"Can you give me back my foreskin?"

Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2013-06-27 01:04

Article here. Excerpt:

'The case is this: if you are able to listen, dare listen, and you are willing to listen to what is clear and obvious: of course you do not need to cut your newborns to win Gods acceptance, a horrifying question emerges from the mists: does this mean that something is wrong in Judaism? The answer is, yes. Of course it is wrong to maintain a practice which involves that one – unnecessarily – cuts parts from small children’s small bodies. Imagine if our neighbors – for religious reasons – had the habit of cutting their earlobes, the outer joint of their little finger or the nipples of their babies. Just like that, off with them. We would never allow that to happen. Nevertheless we accept something even worse: the cutting into and cutting off parts of children’s private and intimate sexual organs.

The consequences are many and ramified but they may be difficult to see until the horror dawns on you. The foreskin tissue contains an enormous amount of receptors which makes it the most highly sensitive area of the entire male body. Several studies show how infants are highly sensitive, they feel pain, and research is constantly extended with more knowledge about how important the first months and years are for a baby’s healthy development. Reports from circumcisions relate of children lapsing into traumatic shock during the procedure – being unable to make a sound. By some this is interpreted to mean that the mutilation does not inflict pain – in reality the opposite is true. Jewish mothers and fathers who have regretted the procedure tell how the special intimacy and (until then) unbreakable bond between child and parents is ripped even more violently apart than the way in which the foreskin is torn from the glans before it is cut off. The child loses the most important part in its relation with its parents: the trust that mother and father will always act in its best interest and defend it – also against religious practice.'

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Comments

Some may wonder why on MANN I seem to be posting, when on circumcision, so many articles that involve Judaism as part of the discussion. It's easy to form the impression that it's less about circ. and nore about Judaism, and possibly anti-Jewish feelings.

Without going into specifics (none of yer bidness!), it would be beyond the pale of ludicrousness to accuse me of anti-Jewish feelings, esp. if you knew me and who I knew! It simply isn't even a remote possibility. Take this on faith (if, like me, you take nothing else).

It's that the discussion of the question of the rightness of circ is now almost entirely being done by Jewish people or philosophers more exposed to religious dogmas and arguments. [Among Muslims, it is very hard to find an open discussion about this practice. At least, written in English. But if I am wrong here, my apologies I extend in advance for my ignorance, because of the language barrier. But if in fact if this topic is being discussed among Muslims (and esp. clerics and/or imams), I'd love to know.]

As for secular people, there are few openly discussing it. Intact America is one of the few non-sectarian groups in the US going after this issue quite publicly.

So most of the stuff that gets on MANN re circ either due to reader submission or my own finding includes a discussion of it in the context of Jewish religious tradition and identity questions.

I am in fact quite sympathetic with the position Jewish leaders and non-leaders alike find themselves in w/ regard to circ. I mean, really-- it took me a number of years to finally accept what had been done to me. It took even more to let go the anger over it, to try to place into context what happened. At the time, really, it was like smoking: people just didn't know better. And that was just me, not being a religious person at all. To now wonder why a person who might be steeped in a religious identity or an ethnic identity, to be in a group that has been kicked around, persecuted, hunted down and murdered wholesale-- ask them to stop doing what many of them see as a critical (and for many, only remaining) religious ritual of what they feel to be of vital importance around their ethnic or religious identities-- this is a very tall order. Immediately, for many, the sense that they have been singled out for particular attention and demands that they end a religious practice that is literally millenia-old must be expected and very intense. For many, it may be too much to ask them to give up the denial around the damage they are causing to their own sons, to realize the damage done to them, to acknowledge that, like the Cold War, in the end-- it just wasn't a good idea. To realize there are alternate ways to ritualize the birth of sons (or daughters) and celebrate them-- without having to alter their bodies in any way-- a really hard thing to do.

So yeah, I sympathize. I get it. Some things are just very difficult. They are very hard to do. These things take time. Sometimes, hard things never get done. But I hope for the sake of newborn boys from Jewish and non-Jewish parents alike, it finally, finally, finally stops. Just no more cutting at boys' genitalia. It isn't necessary. It isn't nice. It isn't wise. And if a male wants to do it, he can always do it when he's an adult. To make him comply with an obligation, religious or otherwise, that alters his physical being permanently before he even knows his own name-- just plain wrong.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2013-06-27 01:28