An Israeli woman is being fined NIS 500 ($140) every day by a state rabbinical court for refusing to circumcise her one-year-old-son, even though there is no legal requirement for Jews in Israel to circumcise their sons and the woman and her husband are not religious.
Rabbinical Court Fines Woman $140 Per Day In Effort To Try To Force Woman To Circumcise Her Son
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
An Israeli woman is being fined NIS 500 ($140) every day by a state rabbinical court for refusing to circumcise her one-year-old-son, even though there is no legal requirement for Jews in Israel to circumcise their sons, +972 reported based on a Channel 2 news report which aired earlier today.
The Haifa Rabbinical Court imposed the fine after the woman’s husband has appealed to the court to pressure the woman into circumcising the son. The couple is in the process of divorcing. Under Israeli law, all Jews – even devoutly secular Jews – must divorce through state rabbinical courts which are now under near-exclusive haredi control. Those courts can jail spouses who defy their orders and can levy fines and other punishments with the full backing of police and state law enforcement.
“I’ve been exposed to a lot of information about circumcision and decided not to proceed with the circumcision. I have no right to cut at his genitals and to maim him, and the court has no authority to force me to,” the woman reportedly told Channel 2. She also said she is unemployed and does not have the money to pay the fine and claimed that her husband originally agreed to leave their son uncircumcised, but changed his mind during the divorce process.
The rabbi-judges reportedly said in their decision that the woman was blocking the circumcision in an attempt to force a reconciliation with her husband.
But those rabbi-judges also noted their fear that a precedent could be set by a Jewish Israeli woman being allowed to leave her son uncircumcised in light of the growing worldwide movement against ritual male circumcision elsewhere in the world.
“We have witnessed for some time now public and legal struggles against the brit milah [Jewish ritual circumcision] in many countries in Europe and in the United States. The public in Israel has stood as one man [sic] against these trends, seeing them as yet another aspect of displays of anti-Semitism that must be combatted. How will the world react if even here the issue of circumcision is given to the discretion of any person, according to their own beliefs?,” the rabbi-judges wrote.
Because of Israel’s draconian laws governing religion, the woman's only recourse to this ruling is reportedly to appeal to Israel’s High Court of Justice.