THE TABLET
By Marjorie Ingall
New rituals create ways to symbolically acknowledge Jews’ covenant with God without actually circumcising infants. A lot of Jews, like my mother-in-law, can’t really articulate why brit milah is important. Rabbi Joshua Ratner can. He wrote a piece for the nonprofit My Jewish Learning called “To Snip or Not To Snip: Why I Say Yes to Circumcision,” quoting Genesis 17 about God’s commandment to Abraham and affirming the value of following the mitzvah. The fact that this topic is so fraught and the emotions so outsized is ironic, given the size of the bit of flesh we’re talking about. But some Jews have decided to skip the brit milah and instead create new rituals that welcome their babies and symbolically acknowledge the covenant (or brit) between God and the Jews that dates back to the time of Abraham. They all have one thing in common: None of them involve actual circumcision. [link]
Friday 11 July 2014
To Cut or Not To Cut: Finding Alternatives to Jewish Circumcision
Posted on 00:00 by tripal h
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