{"id":66,"date":"2007-09-04T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T06:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/feilerfaster\/2007\/09\/the-first-cut-is-the-deepest.html"},"modified":"2007-09-04T06:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T06:50:00","slug":"the-first-cut-is-the-deepest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/09\/the-first-cut-is-the-deepest.html","title":{"rendered":"The First Cut is the Deepest"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m bumping this entry back to the fore today because it’s experiencing increased traffic.<\/em>
\nI’m the father of two-year-old girls, so I’ve not faced the issue of whether to circumcise my children or not. My guess is that my wife and I would have chosen to do it. I agree that it does feel like a fairly important custom of Judaism, warm and traditional in all the best senses of the word, and not medically significant one way or the other. But I’ve been struck by the number of people who’ve commented on my post, The End of Circumcision?<\/a>, who said simply, “It’s not a choice. It’s a mandate from God. Jews don’t have to know the reason or not know the reason, God says do it so we do it. That’s what it means to be a Jew, kid.” Okay, I’m paraphrasing. Let me let one of the commenters, whose email address suggest he’s either a rabbi or very learned, state the case in its most eloquent.<\/p>\n

When God instructed Abraham to circumcise all males, I guarantee you that
\nnot anywhere near 57% of the world’s population at the time were
\ncircumcised, nevertheless 90%! For Jews, circumcision has never been about
\nnumbers and being like the rest of society. Indeed, it was, is, and should
\nbe, quite the opposite. It is about a physical sign of the special
\ncovenant that exists between the Jewish people and God. It is about what
\nsets us apart and makes us different. COVENANT – that is the operative
\nword here. That is why the ceremony is called “Brit (Covenant) Milah (of
\nCircumcision).” In regards to health benefits – over the years we have
\nseen that debate go back and forth. I suspect that before too long, it
\nwill swing back one more time to the circumcision side. In the end, that
\ndoes not matter as long as there are no definite serious health risks which
\ncan be directly and incontrovertibly attributed to circumcision.
\nPersonally, I have always found Brit Milah to be a ritual filled with very
\npowerful imagery. Taking the foreskin is a sacrifice to God in the name of
\nJewish identity. Since it comes from the penis, it represents a sacrifice
\ncoming from that which is most physically precious to men and a commitment
\nto the future of our people (fertility).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First of all, I want this person giving me, or my children, advice on religion. I am grateful he chose to chime in here. Doing this for the literary-historical meaning of the act strikes me as almost perfect.
\nBut what doesn’t strike me as perfect is the failure of a number of people here to acknowledge that God issues any number of commandments in the Bible that we simply ignore. Even some of the sexual ones alone seem relevant here: When men and women should sleep together or not, rules about mensturating women, etc. Even many Orthodox Jews ignore these mandates as simply dated. And that’s not even to touch homosexuality.
\nSo first of all I think justifying circumcision because it’s a biblical mandate is ahistorical to Judaism for the last century. That pushes us to the realm of which mandates we chose to follow, and which we don’t. Nearly every Jew in America is a pick-and-chose Jew of this variety. Some pick more than others, but just look at how many of the rules of Kashrut even devout Jews adhere to. Just look at the way elevators in hotels in Jerusalem just run all the time on Shabbat so those keeping the holiday don’t have to press the buttons. But they ride them. It seems fair enough to address circumcision to the same questions about whether it should survive. And the answer, I believe, lies closer to the commenter above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m bumping this entry back to the fore today because it’s experiencing increased traffic. I’m the father of two-year-old girls, so I’ve not faced the issue of whether to circumcise my children or not. My guess is that my wife and I would have chosen to do it. I agree that it does feel like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nThe First Cut is the Deepest - Feiler Faster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/09\/the-first-cut-is-the-deepest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The First Cut is the Deepest - Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m bumping this entry back to the fore today because it’s experiencing increased traffic. I’m the father of two-year-old girls, so I’ve not faced the issue of whether to circumcise my children or not. My guess is that my wife and I would have chosen to do it. 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I’m the father of two-year-old girls, so I’ve not faced the issue of whether to circumcise my children or not. My guess is that my wife and I would have chosen to do it. 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He is the best-selling author of nine books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America's Prophet, and one of only a handful of writers to have four consecutive New York Times nonfiction bestsellers in the last decade. He is also the writer\/presenter of the PBS miniseries WALKING THE BIBLE. His latest book, The Council of Dads, tells the uplifting story of how friendship and community can help one survive life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatest challenge. For more information, please visit brucefeiler.com or councilofdads.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/author\/bfeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}