To Cut or Not to Cut: Finding Alternatives to Circumcision

Essay here. Excerpt:

'When my nephew Eli was born, there was no way on earth he was going to be circumcised. His father is not only not Jewish, but British, from a culture where circumcision is rare. And his mother—my sister-in-law Ellen, a Jew who grew up Reform in the Milwaukee suburbs—wasn’t thrilled about the notion of brit milah anyway.

“It was never important to me,” she told me. “To me, circumcision is paranormal hoo-ha. I don’t believe in God, so why would I chop off part of my child for something I don’t even believe? It’s like sacrificing a goat or something. I’m not going to kill a goat.”

It’s not the only part of Judaism she has negative feelings about. (“High Holiday services felt hypocritical, like a fashion show where no one was paying attention,” she told me. “I didn’t go to the sleepaway camp all the other Jewish kids went to; they all had this bonding thing and I felt excluded from it.”) I’ve often told Ellen how regretful I am that Jewishness to her symbolizes patriarchy and repression. I wish she’d had the exposure to feminist Judaism, to questioning and intellectual debate and full-throated communal birkat-hamazon-singing that I grew up with.'