private, slitting the foreskin and/or tearing the synechia. This puts the baby into shock: he only seems to be relaxed.
- "It's very quick." To a seven-day old baby, it must seem an eternity.
- "We do it with love, that makes it quite different." The baby
has no way of knowing the state of mind of the people who are doing it.
All he can feel is the knife.
- "It protects his partner against cervical cancer." Quite false.
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An extraordinary development within Reform has been the appearance
of mohelot (circumcisoresses). If equality of the sexes is applicable
here, it is hard to see why it does not apply equally to the babies,
either by circumcising both boys and girls (Shudder!) or by circumcising neither (Yes!).
The Rambam was well aware of the ill-effects of circumcision:
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"As regards circumcision, I think that one of its objects is to limit sexual intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible, and thus cause man to be moderate.
"...How can products of nature be deficient so as to require external
completion, especially as the use of the foreskin to that organ is
evident?
"The bodily injury caused to that organ is exactly that which is desired...there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment; the organ necessarily becomes weak when it loses blood and is deprived of its covering from the beginning.
"Our sages (Bereshit Rabba, c.80) say distinctly: It is hard for a woman, with whom an uncircumcised man had sexual intercourse, to separate from him. This is, as I believe, the best reason for the commandment concerning it."
- Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide for the Perplexed)
p.378 of the Dover edition
1956.
[With respect, the last, by ensuring her fidelity, would seem an even better reason for not circumcising him - HY]
The full text, from a more recent translation.
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Samuel Richmond, a Jewish Intactivist in southern California writes:
Modern Jews, striving to live their lives on the fulcrum of
abiding ethics and accruing knowledge, are continually challenged to
examine their faith. Thus when the claim is made that the practice of
circumcision bespeaks the high value classical Judaism places on
suffering pain for worthy causes, we may be obliged to reflect on the
critical distinction between acknowledging life's inevitable pains to
oneself and choosing to inflict pain upon another.
And when the similarly tendentious claim is made that
circumcision, by necessarily impairing sexual experience for both men
and women, instills the behavioral restraints that once informed
America's moral and cultural consensus, we likewise have the
opportunity and obligation to ask: Does it work? Here again the
empirical support fails as we witness the escalating sexual depravity
of our public lives and the increasingly unabashed license of our
preponderantly adulterous (and predominantly circumcised) political
elite.
For many Jews, the liberation from bondage we celebrate at
Passover represents a profound marriage of human rights and human
duties. The tradition of cherishing freedom for service, not from it,
resonates boldly in the history of Jewish participation in America's
signal human rights struggles. And informing the heart of these
struggles are Talmudic precepts that most adherents of ritual
circumcision choose to disregard - the conviction, reaffirmed by sages
from Nachmanides to the Kushners, that the human body is a neutral
vessel equally predisposed to vice or virtue; the belief in the Mishnah Ketubot
that the failure to experience God-ordained pleasures equals a
disobedience of God's command; and moreover the simple eloquence of Tsar ba'alei chaim, the moral prohibition against causing pain to living things.
In any other arena of medical or religious practice, such an
activity as the willful removal of healthy, God-given, purposefully
functioning tissue (without sufficient mitigation of the pain that it
causes) from a fully conscious infant, would be immediately recognized,
in both Jewish and American law, as the trespass it is.
Or, to put it another way:
It's a mitzvah to fight to end circumcision!
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An enormous amount of pressure may be put on Jewish parents to
circumcise their sons. For more about opposition within Judaism to
circumcision, go to the Circumcision Resource Center.
Many Jews outside Israel and the USA are foregoing circumcision:
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Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, president of the Dutch Association of Rabbis,
said only about 50 male Jewish babies are circumcised in the
Netherlands each year.
- "Dutch doctors urge end to circumcision" Ynet.news, September 27, 2011
Today the Dutch Jewish population numbers about 30,000...
- Jewish webindex
Netherlands birth rate: 10.23 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
- Index Mundi
If the Jewish birth rate is the same as the national average, 307
Jewish children are born annually, 157 of them boys, so the
circumcision rate is less than 32%
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Brit Shalom/Shalem/Milim: Covenant of Peace/Wholeness/Words
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 At
this Brit Shalom, the parents washed their son's feet (Brit Rechitzah)
instead of circumcising him, as a sign of the Jewish covenant and
welcoming, and gave him his Hebrew name.
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Welcoming ceremonies for Jewish babies without cutting have shown three strands:
- The original ceremony is reinterpreted in the light of Abraham's
near-sacrifice of Isaac; as in that case, a substitute cutting (not of
the baby - of his clothing, for example) may be made.
- The ceremony is reinterpreted in the light of the Holocaust. That was suffering (and marking*) enough.
*
It was a terrible thing for adult Jews to be marked by having a number
tattooed on their arms; how then can it be a good thing for baby Jews
to be marked by having part of their penises cut off?
- No reference to the original ceremony: the parents promise the baby that, among other things, they will never hurt him.
As well as the physical advantages to the boy, Britot Shalom/Shalem/Milim
- are equally suitable for welcoming girl babies.
- can be performed without causing heartache to parents, especially mothers.
Here are links to other sites about Brit Shalom ceremonies:
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Celebrants
A list of celebrants of Brit Shalom (Brit B'li Milah) (opens in a new window)
Resources
Books
Two other good books from a Jewish perspective, available through this site, are Covenant of Blood by Lawrence Hoffman and Questioning Circumcision by Ronald Goldman.
Circumcision Exposed by Billy Ray Boyd, though he is not Jewish, has an extensive and sensitive commentary on Brit Milah.
Laura Shanley is a Jewish woman who has written a book about natural childbirth and an essay against Milah.
Discussion groups
There is a Jews Against Circumcision group on Yahoo.
Kahal maintains a discussion in Hebrew on the Tapuz website.
Video
The 8th Day
A documentary video about two Jewish couples wrestling with the decision whether to circumcise their sons. |
Articles
"The most Jewish decision I could make" - A mother finds the agony of not cutting is visceral and deep
A thoughtful article in the Jerusalem Post
"My Son: the Little Jew with a Foreskin" - a thoughtful mother's story
"Live and Uncut", a feature on Brit Shalom in New York Magazine
A more equivocal questioning of the custom
The May/June 2001 issue of "Tikkun" has an article by Michael S.
Kimmel (author of "Manhood in America" and "The Gendered Society"), "The Kindest Un-Cut: Feminism, Judaism, and My Son's Foreskin" about why he left his son intact. It is paired with an article defending circumcision on mystical grounds.
Intact and Jewish on Natural Parents Network, July 11, 2011
Progressive Rabbis On Creating A Jewish Covenant Without Circumcision, in Intact News, January 27, 2012
Ending Circumcision in the Jewish Community? by Moshe Rothenberg, presented to the Second International Symposium on Circumcision, 1991
Websites
A Jewish mother of twin girls has a webpage "Brit Milah: Inconsistent with Jewish Ethics?" which has many links to related sites
The Jewish Circumcision Resource Center
Israel
The Israeli Association Against Genital Mutilation is at
P.O. Box 56178,
Tel Aviv 61561,
Israel
E-mail .
A community of families with intact sons, Kahal.
Petition
Thomas Wolfe, a Reform Jew, has opened an online petition
calling on the Leadership of the Union for Reform Judaism and the
Central Conference of American Rabbis "to demonstrate leadership by now
educating its Rabbis to recognize the medical and ethical shortcomings
of religious circumcision, and to both sanction and promote alternative
ceremonies, like the Brit Shalom, [and] to support those that do so."
Other Jewish commentary
What the Rambam says about Milah
Chapel Hill News, January 10, 2001: A delicate ritual
New York Magazine, May 21, 2001: Live and Uncut
North Jersey.com, June 9, 2002: Sacred practice or unnecessary procedure?
Kahal
Sechum, The newsletter of Machar, the Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism, March 2001
Official policy statement on Circumcision of Secular and Humanistic Judaism
Jerusalem Post, 21 November 2002: A cut above the rest
The Guardian, January 19, 2003: British editor boasted of being an intact Jew
Mothering Magazine, August 20, 2005: My Son: The Little Jew with a Foreskin
October 3, 2005: A New Year's gift
Toronto Globe and Mail, May 22, 2007 : Jewish, and uncircumcised
Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2007: Some Jewish parents break ranks over circumcision
Times Online / Jewish Chronicle September 1, 2007: The real logic of circumcision by David Aaronovitch
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Related pages
Back to the Intactivism index page.
Mishnah Ketubot: the section of the Talmud commenting on contracts, in particular the contract of marriage.
Yebamot 64B {p. 150}
III.3. G. "If a woman was married to a first husband who died,
to a second who died, to a third she should not be wed," the words of
Rabbi.
H. Raban Simeon b. Gamaliel says, "To a third she may be
married, but to a fourth she should not be married. [If she produces
males and they were circumcised and died, if the first was circumcised
and died, the second and he died, the third may be circumcised, but the
fourth should not be circumcised]" [T. Shab. 15:8A-C].
The Talmud of Babylonia: An American Translation. Translated
by Jacob Neusner. Number 251. Volume XIII.B: Tractate Yebamot, Chapters
4-6. Program in Judaic Studies Brown University. Atlanta: Scholars
Press. 1992.
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