Is being Jewish being part of a religion or a community?

Both. Being Jewish is as much a culture as it is a religion. It is as much an identity as it a religion.

Do you follow the religious laws or the laws of the society in which you live?

Again both. For the most part they don’t come into conflict as religious laws. Even circumcision doesn’t conflict with the laws of the country with in I live. Most of my recollection of when this has come into conflict was due to blatant anti-semtisim, when it was illegal for Jews to practice as Jews (holocaust, Russia etc).

I believe off hand that their is Jewish law that deals with how to deal with the local laws, but I can’t quite recall all the details.

As parents you SHOULD have the right to choose, but that right comes from being a parent, not from being a Jew. Being Jewish doesn’t give you any special rights over any other parent.

Quite correct. I’m partly trying to explain the reasoning a parent (mine, me one day (maybe, who knows) would make this decision, and because I’m Jewish this is the context I have. Also I have been accused of having no basis for this but my culture and hence am trying to explain how I do believe that saying culture has nothing to do with it is overly reductionist and it’s not just that simple.

Also I’m not saying that Jewish parents must circumcise their children, I’m saying that parents should have the right to make this parental choice as they currently do.

Self determination is false because their is a collective determination? That sounds like a fairly dangerous statement, don’t ya think? The collective always takes precedence over the self? Is that really what being Jewish is all about? Surely not.

No no not at all. What I meant was that the determination on the tradition is still in our hands and we can choose to end it.

Being Jewish isn’t about the collective over self. Although I might argue that all societies have some degree of the collective over self and need this to function. However this is a completely separate philosophical debate.

This statement could easily be made by a Sunna about Female Genital Mutilation. Do you consider it an adequate defence?

I don’t consider FGM and male circumcision the same. I explained my viewpoint in my comment on part 2.

Circumcision does not give a Jew his religious character as a Jew. An uncircumcised Jew is a full Jew by birth

That’s true. But he wont be able to get married, and he wont be able to have Barmitzvah. And a whole host of other things.

Trust me when I say this will cause a whole host of complications, both growing up and when it gets to dating and marriage.

Not in every case, but in many cases, double so if he wants a strong Jewish identity.

o to cite the difficulty of specifying an age at which one ‘ought’ to decide about circumcision as a reason not to permit that decision to be made as an adult

I’m not saying their is a difficulty in specifying the age. I’m saying to assume that the decision made at 7 or 13 or 16 is fully understood and self determine is not true either. The social context and pressures and parental context and pressures play as much of a part and perhaps at times even more so. The same way to assume when kids want to go to MacDonalds this is not really a choice either but the product of media and society.

Not that I’m saying that choice is necessarily wrong or that having choice open to you is wrong. But the idea that we make correct informed choices all the time because we are able to is not true. We like to think we have free choice in all things but in reality, I don’t think we have as much choice as we think we do either.

I would say this equally applies to two 21 year old parents deciding to circumcise their child. How much of that choice is truly considered? I now believe if I was to have children and decided to have their circumcised, I would making that choice from a point where I had far more consideration as to why I was making that choice.

Yet regardless you think I should be legally prohibited from making that choice. I do not think you should be able to determine the choices I make as a parent.

To say it’s a valid reason that a child ought to have this done when it is too young to remember the pain is frankly ludicrous

I don’t see why it is ludicrous. If I feel that at 16 the child will remember the pain and associated context and feel this is more traumatic why would I not want to avoid the situation I think is more painful?

Comparing stories between people circumcised at 8 days and those sexually aware, in general seems those circumcised in 8 days are far happy it was done then and not when they are older.

If you ask me when I would choose to be circumcised, I would choose to be circumcised at 8 days. This would be my choice as an adult.

why not pierce the child’s ears and nose and navel too while you’re about it? I think there are many positive associations to being pierced and tattooed so why not do it while the kid is too young to remember how much it hurt? Come on.

Well all the positive aspects in piercing and tattoos seem to be in the experience (and quite often undergoing the pain). More like Mandela’s circumcision, in the context within which we exist the benefits seem to come from having this done as an experience and not avoiding the pain.

And I will say again; something cannot be automatically justified or rendered socially or culturally acceptable just because it has been an ‘integral part’ or Judaism - or anything else for that matter - for however long.

I agree. But you assume that the social implications are meaningless and have no value.

There are many, many practices that have been going on for a very long time that we now consider unacceptable, so you may quote your five thousand years of religious tradition all you like and I’ll still say that the right of a child in the society we live in today with the standards and evolved beliefs we hold outweighs the rights of a parent to force that child to conform to a tradition it never has had a chance to consider for itself.

Although today’s society with evolved beliefs supports my choice as a parent to make this decision.

Also I would say that the child wont have the chance to consider being Jewish if he grows up uncircumcised. You view the decision to choose to be circumcised as more important. I view the decision as to be Jewish more important.

Also would post natal circumcision be made illegal tomorrow as you would have it, you fail to take into account that cultures are not just an array of mutually exclusive attributes but a woven tapestry. For things to change, things take time, and destroying the greater culture without consideration for the value it’s history and it’s social organisation brings to it’s people, is vastly more damaging to vastly more people.

You assume that in 5500 years rabbis and congregants and fathers and mothers have never debated this. Never considered the meaning of this, never evolved. Just followed blindly because it was tradition. Put 10 Jews in a room and you have 12 opinions.

I struggle to see how someone who is not Jewish, who is not a parent and who is not a circumcised male gets to decide that over 5500 years everyone else was always wrong. By all means discuss and engage. As do Jews. But your moral value system is not the absolute.

Even if post natal circumcision is wrong, the change will have to come from within the communities who do it, slowly over time. Their is greater harm in legislating against this. In 5500 years it is possible that the reason this practice has remained is as much to do with the fact it may not be harmful or that the social benefits of a community outweigh the person benefits of self determination over a minor piece of elective surgery.

There are many ‘traditions’ that collective determination has decided are no longer acceptable and have ended, many things now that even a century ago we would have had no problem with and we now find distasteful.

I agree. What about those that we have collective determined are still acceptable? Like circumcision?

If circumcision is something we start finding is no longer acceptable it will die out. By parents electing against it. Not by legislation.

Religious customs are always the very last thing to be questioned but because change happens there slowly doesn’t mean the majority has declared it to be right.

Doesn’t mean the majority has declared it to be wrong either.

Gordon very rightly said, the placing of moral authority with the collective rather than the individual is a very dangerous path to be going down and one seen scarily often in religions of all kinds.

Placing the moral authority with the collective … as in … a democracy?

The process, being irreversible, should be a choice. In my humble, I believe that the choice should be exercised by the person concerned having reached the age of majority unless there is a medical reason necessitating the procedure.

I quite accept you opinion on this. And it’s entirely your choice to do so.

My choice is different. Does this mean we have a differing of opinions, or you are right and I am wrong.

I needed some corrective elective surgery when I was under 16; the surgeon discussed it with my parents and then with me, and when he was satisfied that I understood what was involved and what the risks were, he agreed to perform the surgery. I don’t see why a similar balance couldn’t be established with respect to male circumcision.

Because the reality is that the way it ties into the social fabric it’s just not that simple. I would believe the pressure on a (say) 10 year old to make this decision would not arrive at any more of a choice that is a true choice. It then becomes a choice about being Jewish or not being Jewish and as I have said this choice is hard to make unless you have grown up being Jewish.

And changing and overhauling an entire religion overnight is not an answer. You can’t just simply reconstruct social organisations any more than you can biological organisations.

Foreskins might have been cast aside for millenia, but they were in development for a few billion years. It has a purpose.

Although interestingly it is only recently that we have developed hygiene standards that don’t make it as obvious a medical benefit to have then surgically removed.

All of the tests were carried out on adult males, and it was then recommended that adult males be circumcised. This doesn’t affect the primary argument about infant circumcision, since the main issue is one of consent, which adults can give. Adults should be free to have any elective surgery they care to. The right to take this freedom away from someone is the issue at hand.

I agree. Although one can run numbers that show at some point the rate of infection makes sense to circumcise everyone post natally. Especially in parts of the third world were education is problem, and not slowing down the spread of this terrible disease.

So circumcision may be considered a medical necessity in these places. But the first people to be circumcised should be the sexually active men, not babies, as it will take 13+ years for those effects to have any positive upswing (by which time it will be far, far too late).

Very good point. But you can’t force 13 year olds to be circumcised you can just encourage them. I do believe that forcing circumcision on those able to make their own decisions is wrong, and traumatic.

Their are scenarios however where the spread of aids greatly outweighs many other considerations.

So I never said that circumcision is flat-out wrong in all circumstances, just that it is a non-consensual medical procedure which one should have a choice not to select.

Even in societies where hygiene or aids are an issue? If you accept that their are and have been time where post natal circumcision is correct, can you see that this may become part of a society to a point where even though the original purpose is less necessary, it is part of the social fabric? And that perhaps its not so easy just to plug out some aspects of a society as one might think, not being part of it.

ircumcision cannot replace education/protection when countering HIV and it’s extremely foolish, in fact counter-productive, to foster the impression that it can.

I agree with you entirely. Education and protection stop aids. Circumcision just gives you better odds if you don’t have or ignore the education and protection. Circumcision merely slows the spread of the virus down for a bit whilst hopefully we can educate and find a cure.

Notwithstanding I think we are starting to go round in circles, and point and counterpoint have rather been blunted by now … it is my blog so I do retain the right to reply. :]

I’m sure, like you, she’d rather not remember the pain. Is that acceptable? Where’s the difference?

You know isolation, there is far less difference. If circumcision had no health benefits (and it appears it does have some in at least certain circumstances related to hygiene or aids), and had no cultural context whatsoever, then this would just be a matter of aesthetics and then the difference is fairly nominal.

However in a society where a tattoo is passed down from generation to generation, (a bit like a tartan I guess) and not tattooing the child would have implications that I don’t understand … I guess I could comprehend and understand even if I disagree.

I don’t agree with the way some groups back home pierce their daughters ears pretty young (I guess around 4ish), but I would have to consider that it does little harm. I simply wouldn’t do this for my own (hypothetical) daughter and I probably would ask a close friend why they think it’s necessary. But I wouldn’t interfere.

It also might just simple be quite arbitrary that as a society we find some things acceptable and others not. And that ear piercing is ok under 16 and tattooing is not. And that ear piercing is not ok as a infant but circumcision is not. Because societies are evolutionary and not designed, what’s acceptable may or may change on different time scales. I’m just musing here, and not saying on way or another. You yourself did say

Of course the age at which we decide that children can make up their minds for themselves is somewhat arbitrary. I find it ludicrous that someone can marry and join the army before they can legally vote or drink, but we generally accept these socially constructed age limits as more or less fair

But what it definitely isn’t on this particular matter is one hampered by tradition, religion and custom, and there can be a persuasive argument in any debate for thinking uncluttered by these considerations.

That is very true. However I also think that not experiencing or understanding the implications on the culture you are uncluttered by, you also are not as easily able to make a valuation for my (potential/hypothetical) children as to where the greater harm may be, in self-determination or in not having a barmitzvah. Nor are you able to understand as easily the social impact legislating against this may have on a culture not yours.

So you can say “not circumcising my child wont cause other problems later in life that are greater than the loss of self determination”, but I don’t quite see how you can make that evaluation.

I would say that you (as well as parents of every other religion) do not have the right to force your religion on anyone else and this includes children. I agree with your friend who argued that children ought to be taught all religions and choose their own, and would consider it a failing of your and all other religions to be so prescriptive and authoritarian that unless certain things are done to children unable to consent then they cannot really be a part of that religion.

I did say that I would teach my child about all religions. I would fully allow and respect my child for choosing another religion. However, as I said, their is a difference between growing up experiencing a religion and being taught about it. And I would feel that my child wouldn’t quite know what they are giving up if the choose not to be Jewish by not experiencing it.

There is a big difference between having a barmitzvah and reading about it on the Wikipedia.

s this what your argument boils down to, though? The single, core reason for you demanding rights over your child’s body is because you want them to be Jewish? If it is, all the rest you have stated (tradition, sexuality, ‘fitting in’ and the rest) are irrelevant and while I’ll still think you wrong to do it, I would have no further argument with your logic.

I don’t think I ever mentioned sexuality and fitting in as a reason beyond loosely commenting on them as an aspect of why I thought circumcision wasn’t harmful. Whilst their are other considerations that I would base my decision on (relative risk of something going wrong, relative health benefits) and other aspects that I would think about philosophically (rights of the child, parents rights to make decisions for their child), nothing is ever really that simple that it can be reduced to solely one point.

However the reason I would circumcise my child is because I am Jewish, and I want my child to be Jewish and my child cannot be Jewish without a bris.

Whilst it would be nice to separate the fact I am Jewish from me wanting my son to be Jewish, it’s not actually that simple, and the two are inter-linked.

I thought it was blindingly obvious from the debate that the reason I was even having this debate is because I am Jewish.

As I said to Dan (in person), this is not a philosophical debate for me, but a personal and emotional one.

So, for you, a causative factor in non-consensual circumcisions is the very fact that consent can’t be given. If you can explain to me how this is not a double-standard, I’d be very impressed. At what age did my parents lose their dominion over my genitals? Given the choice, I’d like to say age zero, please. Oh that’s right- there is no choice.

There is a difference in being able to consent and not, and not having the ability to make that decision. The same way their is a difference between someone signing a DNR when they are capable and a relative making that decision for them when they are not.

As a child your parents make decisions for you. Physical (your diet) and intellectual (your school) and others. Their dominion over them changes as you grow up and are able to make your decisions. However were you (which I hope never occurs) to get some degenerative disease their dominion over what decisions they could make for you would increase again.

So forgive me for comparing circumcision to…nonconsensual genital surgery.

You have a very good point. There are similarities when you reduce them down. However in my opinion FGM is harmful and male circumcision is not. That is partly why I see them as different, however I also think when you don’t reduce them down they are quite different on many levels.