The following is an English-language version of a commentary that was published in kjarninn on 12 November 2018. This essay was originally written as a letter that was sent to the Icelandic Alþingi earlier this year when that body was accepting public comments on the proposed legislation. It was subsequently revised and published on this blog as "Letter to the Iceland Alþingi on the Proposed Involuntary Circumcision Ban." What follows here is a second revision which served as the basis for the Icelandic translation that appears in kjarninn. That translation was produced by Steinunn Ketilsdottir and Sveinn Svavarsson to whom I am immensely grateful for, without their heroic and generous work on this project, the publication of this essay in Iceland in Icelandic would not have been possible.
by David Balashinsky
by David Balashinsky
As has been widely reported in the press here and around the world, the Iceland Parliament (or Alþingi) is considering legislation that would outlaw the non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors (that is, circumcision that is performed on boys under the age of 18 when not medically indicated). This legislation, if passed, would provide boys with the same legal protection - no more and no less - against genital cutting that girls in Iceland have had since 2005 and girls in the U.S.A. have had since 1996. Because this legislation has been unfairly portrayed by the Anti-Defamation League and others as an attack on religious freedom broadly and an attack on Jews specifically, I would like to explain why I, a Jewish man, as well as many Jews on whose behalf I am writing, have endorsed it. I am writing not only to offer our public support for this legislation but because we want it to be known that the ADL and others who have expressed their opposition to it do not speak for all Jews and they do not speak for us.
Not only are Jews around the world abandoning ritual infant circumcision in ever-increasing numbers but many of us are working actively to end it. So let me begin by offering a few words about who we are and what we believe in. We are men and women who come from different walks of life and different parts of the world but who are united in our identification as Jews and in our unwavering opposition to involuntary genital cutting. Some of us are secular Jews, identifying as Jewish ethnically and culturally, while some of us are religious Jews for whom Judaism is central to our beliefs and values. Some of us have been subjected to genital cutting and others have not. Some of us were subjected to involuntary circumcision within the context of the brit milah (literally, the “covenant of circumcision,” which is the religious circumcision ceremony) while some of us were subjected to it merely because we were born into a particular time and place and so were swept up in the tide of medicalized (but nonetheless customary) practice of involuntary circumcision that has been a blot on neonatal medical care in the United States during the past one hundred seventy-five years or so. For those of us who have been subjected to involuntary circumcision, we maintain not only that we were harmed by it but that, in being denied a choice regarding the very configuration of our own bodies, we were deprived of our fundamental human rights and dignity.
We emphatically do not reject our Jewishness and, for those of us who are religious, we do not reject Judaism: what we reject is involuntary circumcision. We reject it and we oppose it on the following grounds:
First, we reject involuntary circumcision because we regard the genital cutting of children without their consent as a violation of the fundamental human right to grow up with all of one's body parts intact. That is why we oppose all genital cutting: female, male and intersex. We believe that every human being has an inherent right to grow up with the genitals that she or he was born with.
Second, we reject the proposition that involuntary circumcision is essential to the practice of Judaism for the individual himself. It isn't. Jewish women are not subjected to involuntary circumcision and they are no less spiritual - nor do they regard themselves any less beloved by Him (or Her) who they believe to be the Creator of the universe - than their Jewish fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who were. More to the point, there are countless Jewish boys and men the world over - no less spiritual and no less devout than our Jewish brethren who have written to oppose the involuntary-circumcision ban - who were not, as neonates, subjected to this ancient and inhumane ritual. Judaism is the sublime manifestation of one's spirituality and religious beliefs. It is not reducible to the size and shape of a man's penis; to claim otherwise is to debase Judaism.
Fourth, we reject the proposition that involuntary circumcision is essential to the continued existence of the Jews as a people. It isn't. The Jewish people existed long before the advent of involuntary neonatal circumcision as a religious mandate, we existed longer still before involuntary circumcision was expanded into the radical prepucectomy (peri'ah) that is practiced today, and we will continue to exist long after involuntary circumcision has gone the way of other religious mandates that are no longer followed by the majority of Jews (such as post-menstrual ritual bathing) and after it has gone the way of other long-discarded and repudiated practices including polygyny, death by stoning, and slavery.
Fifth, we reject the proposition that involuntary circumcision is a necessary part of being Jewish. It isn't. A Jewish girl is no less Jewish than her brother. And a Jewish boy born to Jewish parents is no less Jewish by virtue of not having had part of his penis cut off. Jewishness is a product of one's genes, one's heritage, one's family life and upbringing, one's values, one's traditions and culture. And, as noted above, in the case of Judaism, it is a product of one's religious beliefs.
Sixth, our opposition to involuntary circumcision is inextricable from the ethical and moral beliefs that we, as Jews, hold dear. Our efforts to bring about the end of ritual circumcision and all non-therapeutic genital cutting are guided by the concept of tikkun olam (literally, “repairing the world”). This concept, which goes back at least to the third century, CE and appears in the Mishnah (a compendium of rabbinic teaching, law and other Jewish oral traditions that began to be set down in writing following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE) has come to be synonymous with the idea that Jews are required to work for social justice. It is not enough for us to oppose genital cutting for ourselves or as an abstract principle. We are called upon to work to end it and to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Our fervent opposition to involuntary circumcision, then, is not in spite of our Jewish beliefs and values but because of them.
Seventh, in contrast to the concerns raised by the ADL and others, we regard the continued practice of involuntary circumcision as constituting as much a threat (and potentially a greater one) to the survival of Judaism as a religion and to the Jewish people as a people as banning it would be. Our concerns in this regard have been prompted by comments that we have received from self-described "former Jews" who, owing entirely to their resentment about what was done to their genitals as infants without their consent, have rejected not just the brit milah but their Judaism and even their Jewishness. The brit milah, far from girding these unfortunate men to their religion and to their people, resulted ultimately in driving them away. We fear that this trend will not only continue but increase. Involuntary circumcision has, for a long time, been on a collision course with modernity, especially with respect to the progress the world has made insofar as fundamental human rights are concerned. We are now witnessing that collision and its unfortunate results unfolding in real time. As the world has modernized, the brit milah has become increasingly impossible to reconcile with contemporary notions of autonomy and the inviolability of each person's physical boundaries. It is inevitable, we fear, that more and more Jews will be driven to renounce Judaism and their Jewishness altogether if they are made to feel that their acceptance of genital cutting is a non-negotiable condition of remaining within the fold.
Eighth, we reject the broad assertion that the movement to ban involuntary circumcision - and the specific assertion that the proposed legislation banning it that is before the Alþingi - is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on Jews or Judaism. We Jewish opponents of involuntary circumcision regard this movement as a progressive human-rights struggle and we regard this legislation as a long-overdue inclusion of boys - including Jewish ones - within the protective ambit of the already-existing legal framework under which female genital mutilation has been banned in Iceland and throughout much of the world. We regard the proposed legislation not as an attack on Jews but as the inevitable and logical conclusion of contemporary and increasingly universal standards regarding human rights and children's rights as articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (ratified by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948) and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 and ratified in 1990 (Iceland became a signatory in 1990, while the provisions of the Convention were incorporated into Icelandic law in 2013), and specifically as articulated in Article 37, part a of the latter which states that "No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Ninth, we reject the assertion that the right to subject an infant or child to involuntary circumcision is a fundamental right that comes under the rubric of "religious freedom." While we recognize that the freedom to believe (or not to believe, for that matter) is fundamental and, therefore, absolute and illimitable, we reject the extension of that principle to the assertion that the freedom to act is likewise fundamental and, therefore, absolute and illimitable. We believe that one person's right to practice her or his religion ends where another person's body begins. We believe that one person's fundamental right of religious liberty is delimited by every other person's even more fundamental right not to be physically harmed. We believe that the only person who has a right to cause to have his or her genitals (or any other body part) mutilated, deformed, scarred, or surgically altered in any way is the individual himself or herself. No one else has a right to decide what parts of a boy's penis he gets to keep and what parts get cut off. We do not consider that a radical or even a controversial position, much less an anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic (or anti-Muslim) one. On the contrary, we consider it to be simply and rather obviously in accordance with contemporary norms regarding fundamental human rights and human dignity. We believe that no one has the right to cut off part of an unconsenting child's penis as a religious rite, for reasons of culture, for reasons of cosmesis, for reasons of convenience, for reasons of conformity, for reasons of tradition or on the basis of dubious and specious justifications related to health or hygiene when perfectly efficacious non-invasive, non-harmful, non-painful and non-permanent alternatives are readily available (such as soap and water and, in adulthood, the use of a condom).
Having stated all of the foregoing, we also wish it to be known that neither do we oppose circumcision under all circumstances. While we may not approve, we subscribe to the right of a man to choose circumcision for himself for whatever reason he may have once he is an adult and of an age at which he can make informed choices about his own body. Once he is capable of exercising informed consent, we endorse, on the principle of autonomy and self-determination, his right to have his body altered in accordance with his own beliefs and values - whether these beliefs have their origin in religion or anything else. It is his body and that is why it should be his choice.
We also acknowledge the social context in which opposition by the ADL and other Jewish organizations to this proposed legislation has arisen. We are fully aware of the history of anti-Semitism and the persecution of our ancestors throughout so much of European history. And we acknowledge that that persecution has manifested itself in circumcision prohibitions in generations past. When these earlier prohibitions were enacted, after all, they were part of explicitly anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish government programs. It is understandable, especially with the memory of the Holocaust still fresh in our minds, that some Jews would hear ominous echoes of Europe's dark anti-Semitic past in the current effort to prohibit involuntary circumcision. Such fears may acquire even greater validation and urgency given the alarming recrudescence of nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism that has occurred on both sides of the Atlantic during the past few years (and especially during the past two years).
But, as Jews who oppose involuntary circumcision, we vigorously reject the assertion that the modern genital autonomy movement (which, it bears repeating, seeks to ban all genital cutting: of girls and intersex children as well as of boys) is nothing more than a resurgent manifestation of anti-Semitism. Indeed, we are offended by that assertion. While circumcision prohibitions from centuries past that were anti-Jewish in design and the contemporary movement to ban all involuntary genital cutting both culminate in and intersect at the point of banning involuntary circumcision, they are fundamentally dissimilar in origin because they arise from worldviews that are, in fact, worlds apart. Previous prohibitions originated in ethnic and religious hatred while the modern genital autonomy movement originates in respect for the body-rights of the individual and in a philosophical objection to violence and to the needless causing of pain and suffering to infants. Previous prohibitions sought to ban this ancient, involuntary bloodletting ritual not because of what it is but because of who practiced it. The modern genital autonomy movement seeks to ban all involuntary genital cutting not because of who practices it but because of what it is.
We also reject the assertion that the effect, if not the stated purpose, of the proposed involuntary-circumcision prohibition would be to make Jews (or Muslims) personae non gratae in Iceland. As Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL put it, "Such a ban would mean that no Jewish family could be raised in Iceland, and it is inconceivable that a Jewish community could remain in any country that prohibited brit milah." That assertion completely discounts the thousands upon thousands of Jews who abhor the brit milah and who would be only too happy to raise their families - and to raise them as proudly Jewish - in a country where brit milah is prohibited by law. How many new Jewish parents have been pressured - against their natural maternal and paternal instincts, against their inmost beliefs, and against their better judgment - into subjecting their sons to circumcision? Time and again we learn of the extent to which it is the social pressure on behalf of involuntary circumcision that is brought to bear on new parents by their parents, relatives or others in their community that is chiefly and ultimately responsible for the perpetuation of this odious practice. The paradox is that, contrary to Mr. Greenblatt's supposition that the involuntary-circumcision ban must necessarily result in an exodus of Jews from Iceland, such a prohibition could just as likely have the opposite effect: an influx of Jews who would gladly raise their families in a country where they are free of the social pressures to subject their children to genital cutting.
There is nothing in the text of the proposed bill that could lead anyone to fairly conclude that it is motivated by anti-Jewish (or even anti-Islamic) sentiment. The bill has sponsors from the Progressive Party, the People's Party, the Left-Green Movement and the Pirate Party. And while the Progressive Party and the People's Party have recently been linked with populism and the espousal of anti-immigration sentiments, the bill is also co-sponsored by MPs from parties that are associated mainly with environmentalism, feminism and pacifism (the Left-Green Movement), and direct democracy (the Pirate Party).
We are thus left to weigh the merits and potential significance of the proposed legislation against the historical backdrop of anti-Semitism and against the contemporary backdrop of xenophobia and anti-immigrant nationalism that have swept across much of the northern hemisphere. We are left, further, to consider whether the proposed legislation has roots sunk deep within nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic soil, as some have claimed of this and of similar proposed legislation elsewhere or, as we would like to believe, whether it is, on the contrary, the flowering of the same humanist and progressive impulses that inform the genital autonomy movement to which so many Jews who oppose forced genital cutting subscribe.
Having done so, we wholeheartedly and enthusiastically endorse this legislation. The proposed circumcision prohibition would ban all non-therapeutic involuntary genital cutting of boys, no matter what reasons are entertained by the child's parents for wanting to subject their child to circumcision, no matter what that child's parents' religion or ethnicity happens to be and, for that matter, even irrespective of any ulterior or merely unfairly impugned motives on the part of the bill's sponsors. This opportunity is too important not to seize. The right of every child to be free of genital cutting is an idea whose time has come. The proposed circumcision ban, as we see it, represents the inevitable and irresistible march of human progress toward greater respect for the rights of the child and the rights of the individual. Consistent with our Jewish ethos and with the concept of tikkun olam, we endorse that progress and are proud, as Jews, to be a part of it.
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