COLUMN: Views on Jewish ritual were flawed
On Wednesday, March 21, 2012, The Utah Statesman published Liz Emery’s column, “Not All Religious Practices are Ethical.” Most Statesman readers – not being familiar with Judaism – may not have recognized what an ignorant, bigoted and tendentious attack on Judaism – and other religions – Emery’s column was. We Jews of Logan cannot allow such an attack on our religion, our traditions, our children, and ourselves, to go unchallenged. I would like to unmask some of her misrepresentations.
Emery’s article begins by citing a tragic case in which a two-week-old baby Jewish boy died as a result of an infection contracted from the circumciser. The particular practice to which she refers, removing a few drops of blood caused by circumcision directly by mouth, is practiced only by a small minority of the ultra-orthodox and is not the standard procedure for the vast majority of Jews today. Emery’s charge of pedophilia is transparently absurd and says more about her own distorted thinking than about anything else. Clearly, the death of a child because of a rabbi’s neglect and poor supervision is a horrible tragedy. Emery implies that no legal action is being taken and that the religious community is not very concerned. She says that the case has been “deferred to a religious council that will, in effect, do nothing to prevent this tragedy from happening again.” How can she know what the religious court (bet din) will do? Is she clairvoyant? Is she even familiar with the workings of such courts?
But the death caused by an irresponsible rabbi, practicing an atypical form of Jewish circumcision is, for Emery, really just an excuse to de-legitimize all circumcision. That is Emery’s real agenda. Thus she hides the fact that normative Jewish circumcision is one of the safest surgical procedures known to medicine. Her tendentious reference – from Hitchens, of all people – to “‘the number of boy babies who died from infection after their eighth day'” is disingenuous – it is a historical reference to an era before infection was understood, not to the present day. But since she is writing to defame rather than to illuminate, she leaves out the historical context.
Male circumcision is one of the most fundamental precepts of Judaism – as well as of Islam and hundreds of tribal religions throughout the equatorial belt of the world, including Africa and Australia. A serious, unbiased thinker will consider that when religions that disagree on many things do share a common belief and ritual, they may be on to something very important that we moderns don’t yet fully understand. But of course such an approach would require respecting the age-old traditions of other peoples – something Emery is obviously not ready to do.
Circumcision, for Jews, is the sign of G-d’s covenant with Abraham, the first Jew. For us it is the reminder of a mutual commitment made at the dawn of our history. The same sign remains inscribed on our bodies today, an indelible reminder of who we are and where our primary loyalties belong. Of this, Emery evidently knows nothing.
She has not bothered to inform herself about what circumcision means to its practitioners, yet she approvingly cites those “who promote legislation that prohibits the practice of circumcision altogether.” In other words, her stance, anchored in ignorance, is one of intolerance for cultural difference, interference in others’ cultural and religious traditions and disdain for religious freedom.
When Emery writes, “I don’t know any sentient man who would willingly submit to significant changes in that area of their body,” she reveals yet another level of ignorance. Men who convert to Judaism must undergo circumcision, so in fact there are many sentient – and from my point of view, very sentient – wide-awake men who are willing to undergo this surgery and ritual to join themselves to the Jewish people and G-d. In fact, circumcision is a more difficult and painful operation for an adult male, which is why the usual age of “brit milah” – the Hebrew term for circumcision, meaning “covenant” – is eight days, when healing is rapid and the procedure simpler. Thus, Emery’s “suggestion” that brit milah be postponed to adulthood is a prescription for pain and medical complication.
There is no space here to go into the issue of female circumcision (which does not exist in Judaism and is much less common globally than male circumcision). Emery breezily tosses it into the discussion as if male and female circumcision are equivalent. They are decidedly not.
Emery is also tendentious in her dismissal of possible health benefits of circumcision. The truth is that the jury is still out on this issue and that there are some medical studies that claim benefits as well as others that deny them.
At the end of her column, Emery writes that “parents … who are about (to decide) whether or not their child needs to be circumcised should reflect on whether the alteration of an infant’s genitalia is ethically justifiable. To any honest individual, I believe the answer is a resounding “no.” In Emery’s opinion, then, all Jews, all Muslims and all members of numerous African and Australian tribal religions are unethical and dishonest.
Emery’s ignorance is matched only by her arrogance.
– Steve Siporin is a USU English professor and active member of Cache Valley’s Jewish community. He has taught many folklore classes at USU including Jewish folklore. Comments on this column may be sent to statesmanoffice@aggiemail.usu.edu.