Jews Don't Think San Francisco's Proposed Ban Will Stop Circumcision

“I don’t think some naughty Jewish guy with a chip on his shoulder is going to bring ritual circumcision down,” Mr. Trager said, listing dictators like Hitler and Stalin who tried to forbid the practice.

Jews Expect Proposed Ban Won’t Stop Circumcision
By AARON GLANTZ • New York Times

Over the last decade, Rabbi Moshe Trager has performed more than 3,000 circumcisions on Bay Area Jews, he estimates. Mr. Trager, 45, said he sometimes performs as many as five in one day — driving as far as Lake Tahoe to snip a foreskin, helping modern Jews fulfill a commandment they believe was first issued by God to Abraham thousands of years ago.

Mr. Trager said he is not worried about an initiative to ban circumcision of boys in San Francisco, which may land on the November 2011 ballot. “I don’t think some naughty Jewish guy with a chip on his shoulder is going to bring ritual circumcision down,” Mr. Trager said, listing dictators like Hitler and Stalin who tried to forbid the practice.

The initiative is being circulated by a retired hotel credit manager, Lloyd Schofield, and needs 7,100 signatures to qualify for the ballot, a relatively easy task in a city with more than 800,000 residents. Mr. Schofield says the initiative is needed to protect children from what he calls “forced genital cutting.”

The initiative would amend San Francisco’s police code “to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18.” Violations would result in a $1,000 fine.

Those familiar with such ballot questions say the initiative stands virtually no chance of passing and is destined to become the latest measure to bring ridicule to San Francisco, like the failed 2008 proposition that would have barred the police from enforcing laws against prostitution.

But the circumcision measure has managed to enrage the Bay Area’s Jewish establishment. The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Board of Rabbis of Northern California and the American Jewish Committee issued a joint statement calling brit milah, the covenant of circumcision, “of fundamental importance in the Jewish tradition.”

Mr. Trager is a full-time mohel, a person who performs ritual circumcision. A Jewish resource directory lists eight other Bay Area pediatricians and urologists who perform ritual circumcision in the home. In interviews, mohels said they don’t expect to be out of work anytime soon.

Dr. Mark Rubenstein, a retired pediatrician in Walnut Creek who has performed circumcisions on Jews and non-Jews for 49 years, said even Jewish parents who eat pork, work on the Sabbath and celebrate Christmas will circumcise their children.

“Do I keep a kosher home? No,” Dr. Rubenstein said. “But are I, my sons and grandsons circumcised? You better believe it.”

According to a 2007 report from the World Health Organization, circumcision remains nearly universal among American Jews, with 98 percent of Jewish men having been circumcised. About 80 percent of American males are circumcised, but recent studies have shown that rates are declining.

The numbers may be trending downward in Northern California, where a small but vocal number of parents and medical practitioners have been speaking out against the practice.

Their leader is Dr. Mark David Reiss, a retired San Francisco physician who promotes an alternative ceremony for newborn boys. He calls it brit shalom, or the covenant of peace, and says it is immoral to perform a surgery with minimal health benefits and the potential for complications.

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Comments

[catcher50]

I am not a mohel, and am well passed child producing age (cancer and an operation have made that an absolute), although a nephew of mine was a mohel in the S.F. area, before he died at too young an age.

This is a "movement" that has been going on for well over a decade and, thus far, has gained very little traction. It is lead by a very few extremists who feel that their opinion is the only thing that is important and correct. While it is possible that such an initiative might even get on the ballot, but, even if passed, there might be a serious challenge to preventing either Jews from performing B'rit Milot or Moslems from doing circumcision at the age of 13. Let's remember that Kiddush wine was exempted from Prohibition.

What is ironic, of course, is that most of the latest studies have shown that circumcision does have definite medical benefits. Of course, those who are leading this charge don't want to see those studies.

[catcher50]

Sorry, I meant to add to the first para in the previous post that I don't have a horse in this race.

[IH]

There is a hysterically funny send-up of this phenomenon in Howard Jacobson's "The Finkler Question" on pages 220-223 (some of which can be seen on Google Books by searching for "Poliakov").

[Garnel Ironheart]

I wonder what Lloyd Schoefeld's position on abortion is. In my experience, the same people who have such a problem with circumcision on post-natal infants have no problem with murdering prenatal ones.

[Shmarya]

I wonder what Lloyd Schoefeld's position on abortion is. In my experience, the same people who have such a problem with circumcision on post-natal infants have no problem with murdering prenatal ones.

Halakha doesn't consider all abortion to be murder, so your analogy is deeply flawed.

[Garnel Ironheart]

I'm not talking about halacha. I doubt Lloud Schoefeld knows what the word even means. My point is entirely different - the same people who support indiscriminate abortion (which halacha does NOT support) seem to have a problem with circumcision which seems to make no sense.

[Adam Neira]

San Francisco trying to ban circumcision is like Sodom and Gomorrah trying to outlaw monogamy.

[Jeff]

I wonder what Lloyd Schoefeld's position on abortion is. In my experience, the same people who have such a problem with circumcision on post-natal infants have no problem with murdering prenatal ones.

And there you go again. As I said recently, sometimes you talk sense, and sometimes you say the most stupid goddamn things - although, I must say, as the years go by, you seem to be leaning increasingly toward the latter.

[Shmarya]

I'm not talking about halacha. I doubt Lloud Schoefeld knows what the word even means. My point is entirely different - the same people who support indiscriminate abortion (which halacha does NOT support) seem to have a problem with circumcision which seems to make no sense.

For people who view life as beginning at birth, not at conception, the logic makes perfect sense.

Past that, saying that an irreversible operation done at 8 days old should be delayed until the child is old enough to make the decision for himself is completely logical.

[soso]

Is this really the text? And it does not exclude medical circumcition from the misdemeanor charge?????

[harold]

Jews Expect Proposed Ban Won’t Stop Circumcision

I don't think so either. There is a supposed separation of church and state and I don't think that meddling with a biggie like the Jewish REQUIREMENT of the bris will happen ANYWHERE in the US.

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

"Supposed" separation is right, Harold. Crazy goyishe republicans deny it exists, and would disenfranchise Jews in a minute. It's only safe in New York, where Jews are 10% of the population.

If there is truly separation of Ch and State, there would be no laws against abortion, since the Mishnah (in Ohalot) and later in the Rambam, permit it to the last moment before birth, because the actual life of the mother has priority over the potential life that is the fetus. Classical Christianity adopted the notion of ensoulment at conception, and they're worried about unbaptised souls.

[WoolSilkCotton]

++the same people who support indiscriminate abortion++

Nobody supports 'indiscriminate abortion'. Such distortions are commonplace in the religious antiabortion argument. Women are brainless idiots, and need religious men to make moral and ethical decisions for them.
I've been in the medical field for 35 years, and have yet to meet any female patient who took the decision lightly, and who didn't have a compelling reason for her decision to have an abortion.

And what does the abortion issue have to do with circumcision? If you're afraid that your arguments for circumcision don't have enough merit, why bring the other topic in? This is a common religious technique- try to discredit the person you're arguing with, by painting them as somehow less 'moral' than you are.

Sometimes religious Jews have abortions, too. They just go to hospitals a bit further out of town, where no one will know.

[Catcher50]

@OCR...I may be mistaken, but it is my understanding that "classical Christianity" did not ban abortions. The banning of abortions, because of the ensoulment at conception was a product of the 19th century Catholic Church. Previous to that, there had been no such ban. The right wing extremist Protestant nuts are strictly a product of the 20th century. Of course, because of the primitive state of medicine, at that time, abortions were relatively rare, but that had nothing to do with either religion or morals.

[Teddy]

Off Ice of the Chief Rabbi, seperation of church and state does not mean that medicine, justice and that kind of things should be ruled by religion.

[wisemonkey]

Pathetic that Jews, a people who champion human rights and liberal thought are so damned heads up the whoosper on this subject. Makes us all wonder.