The National Consensus on the Mutilation of Every Newborn Male

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2012-09-04 23:30

Article here. Excerpt;

'(TEL AVIV Ha'aretz) - The main element at play regarding circumcision is the majority rule. This rule can only be broken by regulation from above. Not from heaven, which is too far from our reach, but from the governing power - a leader with inspiration who isn't afraid of breaking consensus and slaughtering (pardon the disgusting expression) holy cows. It's an irony of fate that the Germans, of all people, are calling us to order in Jewish matters. It's an irony of fate that they are the ones telling us the religious precept, which even complete heretics among us keep without blinking an eye, is a barbaric, primitive act, not to say a violation of the law.
...
If we think rationally for one moment, why should the Germans - and the Swiss who followed their lead, or any other Western state - allow a Jewish rabbi to perform a surgical act forbidden to anyone else who isn't a doctor? What chutzpah on our part to ask for ourselves a privilege that is a blatant infraction of the law, which is intended to protect people from various charlatans. This whole affair, triggered by a court somewhere in the federal republic following a circumciser's severe failure, forces us to face one of the most peculiar occurrences in Israeli life. No other state in the world, perhaps, displays such extreme polarity between outrageous clericalism and defiant secularism. Yet the one thing uniting everyone here, almost with no cracks in the wall, is the national consensus for the mutilation (whose benefit to health is questionable) of every newborn male.'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

American chutzpah, too. The vast majority of circumcisions in America and the rest of the world are done by secular people, i.e., people doing it for some reason, probably nebulous or knee-jerk, or based on some ridiculous reason like "the father was circumcised, too", etc.

Taking on the religious traditions around circumcision is important. But I don't want anyone to imagine that it is less important to take on the non-religious ideas, either. Both are, basically, hollow reasons, from the standpoint of human rights. They may be important reasons from the standpoint of a baby's parents vis-a-vis their religious beliefs, but this is irrelevant to the question of the baby's human rights. And as I have said before, human rights always trump religious rights. So much more then is it unconscionable that people inflict circumcisions on their baby boys for reasons even yet less defensible.

Like0 Dislike0
Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2012-09-04 23:39