Thanks for the clarification and I appreciate knowing that the detachment you convey on this issue is deliberate. It helps me to better understand your approach to this topic.

I do not think the decision was necessarily ~motivated~by anti-Semitism either — in fact it could be better argued, perhaps, that it was motivated by an anti-Islamic (culture) impulse. However, I do wonder if the fact that Muslims in Germany have not reacted to it in the same manner as Jews is as dispositive as you think?

Circumcision, while widely practiced in Islam is nowhere commanded in the Quran, and is not central to Islamic identity. Most of the time Islamic protests tend to center around perceived slights, attacks or violations against Islamic “essentials” — the person of Mohammed, property treatment of the Quran… etc.

Consider too, how incredibly unlikely it would be for radical Islamists (at the very least) to make common cause with Jews over what is for a Muslims a nonessential.

Either (or both) of these seem as likely an explanation of Muslim quiescence….

Finally, I don’t think that Rabbi Sacks believes the ruling was anti-Semitic in ~intent~. In fact he says so quite clearly — your statement that it seems to be targeting Muslims echoes his own.

But he quite clearly believes that, intentional or not, it is anti-Semitic in effect. And, frankly, I agree.

David C,

Nobody should be surprised. The only thing that surprises me is that given the number of Muslims in Germany and the world (4 million, 1.5 billion) and the number of Jews (200,000, 14 million) this has been discussed almost without exception as a Jewish issue. I did a quick check on Google yesterday, and of the first 20 headlines I got from Google News (searching for “Germany circumcision”) only one (the 19th) mentioned Islam. Let’s remember that contemporary Muslims are not shy about speaking up when they feel Islam has been slighted. (Ask Salman Rushdie or a certain Dutch cartoonis.) It would be a very naive anti-Semite who thought it was a good idea to strike at Judaism by opposing something that Jews and Muslims shared in common. Nevertheless, I did say earlier that it is understandable that when you number only 14 million, you would feel more threatened than if you numbered 1.5 billion.

That you can’t see that may speak more to the paucity of experience most Americans . . . .

In addition to having studied Jewish history in college—I will never forget watching Night and Fog with my classmates, most of whom were Jewish—I have lived in New York City since 1970, and most of my friends have been Jewish. I am fully aware of the horrors of anti-Semitism throughout history and particularly in the 20th century. If I seem detached, it is because I am deliberately trying to be. There are enough people in the world who are outraged over the court decision. I a trying to look at it from all sides, and I really do not think it was motivated by anti-Semitism.

Please read what (and to whom) I wrote. Sergio Mendez asked directly “How is this different from clitoris ablation rituals…” The clear implication of which is fairly obvious: “there isn’t one”.

Thus I was responding specifically to the question he asked and the perceived inference. He is the one that lumped the two together, I told him why I believe that to be mistaken. It seems to me that that your dispute with respect to the comparison is with Sergio rather than myself.

As for the rest of it. I am not making any sort of argument about the rightness or wrongness of male circumcision at all, nor have I at any point in this discussion. My single point has been that it is entirely appropriate to discuss it in the context of religious freedom. In fact, in that is perhaps the only reason to discuss it here.

The medical issues, the perceptions and feelings that folks may have about the procedure, the other practices to which it might be compared etc. may be of interest to you, but they are (to my mind) tangential to the question at hand, and in some cases serve to obscure rather than illuminate. FGM is one such case. You may be as reductive as you like but they are not the same. Not as generally practiced, not in religious intent, not in physical experience/results.

You say that they are both “permanent surgical modifications of children’s genitals” and I will grant that. But that definition, David, is an inadequate (and I would argue misleading) one. You are using terms shared in common (‘surgery’ and ‘genitals’) to describe procedures that have a different intent and a different result.

Perhaps we could move it away from something so clearly emotionally freighted to a different analogy to illustrate what I mean. If you click on Sergio’s blog link you see at the top a picture of a pair of “football” (futbol — ie soccer) players. In his self description he says (I am translating loosely) “I have a single religion – the football team of Bogota”. Now let me make a proposition. Studies conducted on players in the United States have increasingly shown that playing football may often lead to chronic deleterious physical effects, including traumatic brain injury. I therefore propose, to protect children and young adults, a worldwide ban on football.

Sergio’s immediate response would, I am sure, be simple. “Wait a minute! No. I won’t support that. You are talking about two entirely different games. They may share a common terminology but they are certainly not the same…” If I were to respond “well, they are both called “football”, both use a football, they both involve kicking, they are both timed in halves, both have offsides penalties, goals and goalposts, halfbacks etc… ” I am saying something entirely true and entirely irrelevant….I am using shared terminology to advance my own desire that a game I object to be considered for elimination and if the other one gets the axe too? Meh. Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet…

Finally, I am not a religious freedom absolutist. I don’t know how anything I have said here could be construed as such. I do see in this ruling a threat, specifically to religious freedom and especially with respect to Jews — for whom circumcision is a sacred act. I am not at all surprised that in the context of where this ruling occurred a Jewish rabbi might sense a darker undercurrent that smacked of anti-Semitism. That you can’t see that may speak more to the paucity of experience most Americans have with genuine and deadly religious persecution than it does to the realities on the ground in Germany/Europe. Certainly the actions/reactions of large numbers of Jews religious leaders in Germany and elsewhere to the ruling should give you pause before you go writing it off as the overwrought reaction of a few paranoids.

Thanks for your time. Though we seldom see eye to eye and often speak past on another I have always appreciated the civility and thoroughness of your replies.

David C,

To bring up female circumcision in a discussion of male circumcision is not to “lump the two together.” I think almost any reasonable person would concede that female circumcision is far more drastic and injurious, and less firmly established as a religious practice. But they are both permanent surgical modifications of children’s genitals. When it comes to surgical modification of a child’s body for nonmedical reasons, the question isn’t whether it should or should not be done but where you draw the line. Forbidding parents who want to have their infant daughters circumcised for religious reasons is certainly an abridgment of their religious liberty. Sometimes in these discussions it seems as if some people are arguing that religious liberty should be absolute. I don’t think they believe that deep down, and it is good to remind them that there are cases in which we are more than willing to prohibit practices that some feel entitled to engage in on the grounds of religious liberty. Certain people have reacted to this controversy as if it were outrageous and insane (and anti-Semitic) even to discuss it at all. But it seems to me it is quite reasonable to discuss it, even if in the end the vast majority agree that there is nothing wrong with circumcision as a religious ritual.

Following the common teaching of the Church of his time, Pascal says “The Jewish religion is wholly divine in its authority, its duration, its perpetuity, its morality, its conduct, its doctrine, and its effects” [La Religion Juive est toute divine dans son autorité, dans sa durée, dans sa perpétuité, dans sa morale, dans sa conduite, dans sa doctrine, dans ses effets, etc.]

It is this teaching that was recovered by the Second Vatican Council and the recent Pontiffs

The comparison of male circumcision to female genital mutilation (FGM) is tempting to make but only because of the common (and mistaken in my view) vocabulary. Conflation of the two is problematic if one wants to have an honest discussion.

There are at least two crucial distinctions:
1) The practice of FGM of the type you are referencing would be analogous to something in men much more like castration than the removal of all or part of the foreskin — which is to say that it actually interferes with normal female sexual functioning. Indeed this is usually explicitly stated as the reason FGM is practiced. Male circumcision rarely interferes with normal male sexual functioning.

Second, in the religious context, there are significant differences as well. FGM has never been practiced as a ~required~ part of any established faith. While it is true that Christians, Jews, and Muslims (in particular) have practiced FGM they have done so based on what might be called “folk” practices based on earlier tribal and cultural traditions rather than any requirements of those faiths. Authorities from all three faiths have taught that the practice is not required and,in fact, (in the case of most Christian and Jewish authorities at least) prohibited.

There are other differences as well, but to lump the two together as though they are analogous is in my view (and that of a great many others — I could point you to articles if you like but you can easily Google it…) a category error. They are different procedures with with different intents both physical and religious and should be discussed as such. To conflate them is a form of advocacy based on false or at least misleading premises.

It seems to me that “supersessionism” is basically what I was taught in Catholic school in the 1950s and early 1960s, and only beginning with Vatican II did the Church edge away from it. From the Baltimore Catechism:

Q. 390. Why was the veil of the Temple torn asunder at the death of Christ?
A. The veil of the Temple was torn asunder at the death of Christ because at His death the Jewish religion ceased to be the true religion, and God no longer manifested His presence in the Temple.

Q. 391. Why did the Jewish religion, which up to the death of Christ had been the true religion, cease at that time to be the true religion?
A. The Jewish religion, which, up to the death of Christ, had been the true religion, ceased at that time to be the true religion, because it was only a promise of the redemption and figure of the Christian religion, and when the redemption was accomplished and the Christian religion established by the death of Christ, the promise and the figure were no longer necessary.

Q. 392. Were all the laws of the Jewish religion abolished by the establishment of Christianity?
A. The moral laws of the Jewish religion were not abolished by the establishment of Christianity, for Christ came not to destroy these laws, but to make them more perfect. Its ceremonial laws were abolished when the Temple of Jerusalem ceased to be the House of God.

I found this in Wikipedia in the entry for supersessionism:

Pope Pius XII, enyclical Mystici corporis (1943) states: By the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area – He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the House of Israel – the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. “To such an extent, then,” says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, “was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from the many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as Our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.”

Humanists [claim religious freedom is absolute]

All of ‘em?

Heck, can you link to an example of even one of them?