LETTER: Understand symbol of ritual

To the editor:

My experience — both in my own flesh, so to speak, and vicariously through my son’s circumcision roughly 12 years ago — is in direct contrast to Liz Emery’s blanket  condemnation of the brit milah practice, or “covenant of circumcision” in the Jewish tradition.

With respect to my son, I watched his circumcision — performed by a mohel flown in from Los Angeles expressly for the purpose — with both joy and trepidation — joy because it was in keeping with a cherished, ancient Jewish tradition and trepidation because it was my son up there in the hands of a man with a knife who I had only met hours beforehand.

Looking back, I think both emotions were natural, what one would expect from any parent who is forced to grapple with his commitment to tradition — for me it was especially difficult because I’ve never really been that committed — and his awareness of the apparently simple alternative. We could have had the procedure performed at a hospital without all the hooplah. Thankfully, for my wife and I, the joy quickly overwhelmed the trepidation. Watching him survive and eventually settle into a torpor, I too nestled into the warm embrace of the feeling that I had made the right decision.

As for my son, he has shown no after-effects that we are aware of — he’s a normal boy living a normal boyhood. And he is proud of his first body piercing, which may be the only one he’ll ever have, both for its obvious health reasons and for the intrinsic connection it makes with our ancestry.

As for me, it’s been roughly 50 years since I received my first and only body piercing. Like my son, I wear mine with pride, despite the fact that people like Liz Emery have whipped themselves into a frenzy believing it symbolizes an unethical act of savagery.

Arthur Caplan