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June 4, 2011 | 8:01 pm

‘Foreskin Man’s’ anti-Semitic slam dunk in circumcision wars?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo

Foreskinman.com

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published my op-ed about “The Circumcision Wars.” It was an interesting, if slightly awkward piece to report out, but it’s stirred up some interesting comments over at the WSJ cite.

The long and short of it is there is an movement of anti-circumcisers, “intactivists” who claim that foreskin has gotten a bad rap. They want to ban male circumcision everywhere, starting in San Francisco, and they claim the act is no different than female genital mutilation.

I know. It’s bonkers.

My op-ed focused more on the cultural and religious implications of prohibiting a covenantal act that Jews and Muslims are religiously commanded to perform. (The First Amendment issue is it’s own animal, and I largely left that alone.) Here’s a snippet:

From a Jewish religious perspective, the medical evidence is largely beside the point: Circumcision was ordered by God, so it requires no independent justification. Likewise for Muslims, who also circumcise per religious tradition.

The San Francisco measure would only prevent the circumcision of minors within city limits, and the practice would likely endure even there. “Circumcision is not going to go away because of this small, determined, angry group,” said Dr. Samuel Kunin, a Los Angeles-based urologist who promised that if the ballot measure passes, he’ll travel north to perform the first San Francisco circumcision.

The law also wouldn’t prevent a Jew from being circumcised as an adult, though that’s a much tougher procedure. To be sure, that didn’t stop thousands of Soviet Jews who were circumcised after they escaped persecution and arrived in Israel, the United States and elsewhere.

Still, circumcision doesn’t make a Jew a Jew. Family lineage or conversion (for which only the Orthodox widely require circumcision) do that. But, like baptism for those Christians who believe it is essential, circumcision is a declaration of a man’s covenant with God—a physical seal on that part of the body that passes traits to the next generation. No law, constitutional or not, can change that.

I also mention that some critics of the anti-circumcisers have claimed this movement is at least potentially anti-Semitic. I spoke with Matthew Hess, the guy running the MGM Bill organization, which is leading the legislative fight, and I didn’t get that impression. Instead it just seemed that Hess and others were anti-religious—or at least that they didn’t respect a religious impetus for male circumcision:

“Jewish people are not the only ones who practice circumcision,” Hess said. “In fact, they are a tiny minority. It is also practiced by Muslims; it is practiced culturally in the United States by people of any religion. It is not targeted toward Jewish circumcision, and I am always puzzled to hear the first thing to come out be: Oh, this is anti-Semitic.”

Well, I wish I had seen the Foreskin Man comic before we went to press Thursday. That’s it in the above image; it turns out that Hess wrote and created the comic book. Kind of undercuts his I-can’t-believe-people-think-we-hate-Jews spiel.

I’ll let Debra J. Saunders of the SF Chronicle describe what is going on:

Hmmmmm. Blonde superhero. An evil rabbi before a baby, a glass and a bottle of wine. And there’s a character named “warrior” of the “intactivist underground” who doesn’t care about rules or law and has one goal: “to stop child circumcisers dead in their tracks.”

I spoke with Matthew Hess of Foreskinman.com this morning. I asked him if the comic is anti-Semitic. He answered, “A lot of people have said that, but we’re not trying to be anti-Semitic. We’re trying to be pro-human rights.”

Jonah Lowenfeld has more on Foreskin Man here.

34 Comments — Leave your comment

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Brad,

Just to clarify your comment that “only the Orthodox widely require circumcision” in regard to conversion. That is actually not true. The Conservative and other forms of Judaism also still require circumcision for conversion. And in the event that a person is already circumcised, a procedure called Hatafat Dam Brit, a symbolic drawing of a drop of blood.

Comment by Rabbi Joshua Brumbach on 6/04/11 at 8:44 pm

My understandin is that while that is true, it is not universally true throughout the Conservative movement and that, unlike in Orthodox Judaism, there are Conservative rabbis who will accept a conversion without circumcision.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 6/04/11 at 9:03 pm

The excellent website http://www.circinfo.net/ has a comprehensive listing of health benefits of circumcision in infancy. The author, Prof Brian J. Morris “... is a full professor in the medical faculty of a major very prestigious highly reputable university, has 40 years of scientific research experience and more than 280 research publications.”

Dr. Morris advocates universal circumcision as an imperative (I don’t). Dr. Morris makes the case that anti circumcision activists are driven by homosexual pedophilia. Just to connect the dots, there is also a strong relationship between homosexuality and anti semitism. See The Pink Swastika at http://www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/books/pinkswastika/html/the_pinkswastika_4th_edition_-_final.htm

Additional proof is that so-called ‘intactivists’, Jewish or otherwise have nothing to say about tattoos and piercing, cosmetic surgery and implants, sex-change operations, or surgery to create elf ears and forked tongues; in fact any bodily alterations except for circumcision.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/04/11 at 11:14 pm

ANTI CIRC here….it’s a terrible practice!

Comment by 100%Jewish Republican female on 6/05/11 at 3:22 am

I have a few questions for you.
1) Were you always a female?

2) Are you comfortable being a female?

3) When you buy a car, don’t you get the deluxe trim package?

4) Does the term ‘Funkadelic Hoodie’ evoke anything in you?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/05/11 at 6:11 am

I’m suprised anyone can muster the chutzpah to defend cutting off a healthy normal exquisitely pleasure receptive part of someone else’s body without their informed consent. 

Foreskin feels REALLY good.  HIS body, HIS decision.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/05/11 at 12:11 pm

Thousands of young and older adult males a year are circumcised due to deformity (phimosis), traumatic injury (zippers gone wild) or conversion to Judaism or Islam. NOT ONE of those report a diminution of sexual pleasure or function after the procedure. The reverse is true. Likewise, the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes that trimmed males have LESS sexual dysfunction than untrimmed ones.

But let’s pretend we didn’t know that, and there really is less sensitivity to the trimmed member., Well, that would be like the Lidocaine spray men buy to numb the glans so as to last longer. Now let’s apply that information.

1) Research reported in the NY Times magazine concludes that the chief trait distinguishing human society from ape society is the sexual promiscuity of the apes.

2) As one might expect, apes have no clue about which other apes they are related to and have a herd or pack structure rather than a family structure.

3) The physical difference between humans and apes is the presence of a penile bone structure and hyper-sensitive penile ridges in the apes.

4) The absence of these in humans leads to staying hard longer and a concomitant increase in pairing and sexual bonding necessary for family formation. and genetic diversity.

5) As a nation identified with a mission to build and maintain a stable model society, these human traits need reinforcement.

6) Therefore a procedure that reduces sensitivity a little bit and thus enhances and lengthensthe sex act does so reinforce the human character, family structure and societal stability.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/05/11 at 9:29 pm

You forgot to mention the blond mother who looks like she is being restrained by the eveil Jew behind her.

Comment by Bill Pewarlman on 6/07/11 at 4:17 am

What is the big deal here? I do not understand why anyone should be surprised that this iniative has surfaced first in San Francisco. It has long been known as America’s asshole. Are not many its residents assholians? Even its so-called Jews historically have been quite out of the Jewish mainstream, far more interested in qualifying to join their Christian neighbors’ clubs than in preserving their own heritage. Whether it is anti-Zionism or anti-circumcision it is all the same.

Comment by cacapasa on 6/07/11 at 3:52 pm

I read your opinion in the WSJ (The Circumcision Wars).
As a Roman Catholic my question to you is, what has God to do with the skin of my penis?

Comment by Nicholas Molnar on 6/07/11 at 5:50 pm

“circumcision is a declaration of a man’s covenant with God”.
Yes, but a baby is definitely NOT a man.
He may ask for this mutilation when he’s older enough, but forcing it on a baby should be a crime.

Comment by Alex on 6/08/11 at 7:29 am

Alex, why don’t we apply your logic on the issue of homosexuals being allowed to adopt? Shouldn’t a child have the choice of being raised in a home with homosexuals, forever a product of that environment or to grow up in the normal way? Shouldn’t we allow the child to decide? Perhaps he should be given the option as an adult instead. Perhaps forcing that on a baby should be a crime.

Comment by Chanan on 6/10/11 at 6:06 am

^^ Shouldn’t a child have the choice of being raised in a home with homosexuals ^^

To prohibit gay adoption, you’d have to first show that it is detrimental.  Not possible. 

Foreskin amputation IS harmful, and further, unlike the adoption, it’s a decision that can easily wait until the male is old enough to make his own rational informed choice.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/10/11 at 8:02 am

Who determines what is ‘harmful’?

Comment by Chanan on 6/10/11 at 9:17 am

^^ Who determines what is ‘harmful’? ^^

How about the world’s medical associations. 

Australia has banned non-therapeutic circumcision in public hospitals.  South Africa says boys can’t be cut until 16 (when they can choose).  Sweden says only a medical doctor in a medical facility may perform surgery.  Holland’s official 2010 policy statement (the world’s most up-to-date medical society policy) says “doctors must actively and insistantly discourage families from circumcising due to the absence of medical benefits and danger of complications.”  They also make the case that it should be illegal due to the sexual drawbacks.  Read their well-footnoted policy in English by Googling “KNMG circumcision policy.”

Comment by Ron Low on 6/10/11 at 9:31 pm

Chanan, you’re a genius.

Ron Lowe
You have not made a case for any harm whatsoever resulting from circumcision, and you have ignored all of the benefits from circumcision that have been presented. The overwhelming finding regarding circumcision is that it is at worst neutral, both in a medical and functional terms, and at best lifesaving.

Nevertheless, for our purposes a simple religious exemption would satisfy all parties.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/12/11 at 1:28 am

Ben Plonie says: ^^ You have not made a case for any harm whatsoever resulting from circumcision ^^

It’s hard with your fingers in your ears. 

Skip my note and just Google “circumcision damage” if you like. Or read the recent Dutch Medical Association statement in English by Googling “KNMG circumcision policy.”  Again it says “absence of medical benefits and danger of complications.”

EVERY “successful” circumcision amputates about 15 square inches (in the adult) of exquisite sexual interface.  This skin includes about 20,000 specialized pleasure-receptive nerve engings, protects the glans and mucosal zone of shaft skin from drying and abrasion, and affords an exquisite frictionless rolling/gliding mode of stimulation. 

(continued)

Comment by Ron Low on 6/12/11 at 10:31 am

Ben Plonie says: ^^ You have not made a case for any harm whatsoever resulting from circumcision ^^

These things I’ve said about what foreskin is and does are not opinions.  Go to YouTube and watch the medical training video “Functions of the foreskin” (in 2 parts). 

So the fact is that foreskin amputation dramatically alters sexual function.  INFANT circumcision is haphazard, and has unintended consequences about half of the time (per Fletcher 2010).  These can include painfully tight skin, skin bridges and adhesions, gouges to the glans, asymmetry, malopposition, skin tags, bulgy painful truncated vein.  These go mostly unreported because men cut at birth have no idea what’s normal. 

The moral right to decide what sex should be like for a man belongs to that man, nobody else.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/12/11 at 10:36 am

You are repeating yourself, which means that you are the one with fingers in your ears to exclude my previous responses.

Your first point is adequately answered by research into complications of pediatric tonsillectomy, appendectomy, tooth extraction, orthodontics etc. All of these are exquisite organs with important functionality, and yet there are reasons, often elective, often prophylactic, to perform them and accept the incidental risks. On the whole those risks (while greater than those of circumcision) are of no practical concern to anyone. It used to be the practice to perform an appendectomy in the course of abdominal surgery for any other purpose.

The second point is answered by the experience of thousands of mature and aware males who undergo mandatory circumcisions as a result of trauma, urological dysfunction, and conversion to Judaism or Islam, who do not experience the purely theoretical dramatic alteration you describe or do experience an improvement in their experience. Note that this mythical dramatic alteration is never a factor in the decision to obtain a circumcision. You did not respond to my example of Julius Lester. The truth is that your obsession with the nerve endings makes you sound somewhat crazed on the topic.

Jewish circumcision is never haphazard, but may be the most highly developed, specified and refined procedure in medical history and experience.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/12/11 at 8:34 pm

Ben Plonie said: ^^ Jewish circumcision is never haphazard ^^

So the deaths and disfigurements are intentional?

Comment by Ron Low on 6/12/11 at 10:22 pm

Ben Plonie said: ^^ {men cut as adults} do not experience the purely theoretical dramatic alteration ^^

Wishful thinking.  You can still read when you take away one eye, but things don’t look the same.  You can’t amputate half the surface with which one experiences a partner and not change his sexual experience. 

Again, you do not know what the foreskin is or does if you think his and his partner’s experience is not changed.  Watch the YouTube please, if only to tell me I’m an idiot for recommending it.  Don’t remain ignorant.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/12/11 at 10:25 pm

I have documented that deaths and disfigurements are vanishingly few, and all avoidable. Furthermore, your own Korea studies plus the Africa studies plus the detailed testimony of Julius Lester, a sexually experienced man at age 50 all tell of no change to an improvement, balanced by the opposite in a small number of cases; the placebo effect works both ways.

In any case, again as I have documented, nobody gets or should get circumcised for the sexual effects or changes. Therefore they are secondary, at least for men of a practical and rational viewpoint. The analogy to tonsils is apt here.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/12/11 at 10:39 pm

“Informed consent from an infant?” Idiotic. Putting aside that it is a command from Hashem, a foreskin can harbor a precursor of CANCER in a woman. To compare it to the barbarous female “circumcision” is as absurd as Jew hate. In the Jewish circumcision, the child is not circumcised until the eighth day, the pain is minimal at that age.  If an adult is circumcised it is horribly painful. Just admit it, people, you are not going to stop the practice: It is UNCONSTITUTIONAL! How DARE you attempt to prohibit what our G-d has commanded?

Comment by Beverly Kurtin, Ph.D. on 6/13/11 at 10:30 pm

I am with you ideologically Beverly, but the problem here is not that our God beats their belief system. It is that they are trying to prove their case with lies and exaggerations. It’s a mystery why their parents circumcised them, and they are obviously free to do what they want with their children, but the real weakness in their position is that they need to convince us in order to validate themselves. It’s like gay marriage in that respect.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/13/11 at 11:12 pm

Beverly Kurtin, Ph.D. wrote: ^^ foreskin can harbor a precursor of CANCER in a woman ^^

Not one national medical association on earth (not even Israel’s) endorses routine circumcision.  The Israel Medical Association web site even hosts a write-up of a study debunking the link to cervical cancer.  And there’s now an HPV vaccine for M and F.

^^ If an adult is circumcised it is horribly painful. ^^

It’s less painful because he can tolerate more/better meds during the cutting and recovery, and he can control the dosage and explain whatever doesn’t feel just right during healing.  Most of all he can weigh in on the style and degree of cutting, and an adult would have someone NOT long dead to punch out if the job is done poorly.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/14/11 at 9:58 am

You are still trying to fight apples with oranges, and trying to solve a nonexistent problem. Every time you dwell on the Dutch medical society or whatever it is a change of subject. This is a Jewish website.

- Although there are overwhelming personal and public medical benefits to circumcision that are indisputable in a rational discussion,
- and although there is for practical purposes no downside to it…
that is not why Jews circumcise.

We do it because it is a core component and requirement for citizenship in the Jewish nation. As specified by God in the Bible, of course, and anyone who does not believe in God or the value of Jewish citizenship should not circumcise themselves or certainly their children for any reason other than tangible benefits. Those benefits are there as they always are for God’s prescriptions, but if do not or refuse to see them, there is no need to argue about it.

It seems that this is the situation in your case. You have not answered the question of whether you are Jewish in the first place, and if so whether your parents or guardians believed in the validity of God, Torah and Israel. If the answer to those is ‘no’, then you are perfectly correct in your resentment and ae even entitled to over-react a little. Circumcision was not for you. But there is no need to project your hangups on the world and especially on us Jews. Your secular case is weak in the face of the rational benefits of circumcision, and as Jews cannot relate to it at all. Sure, you can find a few Jews who will sign on, just as you will find a few Congressmen who send naked, leering photos of themselves to girls on the internet.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/16/11 at 4:26 am

You can say there is no downside to circumcising and claim there are medical benefits until you are blue in the face, but that doesn’t change the facts. 

Have you spent 20 minutes learning the “Functions of the Foreskin” at YouTube?  Have you typed “circumcision damage” into Google?  Deliberately remaining ignorant about something is not in keeping with Judaism at all. 

Why doesn’t the Israel Medical Association endorse routine circumcison?  Please, ask them yourself like I did. 

To say there is no downside to circumcision is to put your fingers in your ears and pretend the hundreds of thousands of men (Jewish and otherwise) who are distressed that their foreskin was amputated simply don’t exist. 

To say “I do it because god tells me to” I could respect.  I’d still say the government should protect your child from you.

Comment by Ron Low on 6/16/11 at 8:51 am

OK, “I do it because God tells me to”. Happy? We have already been here. Genesis 17:1-14 says it all. A born Jew without a circumcision is no longer a Jew. Therefore, any Jew distressed about his circumcision is really distressed hat he is a Jew. A little nutty but ce la vie. Any non-Jew distressed about his circumcision is entitled to be, and I would have no objection to your proposal for a death penalty for anyone who circumcises a non-Jew, as long as it doesn’t involve us.

That said, we take comfort and reassurance that God is good, especially to us Jews, and prescribes only beneficial things for us. Jew-groupies can copy those of our practices that they admire but it is certainly not required by God or by us. Obviously there are functions to the foreskin, but there are also documented functions of the circumcision, and you are the one with your fingers in your ears.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/16/11 at 10:34 pm

“Genesis 17:1-14 says it all. A born Jew without a circumcision is no longer a Jew”

Chapter 17 says no such thing. An uncircumcised Jew is an arel and excluded form certain ceremonies, but he is still a Jew.

The brit milah can still be a sacred ceremony if infant circumcision were abolished. In fact, it would be even more sacred if it were only performed on individuals able to consent. How is it significant to force a covenant with God on an infant who cannot understand the spiritual ramifications of the ceremony?

Comment by Ken on 6/28/11 at 7:19 pm

My God’s better than your God,
My God’s better than yours.
My God’s better because
She wears underwear,
My God’s better than Yours

Sing that to the Kibbles song..my dog’s better…

That makes as much sense as some of the comments I’ve read.  What is it going to take to get some of you to understand that whatever our God says we are GOING TO DO REGARDLESS OF ANY OF MAN’S LAWS.
The discussion is pretty much of no importance as it will not pass even if it gets on the ballot, which is at doubt now.  IF it passes, however, it will be instantly vacated because it violates the BILL OF RIGHTS.

Viz: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… DO ANY OF YOU GET IT NOW?  NOBODY CAN PROHIBIT THE FREE EXERCISE of any religion. Once again, how in the hell can an infant give “informed consent?” 

What Genesis 17 says is that in verse 14 of Torah: And if any ale who is uncircumcised fails to circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his kin, he has broken my covenant. (From Tehach by the Jewish Publication Society)

That seem to mean he is not a Jew, but in reality it means that he cannot perform any of the normal duties of a Jewish man.

There is only ONE reason for attempting to block circumcision, the nastiest, least intelligent, moronic reason: JEW HATE. I never call it antisemitism because even Arabs are Semites as are other groups.

Majorities are always trying to take away the rights of minorities and if Jews are not a minority, I don’t know what is. There are about one billion Muslims and only fourteen million Jews on the same planet. Various countries attempt to deny Jews the right to eat kosher meat by outlawing kosher slaughter methods. The fact that kosher butchering is the most humane method of slaughter (the animal must not feel any pain during their death, they simply pass out and bleed out). Those nations don’t give a crap about whether the animal hurts or not; they simply want to make life hard for Jews.  Of course, most of those countries have a large Muslim population…

So, is San Francisco filled with Jew haters or not?  Yeah, it is.

Comment by Beverly Kurtin, Ph.D. on 6/28/11 at 8:50 pm

I am an Intactivist, yet, I do not have any problem with ANY religion.  However, religious freedom ends where another person’s body begins.  You have actually stated this yourself… “circumcision is a declaration of a man’s covenant with God—a physical seal on that part of the body that passes traits to the next generation.”  Exactly.  A MAN’S covenant with God.  Not a baby’s.  A baby does not have a covenant with God, as a baby has not yet chosen his religious path or made a conscious decision to enter into that covenant.  THAT is our point.  If men want to be circumcised as an adult in order to fulfill that covenant with God, then that is their right, and their perceived commandment.  They are an adult and can make that decision.  But an infant should not have that decision made for himself by someone else.  The same was true of girls.  There are religions that call for the circumcision (varying in severity across a broad spectrum) of females, yet the US has banned that practice for ANY reason, medical or religious.  Boys are no different.

Comment by Meg on 6/28/11 at 9:09 pm

Circumcision is looking like a grand farce already. Anyone who justifies losing this precious piece of tissue in order to make a “covenant” with an imaginary god is psychotic. Imagine god operating as Froggy the Gremlin. “Hey, rabbi, now pick up that scissors and cut the skin off the tip of that kid’s penis! AH, Ah, ah!!!

Comment by Tijeffe on 6/29/11 at 12:23 pm

Looks like Ben and Bev are special; they are not limited to the same 700-word law that intactivists are. 

At any rate, Bev, i would protect YOU from FGM, because I know how awful it was for me. 

Ben, I would protect YOU from MGM, because I know how awful it is for anyone to be held down and cut.  Other Jewish men have confronted me when I have said, “No circumcision - except religious circumcision is ok” with “Do you mean you would not protect ME?”  So you see, Brad - I mean Ben, we intactivists are between a rock and a hard place.  We love you.

cutting genitals is a fetish whose time is up.  It is time for all abuses to end.  The world, she is a’changing.

Comment by Patricia Robinett on 6/29/11 at 4:43 pm

I think the character counting software gadget or widget is buggy. I get trapped in it all the time. I would respond to your post except I can’t get a handle on the sense of it. Maybe I will get a chance to look at it again later.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/30/11 at 5:12 am

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