When Everything In Me Said to Circumcise: A Jewish Father Wrestles with Tradition

Article here. Excerpt;

'I always thought that if I had a son I would not circumcise him. I felt the need to challenge this Jewish tradition. It felt like quite a brutal decision to take on behalf of my newborn son, for a covenant that I did not believe in. (I am secular but very culturally identified.) But when I found out that we were going to have a baby boy, the sudden emotional desire to have him circumcised was immediate and very strong.
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So now I faced what felt like a huge decision, the idea of not circumcising my son. Jude, who is also Jewish, was clear it was something she did not want. For her, cutting off any part of her son’s anatomy for an ancient ritual meant nothing. So why did it all change for me, the moment I found out I was having a baby boy?

It was a very personal and emotional response. I felt by not circumcising my son, I was effectively cutting off (pardon the pun) his connection with a 5000-year-old cultural history. For thousands of years Jews have performed this ritual as the first and important means of identifying with our tribe/community. So as a self-identifying Jew, the idea of not doing this for my son created a lot of anxiety and confusion in me.
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I researched the medical pros and cons. There seemed to be no health benefit enough to justify circumcision. The one strong argument I found is about the transmission of STDs among heterosexuals, including HIV, being lower in circumcised males. This might be a good argument for circumcision in a country that has an AIDS epidemic in its heterosexual population, but in the West today we do not face such a situation. And sensible safe sex education and practice has worked well as a preventative measure against sexually transmitted disease.
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It is argued that by cutting off the foreskin, the head of the penis becomes calloused and is less porous, and this is the reason HIV is less likely to be transferred. This logically leads to the idea of the head of the penis being less sensitive, and I came across testimonials of men in their twenties who chose to get circumcised. After doing so they found that their sex lives had drastically changed, with far less sensitivity. A great analogy that I read is that it is like listening to a Mozart concerto without the violin section. It is still beautiful, and if you never hear it with the violins you will never know the difference. I thought about this, and the idea of denying my son the full enjoyment of sex was something I did not feel comfortable doing, of deciding for him.

Anyway we made a decision. It kind of happened gradually. After Lev was born, he had complications with breathing and the very usual jaundice, and had to spend six days in Hospital. The fear we felt in those days made us feel there was no way we wanted to cause any more distress for the little man. So I said, let’s not circumcise and leave it for a while and see how we feel. And today, nine months on from his birth, I feel very happy with our decision.
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I really do hope that in the future other Jewish families will decide not to circumcise. I would love for there to be a community of Jews that are not circumcised, partly so that Lev does not feel like he is the only one, and as I think it would make for a more pluralistic community.

I make no judgements on any parent that decides to circumcise. I feel it is a decision for each family to make. It does not feel to me like mutilation. But I really hope that every Jewish family (and non-Jewish family for whom circumcision is an option) spends time looking into the arguments for and against—as no decision is better than an informed one.'