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November 21, 2009 12:41 pm PST

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I don’t know if there is anything technically wrong with this but I am not happy about it. It sort of falls into the category of ‘alternative’ medicine in the sense of using a friendly, family-oriented setting etc., and there is nothing wrong with that. And it makes good medical sense to have this procedure done by the mnost experienced practitioner you can find.

But it feels a little fraudulent to give the procedure a significance it doesn’t have, and establish a new-age ritual using traditional practitioners. Jews have risked their lives and freedoms to have this done, but for non-Jews it is more like a girl having her ears pierced or getting electrolysis than the mark of a covenant with God.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/20/08 at 4:13 pm

Mohels circumcising non-Jewish babies reveals an appalling lack of knowledge by some Christians concerning Christian teaching about circumcision. For mohels to take advantage of this situation and to profit financially from this ignorance is appalling!

St. Peter, who was Jewish, dismissed circumcision as unnecessary and disadvantageous: “And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?” (Acts 15:10)

St. Paul, who was also Jewish, warned Christians: “Pay close attention to me, Paul, when I tell you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no use to you.” (Galatians 5:2) He added, “Be on guard against those who mutilate” (Philippians 3:2), and “Circumcision counts for nothing, and its lack makes no difference either.” (1 Corinthians 7:19)

For Catholic Christians, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: ““Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”

Any mohel or Christian parent who participates in the circumcision of a Christian baby violates the moral law.  There is nothing “(w)holistic” about penile reduction surgery performed upon baby boys.  Today, baptism is what is required of Christians, not circumcision.

Imagine how upset Jews would feel if Christian clergymen travelled around baptizing Jewish babies, similar to these two Jewish mohels who are circumcising Gentile, Christian babies.  This is reprehensible and should stop immediately!

To learn more, see:
http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org/

and

http://www.acts15.org/

Comment by Petrina Fadel on 8/20/08 at 4:47 pm

I have no objection to your promoting against circumcision in accordance with your belief system, and to promote it among your co-religionists. And Judaism shares a prohibition against unnecessary surgery and body alteration with the Church. But the article makes it clear that it is the Christian parents who are seeking out the Jewish practitioners and not the mohels who are seeking out the clientele. I am not personally crazy about their accepting the work but I am not qualified to judge on the technical appropriateness of it. Likewise, if circumcision was not by now proven to be protective against various medical conditions you would have more of a point. But even if you were to drag in all the controversy about it, the evidence is proven well enough for both mohels and clients to feel comfortable with the choice.

But I beg to difer with you about your baptism comment. If Jewish parents (God forbid) actually sought out Christian clergymen to baptise their children, while other Jews would be upset, they would not blame the clergymen, and the clergymen themselves would be delighted to oblige.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/20/08 at 6:13 pm

To use “comfort” to describe mutilating cosmetic sexual surgery in which the patient is uninformed and unconsenting is the height of hypocracy.  If asked, ten out of ten babies would say “NO!” to circumcision.  Become better informed by viewing http://www.nocirc.org/

Comment by Barry Borella on 8/21/08 at 5:26 am

Ms. Fadel quotes paragraph 2297 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as though the Church actually condemns male circumcision.  This represents her interpretation, not actual Church teaching.  While Catholic hospitals refuse to provide abortion services and infertility treatment, they have no objection carrying out neonatal circumcision.  Clearly, Ms. Fadel holds the minority viewpoint on this matter.

The last time the Church actually condemned male circumcision was in Pope Eugene IV’s 1442 Papal bull.  The intent of this bull was not to promote the rights of the child, but to marginalize the Coptic Christians who continued to circumcise boys as a religious obligation.  Of course, what one Pontiff said 566 years ago has little bearing on current Church policy, at least in this case.

The website provided by Mr. Borella is so biased that it may indoctrinate one to the anti-circumcision position, but it hardly serves as a place to become better informed!

Comment by Aquanano on 8/21/08 at 10:20 am

It is unfortunate that some of us believe the human male is born in immediate need of surgical intervention.  However, Aquanano illustrates, it is difficult to open a closed mind.  This is a human rights issue.  Parents should not have the right to surgically alter their children, regardless of religious justification.  When the are consenting adults they can get all the cosmetic surgery and tatooing they desire.  Many men who have been circ’ed after reaching sexual maturity report that before, intercourse was like watching a movie in technicolor.  Post circ, the plot is the same, but now it is in black and white.
It is a barbaric practice.

Comment by Barry Borella on 8/21/08 at 10:47 am

Well, no shock that there are already a few posts from the anti-circ group. Give it a couple of days and they’ll be all over this.
Anyway, Ms. Fadel made the most wrongful comment here with: “Imagine how upset Jews would feel if Christian clergymen travelled around baptizing Jewish babies, similar to these two Jewish mohels who are circumcising Gentile, Christian babies.  This is reprehensible and should stop immediately!”
This just showed her appalling ignorance on the topic. These mohels aren’t performing a brit milah on Christian babies, they are performing a circumcision. And the two aren’t the same. Jewish babies require a brit milah, which includes a religious ceremony, when the baby boy is given his Hebrew name and welcomed to the Jewish community. So by just performing a circumcision, these mohalim aren’t making these babies Jewish, they’re just offering a prophylactic medical procedure that the parents believe is best for their sons. Some parents feel uncomfortable in the hospital environment and are aware of the gentleness offered by mohels and the in-home setting as opposed to the medical circumcisions. There’s no religion involved here unlike her analogy of the baptism. If Christian clergymen were going around baptising Jewish babies that would be proselitizying and forced conversion. This ins’t the case because these babies aren’t indoctrinated in Jewish religion and aren’t considered Jews simply because a mohel, as opposed to a doctor, performed the circumcision.
Now, I’m really not surprised at the shameless alarmist propaganda being spread by these so-called “intactivists”: Ms. Fadel, Mr. Borella, there’s a better place for such biased and wrongful opinions. Try mothering.com, they’ll hail you like heroes for spreading these lies over there!

Comment by Sarah on 8/21/08 at 1:34 pm

As a non-Jew, I think it’s fine for mohels to circumcise non-Jewish boys.  Although it’s not medically necessary, if Christians are going to have their boys circumcised they might as well have a mohel do it since studies show they are faster and less painful than in the hospital.

Comment by Marco on 8/21/08 at 7:41 pm

Barry Borella,
This is not the place to have this discussion anyway. Jews circumsize because God said to do it, and/or because is the requirement for citizenship in the Jewish nation. Jews don’t give a crap about why or if anyone else does it, or who does it for them. Your assertions are irrelevant to either of those points, even if you are a Jew which I doubt.

If you really want to make inroads against circumcision, why not begin with the *billion plus* Muslims rather than the twelve million Jews? Are you circumcized? Whose fault is that, the Jews? God? Abraham? If you have problems getting women or forming satisfactory relationships, your problem ain’t your missing foreskin, babe.

Just as the current news item that describes Christina Applegate electing for a double mastectomy in the face of a serious breast cancer risk, the sacrifice of a foreskin for a significant protection against all kinds of medical conditions is trivial. Now, take my foreskin… Please!

Maybe you are really worried about the Jewish enjoyment of sex. Well, there are any number of men who have been circumcized as adults, for reasons of medical or surgical complications, or simply because of conversion. One of the most famous and outspoken is Julius Lester, originally a Black Power militant who ultimately converted to Judaism in 1982. “...the procedure also boosted his sex life…”

“Circumcised there are far more subtle sensations, and staying power is much, much longer,” he said. “From a sexual point of view, I wish I’d gotten circumcised many years earlier.”

He said in his memoir “... “Lovesong”: “This was my first operation, and I was terrified. Dr. Miller, the surgeon who was going to hold my future in his hands, asked if I wanted just a local anesthetic or a general. I said, ‘knock me out!’ . . . An hour later, I woke in the recovery room, and the first thing I did was to peek and see if my penis was still there.” Lester, who initially expresses some concern as his penis is healing, later writes, “It works! It works better than ever!!!”

In the face of all kinds of bizarre piercings and tatoos and mutilations carrying high risks of complication, it is irrational and hysterical to focus on circumcision as a problem, unless something else is going on. Since you were kind enough to provide us with an informational website, I offer you http://www.circinfo.net/index.html run by a non-Jewish medical doctoral professor and researcher in genital cancer virology, molecular biology and other areas, with many medical interests and causes. He feels that circumcision is almost a medical necessity today. He makes a case that the nutty anticirc people are led by pedophiles with foreskin fetishes here http://www.circinfo.net/anti_circumcision_lobby_groups.html which includes a point-by-point FAQ refuting all of the arguments they flog in every forum they infest.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/21/08 at 8:16 pm

please check spam

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/21/08 at 8:17 pm

Also as a non-Jew (and uncircumcised) I don’t see a problem with this.

It’s a parent’s decision whether they choose to circumcise, and this may be for religious, cultural or medical reasons. Like anything, there’s pros and cons, but if parents choose circumcision for their sons, then why not have the best practitioners do it? It’ll be better and safe for both baby and family.

Comment by Brian on 8/21/08 at 8:41 pm

Why was my very applicable reponse to Barry Borella here first trapped in spam and then deleted?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/23/08 at 8:01 pm

It is significant that none of the pro-circ comments address the real issues: The right of an individual to an intact body; the immorality of performing a medically unnecessary procedure on an unwilling and unconsenting victim; the lifelong diminuation of sexual pleasure not only for the individual but for his partners as well. The first experience of a penis should not be pain.

Comment by Barry Borella on 8/24/08 at 5:15 am

Oh, the standard spiel from the anti-circ zealots.

1) Multiple studies have shown no harmful sexual side effects from circumcision. In fact, non-circumcised were actually found to suffer more sexual dysfuction than circumcised men.
2) A trim of a piece of skin is neither impproal nor unecessary. Especially when that trim results in less chances of infection, cancer,HIV and other STD’s. In fact it would border on immoral not to circumcise for these reasons.

Comment by Jeremy Stowell on 8/24/08 at 10:57 am

(Brad - Thank you for activating my comment, a little too long to recreate)

Thank you Borella for laying out your complaints so succinctly. It saves time.

The last place to advocate against circumcision is on a website oriented to Jews. We don’t do circumcision for or against any of the reasons you detail. We are not ‘pro-circ’. We don’t care if you have one or not or if you choose to tattoo a little smiley face on it. We do happen to have confidence that God does not ask of us unhealthy practices, and lo and behold! Circumcision is protective against cancer and AIDS. But we would do it even if the reverse were true, all the while seeking ways to make it safer and so forth.

For the spiritually minded, we do it because it enrolls us into the Covenant of Abraham. The neglect of it it ‘Karet’, or spiritual extermination, the opposite of eternal life. The Covenant of Abraham is one that is madated to our children and their children, so that we at least have no right to ‘an intact body’. But looking at the bright side, as in so very many Judaic prescriptions, having reserved this one deluxe trim package for His children, God forbids ALL other modifications, mutilations and abuses. Tattos, piercings, non-critical cosmetic surgery; all forbidden.

For the nationalistically oriented (not exclusive of the preceding) it is one requirement of citizenship in the Jewish nation. Without a circumcision an otherwise qualified Jew is not a Jew. He will not be admitted to a Jewish school, no typical Jew will marry him, he will not be buried among other Jews.

There are no God police, or circumcision police. We tend to forget that Jews are free to opt out any old time they feel like it, leaving them free to affiliate with the other 99.8% of humanity.
As far as performing a medically unnecessary procedure on an unwilling and unconsenting victim, if you are a genuine do-gooder I hope you will check out this unpleasant and horrific yet eye-opening website devoted to ‘psycho-history’, or the application of psychoanalysis on historical practices.
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/index.htm
The major premise of this site is that much of history can be traced to child-rearing/abuse practices of the age. He is no fan of circumcision but he does place it in context.

I won’t cut and paste much of the content for shock value, but if you are for real you will drop the anti-circ nonsense and devote your life to more productive pursuits. I will only include a concluding sentence or two, in this case from the paper entitled “The Universality of Incest “:
“There is hardly an imaginable form of genital assault that is not regularly performed on children. Girls’ genitals are tattooed, cut off, sewn up, burned off, and ripped open with the fingers.(199) Boys’ genitals are pierced by objects, sewn up, burned, cut off, flayed, “gashed open [so that] wedges of flesh are removed,” and slashed through to the urethra so that “the penis splits open like a boiled frankfurter.”(200) The topic of childhood genital mutilation is so rich in meaning that it will have to await further discussion in the next two major sections of this study, “The Cross-Cultural Study of Incest,” where the universality of incest in contemporary preliterate groups is documented, and “The History of Incest”...”

I must refer you back to my now-restored post regarding the necessity for circumcision or lack of thereof, conatining a link to http://circinfo.net/ , and as far as the lifelong diminution of sexual pleasure please refer back to the statements of Julius Lester, who was circumcised at age forty, having a basis for comparison that I for example lack.

There is no room in kind of forum for much more in-depth discussion.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/24/08 at 9:07 pm

My post is SPAM! Oh no, not again!

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/24/08 at 9:07 pm

Mr. Borella,
The fact that you even think that comments such as yours are acceptable on a Jewish journal is appalling. Not only are the yfilled with lies (the reduction in sexual satisfaction, for example) but you suddenly feel that you have th eright to tell others how they should follow their faith. Not nice, Mr. Borella. 
It’s understandable that yuo feel strongly about this. But in case you haven’t noticed, the people here aren’t interested in your ideas. your efforts would be better spent in places were people will actually be interested in listening to what you have to say. You’re wasting your time, your insulting the people here and you’re portraying yourself as a laughable intolerant by continuing to post lie after lie after lie, maybe expecting that someone will fall for it. We won’t fall for it, Mr. Borella. Because we’re not stupid. We can see that your claims aren’t consistent with reality, with OUR reality.
Do yourself a favor and stop making a fool of yourself here. We’re NOT interested.

Comment by Sharon on 8/25/08 at 3:17 pm

Rather than having a typical debate about circumcision as some people seem to be doing above, let’s keep the focus of the discussion on the specific topic - non-Jews wanting to have their boys circumcised by a mohel.  That’s what this article is about - the typical debate for and against the practice itself can be found on hundreds of other sites.

The point is that many non-Jews are still having their boys circumcised and since they are, they might as well have the option of having it done by an expert who does it better.

Comment by Pamela on 8/25/08 at 3:29 pm

When I want Chinese food, I like to see a Chinese cook. When I want a circumcision, I don’t want to see a Chinese urologist. Case closed.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/25/08 at 6:22 pm

Some of the most important and effective intactivists in the world, in earlier times and now, have been and are Jews. I include Abraham (who ended religious child sacrifice done in the name of God; circumcision is religious child sacrifice; Genesis 17 is a lie inserted into Genesis by corrupt priests 400 years after the first version was written, containing no such lie), Moses (whose second commandment, prohibiting “the crime of fathers against children” condemns circumcising and prescribes punishment “to the third and fourth generation” [the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who circumcise), Jesus (read John 7), St. Peter (Acts 15), St. Paul (Galatians 5), many of the founders of the Jewish Reform movement of the 1800s, Edward Wallerstein, George Wald, Harvard biologist and Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine (1967) (see http://StopInfantCircumcision.org/crick-wald.htm), and today Ron Goldman (see http://circumcision.org), Leonard Glick, Mark Reiss, MD (see http://DoctorsOpposingCircumcision.org), Norm Cohen, Miriam Pollock, and many others too numerous to list. Jews gave up stoning adulterous wives to death, sacrificing animals, and lots of other hokum in the Torah, and Jews are in the process of giving up the child sacrifice of circumcising, too. The civilized ones already have.

Comment by Van Lewis on 9/07/08 at 10:13 pm

I also highly recommend http://JewsAgainstCircumcision.org

Comment by Van Lewis on 9/07/08 at 10:16 pm

It seems you are too lazy to have read my comments and those of others before smearing your graffiti on this blog thread. You have not brought in anything not addressed earlier, and it would be obvious that the world of ‘intactivists’ has far greater problems on its hands, so to speak, then circumcision for committed Jews. I am not going to synthesize a new version of it now, but we could stop now and wait while you do that… (hmmm)... (mmm)... (z-z-z)... Oh well, let’s move on.

Unfortunately, you have that common secular humanist tendency to shoot yourself in the foot by overstating your case. Your credibility is undermined by foolish lies and childish logic.

If you want to say that you don’t believe Abraham existed or Moses is wrong, fine, and have a nice day along with all the important and civilized Jewish ‘intactivists’. But explaining and interpreting the Bible to us is laughable. So-o-o ... the Bible has no authenticity, but it also really can be taken to mean the opposite of what it says explicitly, and all the really very best and most important civilized people don’t obey it anyway WAIT A MINUTE!!! DID YOU SAY NORM COHEN???? THAT NORM COHEN???? Who the hell is Norm Cohen?

This is all very old stuff. Foreigners opposing and ridiculing circumcision have been around for thousands of years. Some out of resentment at our claim to a divine covenant, some out of an ‘intactivist’ ideology. Those guys are now less than piles of dust.

If I needed to repeat one thing, look at the steps Christian Applegate (just to name a well known and recent case) took just recently to preempt a life threatening situation. Nobody sane is not ‘anti-mastectomy’ in the absence of a damn good reason. Now be aware that the specific tissue type underlying the foreskin is literally a red carpet and a welcome home band to the AIDS virus. You would not be aware that the World Health Organization conducted a longitudinal study on sexual practices and circumcision and their relation to HIV/AIDS contagion in several African countries, and literally had to halt the study when the protective effect of circumcision became OVERWHELMINGLY clear and it was deemed irresponsible to make a known sacrifice of lives and health for pro forma conduct of the study. Just go to Reuters for example and throw ‘circumcision’ into the search box and watch this story unfold over several years. And the UN, the WHO, Reuters etc. are no friends of either the Jews or genital mutilation nor are they controlled by the Elders of Zion or some such.

The doctors in the study were no fans of circumcision either, and were anywhere from shocked to dismayed to learn the civilized and rational and scientific FACTS AND TRUTH. Now in Africa they are lining up to get circumcised, if not for their own sake than for the sake of getting nookie.

If Ashley Montagu were alive today, he would not oppose the public health measure in that knowledge. Of course, anyone changing his name from Israel Ehrenberg to Ashley Montagu cannot be relied upon to be emotionally undistorted on the topic of Jewish culture and customs, especially those so deucedly obvious in the locker room, what hey? just as Freud, Marx, Einstein etc. spoke on things Jewish as outsiders to say the least.

And Van - Got Purell?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 9/08/08 at 8:43 am

Thank you Van Lewis for a breath of fresh air.

Comment by Barry Borella on 9/08/08 at 8:49 am

Like I said, you need to prioritize. If you could convince the billions of non-Jews in the world not to get circumcised, wouldn’t it be a wonderful world? And if you could convince the Jews to stop but fail to convince the Muslims, wouldn’t that be a waste of your valuable, important, effective and civilized time?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 9/08/08 at 11:07 am

Say,Barry and Van - while we have you in the room. You got any references to anti-circ intactivists who also have websites or speakers bureaus against vasectomies, tongue-piercings, tattoos, hair transplants, boob jobs and the like? I don’t mean just those things, they have to be anti-circ PLUS those things. No? Strange…

Comment by Ben Plonie on 9/09/08 at 8:17 am

Please don’t lump all circumcision opponents together. I agree that the harms of circumcision have been exaggerated (as have the benefits). But my gut instinct tells me that a comparable procedure performed on infant girls would not be tolerated in the United States. I’m not comparing circumcision to FGM - read what I said again.

Comment by ou812 on 11/10/08 at 9:30 pm

Hey, I would oppose it for all non-Jews too if I cared enough. Jewish law does oppose any body alteration (including piercings and tattoos) except for circumcision, which seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/11/08 at 10:20 pm

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