To Mutilate in the Name of Jehovah or Allah:
Medicine and Law, Volume 13, Number 7-8: Pages 575-622, July 1994.
Infant circumcision in the United States began not for medical or religious reasons, but for social reasons. It began in the 1870s as a Victorian attempt to prevent or cure masturbation, which at the time was believed to cause bedwetting, alcoholism, insanity, curvature of the spine and other physical and mental disorders. The practice spread from England concurrently to other English-speaking countries (Canada, Australia and the United States).
When the masturbation theory was dispelled and declared false in 1948 by the British National Health Service, the rate of circumcision was reduced to less than 0.5% in England. The rate of circumcision in Canada and in Australia also was lowered, but remains still around 20%.
In the United States, with the development of hospitalized births, male infant circumcision remains a common practice. The American medical community has tried to find "medical" justifications for the continuation of circumcision. Even today, the United States remains the only country on earth where the majority of male infants are circumcised for non-religious reasons. This rate is today 60% with differences from one region to another. Approximately 3'300 babies each day are submitted to circumcision in American hospitals. This represents more than 1'25 million children circumcised each year. Several babies die as a consequence of the operation, which is performed without anaesthesia, and which results in numerous medical complications.
Circumcision is considered today as one of the reasons for the violence which rages in American society, where the crime rate is six times larger than that in Europe: That which society does to its children, its children do to society. In effect, circumcision injures the brain of the child. It also impairs the normal functioning of the adult sexuality. On average one forth of the skin of the baby's penis is amputated. This has forced many Americans to seek restoration of their foreskin.
Many authorities estimate that the violence done to the infant during circumcision plays a role in the fatal conflicts in the Middle East between Muslims and Jews, two groups that practice circumcision.
Concerning Jews, the mandate for male circumcision comes from the Bible. It is in fact from this community that the fiercest opposition to the abolition of circumcision is mounted. The so-called "medical" justifications for circumcision were formulated principally by Jewish doctors. It would seem even that the development of male circumcision among Christians in the United States was a premeditated action on the part of the Jewish medical community after the second World War.
By circumcising as many Christians as possible, they sought to make it more difficult to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews in the event of a future persecution of the Jews. It would seem also that there is a hint of Jewish proselytising behind circumcision :
A circumcised Christian is more easily converted to Judaism than an uncircumcised one because he will not fear having to submit to circumcision as an adult. Notice here that the Western world has passed laws prohibiting female circumcision, but dares not to do the same for male circumcision for fear that they will be considered anti-Semitic by the Jews. One must note, however, that even the voice of American Jews is being added to the cry against the practice of circumcision.
http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/
Jewish doctors and America's circumcision popularity:
A speculative medical aside for a moment: With all these Jews going to medical school over the last few decades, what are we to make of the fact that American secular medical culture has for decades emulated Jewish religious tradition in dictatorially circumcising the vast majority of American Gentile males? This century the American circumcision rate has been as high as 85% of the male population.
A Jewish author, Ronald Goldman, notes that "from a global perspective, most of the world rejects circumcision: over 80 percent of the world's males are intact (not circumcised). Most circumcised men are Muslim or Jewish. The United States is the only country in the world that circumcises most of its male infants for nonreligious reasons." [GOLDMAN, R., p. 2]
Surveys have found that a huge number of Americans are ignorant about this extremely personal subject; many aren't even aware, with certainty, what circumcision is. Because it has not often -- until recently -- been a subject of public discussion, because infants had no choice in the matter, and because the medical world has been routinely trusted to know what's best for babies, for decades a veil of ignorance has been draped across the subject.
"In one study," notes Goldman, "34 percent of men incorrectly identified their own circumcision status. In another study, half of the mothers questioned did not know if the father of their child was circumcised ... My own research of 60 adult graduate students revealed that 38 percent of the women and 45 percent of the men were not sure of the difference between a circumcised male and an intact penis." [GOLDMAN, R., p. 29]
In recent years, there are increasing objections -- even from some Jews, like Goldman -- to the routine circumcision of American male infants. More and more medical practitioners are rejecting claims that a circumcised penis is more hygienic than an uncut organ, as well as that it helps to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Most perplexing in all this is how and why circumcision has developed as a norm for behavior in America on such a wide scale, a dictate of the medical profession and not the populace at-large.
Rosemary Romberg, married to a Jew, is among those who have written an entire volume criticizing the omnipresence of circumcision in American medical society. As she notes, "I have learned that none of the medical arguments for circumcision are justified." [ROMBERG, p. xxi] Yet, she observes, "If we take a stand against Jewish ritual circumcision we run the risk of being labeled anti-Semitic." [ROMBERG, p. 59]
In her investigations into the subject, Romberg once even interviewed a rabbi, asking, "There are many Jewish doctors in the United States. Do you think that their influence could have anything to do with the popularity of circumcision in the United States today?" [ROMBERG, p. 71] The rabbi of course said no, and Romberg herself later rejected the possibilities of a conscious Jewish influence on the issue as being unfounded. She ultimately decided it may be, at least in part, the result of an abstract openness to the idea of circumcision because of the Judeo-Christian link. [ROMBERG, p. 105] Others suggest its prominence rooted in a Christian-based anti-sexual morality, an American obsession with hygiene, and other postulates.
But is Romberg's question to the rabbi -- inferring that Jews would have a vested interest in mass circumcision -- one that is so easily dismissed?
With the huge numbers of Jews in the medical world, their high proclivity to publish their medical opinions, and their disproportionate influence in the field, is it an unreasonable question to wonder about?
Romberg notes a very important point in her initial speculations about Jewish medical influence in having American males, in large numbers, circumcised. To traditional Jewish thinking, a Jewish male must be circumcised. There is no choice in the matter.
Given this fact, as Romberg says, "In other times and places [circumcision] has brought ridicule and persecution upon the Jews. In the United States today, the Jew does not stand out as different for having a circumcised penis. Have Jews been the cause, directly or indirectly, of the widespread popularity of routine infant circumcision in the U.S.? There are many Jewish doctors in the U.S." [ROMBERG, p. 104]
Always highly attuned to threats of anti-Semitism, religiously convinced that Gentiles must sooner or later rise up for no reason against them, and for centuries seeking to mold the safest niches possible within non-Jewish communities, the secular American custom of circumcision offers the Jewish (male) community the extraordinary opportunity to physically blend into American society, without having to abandon its traditional genital marker which, in European society, was the absolute test for determining who was, and who was not, Jewish. There was no hiding from the malicious anti-Semite.
"The exposed penis," writes Jewish feminist Andrea Dworkin, taking it to the furthest abstraction, "reifies the vulnerability of the Jewish male." [DWORKIN, A., 2000, p. 115]
For whatever reason, the fact remains that the careful -- and guarded -- Jewish process of assimilation in America is such that in this regard, on the procreative organ, it is the Gentile males who have effectively assimilated, only this century, to Jewish religious tradition.
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/20pocul2.htm
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