Pro-circ delusions

misc.kids #267469
Date: Fri Apr 19 11:04:12 GMT-0400
Organization: Prodigy Services Company

[1] Re: Pro-circ delusions

Before I get too far along in this discussion, I want to take a moment and tell Rob Strom that I respect your method of argument. I have lurked in the newsgroups for some time, but 99% of the anti-circ [sic] postings are grounded in such ignorance of anatomy and history or so poorly written that they are not worthy of reply. I have devoted a couple of hours a day for 14 years of my life to careful study of the anatomy and sociology of circumcision, both neonatal and post-neonatal. I have written and lectured extensively on the subject to groups as diverse as intactivists, expecting parents, and university anatomy classes. You are a worthy opponent; the others generally are not.

[Your original note is gone and my browser does not have a means to redisplay it, so if I may I'd like to quote from a printed copy I have]

On 17 April 1996 Rob Strom wrote:

(I think the use of the word sacrament is misleading here, [...]

I chose the word sacrament for precisely the reasons you cite. The Encyclopedia Judaica chose to use the word sacrament, and its meaning applies: this is not a life-status altering rite. Most of the readers of this thread are likely Gentiles, many of whom incorrectly believed that infant circumcision is an admission rite to Judaism, much like the baptism is for Christian religions. I post this here so people understand that while all branches of Judaism (including Humanistic? I don't know) expect ritual circumcision of newborn boys on the 8th day, absolutely no branch of Judaism accepts simple circumcision (such as non- ritual or non-8th day but for good reason) as fulfillment of this obligation. More importantly, circumcision in no way makes one a Jew. Period. All the intact Russian Jewish emigres are no less Jews than youare.

Maimonides was the product of his time and place. As rabbis go, he was more negative about sex in general, [...]

Yes, Rabbi Moises Maimonides reflected the mores of his day, which were sexually conservative. My point, however, was that he demonstrated a rare truthfulness and honesty about the damage that circumcision does. I cannot bear to listen to another Jew rave about how much cleaner, healthier, and physically superior circumcision makes him. The medical facts suggest exactly the opposite. The whole point of my original post was: is there something wrong with acknowledging this harm, while also acknowledging that we must do it out of service to God? Circumcision is a sacrifice, but apparently one that no one today is willing to confront andadmit.

I don't have a problem with this -- circumcision is supposed to be a horrible thing among the Jews, a terrible destruction, a sacrifice to God of normal sexuality and function as a demonstration of faith. It is our substitute for Abraham's aborted murder of his son Ishmael at God's command, in addition to being an outward sign of the covenant God made with Abraham.

[I assume you meant to write Isaac, not Ishmael]

You are absolutely right that this should have been Isaac. I posted past midnight and was too tired to catch my typo. My apologies. Nevertheless, I stand my my theory (and it's mine, not Rambam's). I argue that the meaning of circumcision as a sign of the covenant was not revealed to Jews until God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac; then, it became clear that each time we circumcise our sons, it symbolizes a little death of part of our sons. And a little part of us, as parents and family, dies also out of sacrifice to God. It is entirely consistent, unlike this nutty mitzvah idea that's come up in the last few centuries. There is no indication that Abraham and Sarah served cake and told off- color jokes atIsaac's bris.

I am disgusted when I watch the joy of the menfolk at a bris -- what pathetic denial.

Do the womenfolk at a bris behave differently?

In my experience at 10 or so brises, yes, the womenfolk absolutely do behave differently. The majority of the males I've observed express a morbid fascination and exhuberance over the impending surgery and screams of the child, while the women cringe and ask themselves why this has to be done (when they're even allowed in the room). As Jewish scholar Miriam Pollock has eloquently argued, in an intensely patriarchal religion with MATERNAL lineage the defining factor, post-partum circumcision is a forceful way to destroy the mother-child bond, wounding both and bringing the child clearly into the camp of similarly wounded men. A significant shift in bonding.

I don't agree that modern circumcision dates only to 140CE. Even if it did, that still makes it a 1,850-year-old tribal custom.

Sorry you didn't know this history before. In 140 C.E. the bris milah was modified to include two steps beyond the initial nick or small cut that was practiced for nearly 4,000 years. These two steps were Periah and Mezizah. In Periah, the mohel uses a sharpened thumbnail or other instrument to tear the delicate, adherent infant foreskin off the glans to which it is naturally still fused. This effectively destroys the proper function of both the foreskin and glans. When all mucous membrane has been separated, the foreskin tissue is pulled through a Mogen clamp and sliced off. The resulting scar, then, is everything from the circular cut to the tip of the glans. Yes, your glans is effectively one large scar. In Mezizah, the mohel is supposed to take the freshly circumcised infant penis in his mouth and gently suck away the blood. Following several noted cases of TB being passed this way in the 18th century, some mohelim changed to sucking the blood from the penis through a glass straw.

Again, the point is that the original circumcision commanded by God and practiced by the Jews for nearly 4,000 years (except for those generations, around the time of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jews did not circumcise at all) involved a small cut that did NOT tear the fused foreskin from the glans. This is a modern, radical modification ordered by a group of men. The ancient Greeks extolled the foreskin and emphasized its beauty by stretching it to new lengths. Young Jewish athletes in the Hellenic period also tried stretching their half- foreskins, which the rabbis frowned on. But it was those athletes desperate for long foreskins who actually cut off the GLANS penis in order to make the foreskin look longer who caught the condemnation of the rabbis. Some of these young men hemorrhaged and/or suffered septicemia; a few died. This was enough to force the rabbinical council to take action and order that the drastic, radical stage of Periah be added to the otherwise fairly benign circumcision.

As you can see, there is a lot of history to circumcision that is not routinely taught to Jews or to the general public. I posit that this is part of the huge denial/disinformation campaign that goes on to permit the continued practice of a harmful, misunderstood, outdated practice. Neonatal circumcision persists as a tribal identification for Americans and Jews, but its scrutiny and replacement are long overdue for both groups. For Americans it no longer serves its original puritanical anti- masturbation purpose, and for Jews it has deviated way too far from God's simple commandment.

The purpose of Jewish existence is not to eat Jewish food, or tell Jewish jokes, or use Yiddish words. It is to fight evil in the world. It is a source of deep pain to me to recognize how few people know this.
~ Dennis Prager and Rabbi Telushkin, The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism

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