Study Jewish history and you will immediately recognize three narratives used by Jew-haters to delegitimize Judaism—all in the name of tolerance and humanity.
- Brit milah, circumcision
- Shehitah, or ritual slaughter of animals for food
- Torah study
The commandment of circumcision—brit milah—is found in Genesis 17:10-14 and Leviticus 12:3.
And since Abraham, brit milah—Judaism’s sign of the eternal covenant between G-d and the Jewish people—has been under sustained attack.
The Greeks, the Romans, and the Nazis all banned circumcision.
Kashrut (dietary laws) is another fundamental of Judaism. Thus, inevitably, ritual slaughter is attacked as cruel and barbaric.
Of course, those who oppose ritual slaughter and circumcision in the name of progress and humanity are almost always a bunch of genocide-yearning Jew-haters.
In classical times the Greeks and Romans were, well, expert mass killers and torturers. The Nazis and communists, no slouches at genocide either, always claimed to be progressive, banning Jewish rituals even as they ran their death camps and gulags.
In contemporary times, those who oppose brit milah and ritual slaughter are enthusiastic supporters of abortion — which, if you’ve looked at a sonogram lately, is nothing less than deliberate infanticide.
Naturally, the Greeks and Romans banned the study of Torah, the Written Law. During the Middle Ages, the Talmud, or Oral Law, became the target of Jew-haters in the Christian and Muslim worlds, even as they claimed ownership of our Torah.
You see, like terrorists, those who seek to eradicate Torah Judaism are always armed with allegedly noble motives. They claim to be progressives, defending high culture against the ravages of primitive Judaism.
The Greeks, Romans, Bolsheviks and Nazis are gone. But Torah Judaism lives and thrives. We persevere in the face of endless mortal threats because we insist on fulfilling our eternal covenant with G-d.
Of course, Greece, Rome, Bolshevik Russia, and Nazi Germany have been replaced by progressives who smile at us from the PR-savvy campaigns of PETA and the clinically unbalanced members of Intact — we will not link to these sites — and the oh-so-cultured tones of the EU.
Instead of ruling by the sword, secular fascists attack through so-called dialogue and the endless legislating of pitiless state, local, and national regulations.
Pretty soon, if this war against Judaism continues, Europe will be Judenrein. As they have done before, the Europeans will replace loyal and productive Jewish citizens with Islamists who are not only overwhelmingly welfare witches, but whose loyalties are to the Ummah, with its yearning for sharia and the caliphate, and not to the nation-state.
At last, Hitler’s dream will conquer Europe.
Jewish groups spoke out harshly this week against a resolution passed on Tuesday by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe calling male ritual circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children.
”The resolution urged European Union member states to “initiate a public debate, including intercultural and interreligious dialogue, aimed at reaching a large consensus on the rights of children to protection against violations of their physical integrity according to human rights standards.
”It further proposed that governments should “adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted.”
More here.
As an Orthodox Jew who of course is circumcised, and has 6 circumcised sons and 3 circumcised grandsons so far, I must admit to being quite troubled by this article.
There is simply no question in my mind that even according to Jewish Law itself, if there would be no mitzva to circumcise, it would be forbidden as a plain assault and injury, just as it is forbidden for a parent to cut off, say, a toe or earlobe of a child even if it is done with complete surgical sterility. To say that “circumcision is harmless” or something of the sort is to walk on very thin evidential ice indeed, and perhaps even a denial of G-d’s wisdom in creating that part of the body.
Circumcision only makes sense in the context of belief that G-d himself commanded us to perform this act which may or may not have observably beneficial consequences. If this belief presents us with the test of fighting a hostile world, that is its price, but let us not fool ourselves that we can convince anyone that we are right without invoking our faith in the truth of the Torah.
It’s absolutely true that the foundation for our practice of milah is our faith in God and Torah. That does not change the fact that the operation is indeed harmless, and even beneficial, and evidenced by the millions of non-Jews who have it done to their infant sons. I agree as well with what kgbudge said below (I don’t understand the low comment rating he received): an assault on milah is also an assault on the family, on the parents’ right to choose what is best for their child.
I don’t understand the low rating either for kbudge’s comment either.
Some haters doing drive-by clickings, maybe.
Wasn’t there a point during which all male children born in the US were automatically circumcised for health reasons? Not saying whether those reasons were valid, but whether or not circumcision is helpful, it’s clearly not harmful if the entire male population of the US was subjected to it without any observable negative result.
OK, maybe not everyone. But definitely lots and lots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#United_States
I personally find the entire idea distateful. But “I don’t like this” is not nearly a good enough reason to ban a tradition that has been practiced for millenia without any apparent harm to those involved.
I’m not Jewish. But I’m grateful my parents had me circumcized, for sanitary reasons, at a very young age.
Parents are supposed to make choices for their children, including choices with lasting consequences. This is not just an assault on Judaism, but on the family as an autonomous decision-making institution.
What is the definition of insanity? One theory holds that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is *insane.* The nations have been attempting to ban fundamental Jewish mitzvot for millennia, with little success. The current progs are simply another group that can’t stand to think that Jews are still being Jews, and think *they,* enlightened as they are, will be the ones to “end all this Jewish nonsense.” Where are the Syrian-Greeks, or the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Mitzrim, the Philistines, the Romans, the Tsarists, or any of the others who have decided Jews should no longer be a separate people? Gone.
Even despite secularists (can they be called Misyavnim?) in Israel, Torah Judaism is growing. Torah adherence and learning is just as relevant today as ever. And again, they will not succeed. And again, and again. Just as we read in parsha Noach last week, people who are convinced of their own superiority and authority attempt to “fight” against the Creator, but will ultimately be brought down. However, “in each generation….”
Right, they won’t succeed in the end. But they can cause us a lot of pain and suffering in the meantime, God forbid, so I wouldn’t be so sanguine.
Fortunately for us, the Muslims need circumcision and ritual slaughter, and there is no way that any progressive will try to take it away from them.
Even the PETA groups are strangely silent.
You must have missed the brouhaha over the attempts in the UK 2-3 years ago to criminalize both kosher slaughter and halal slaughter. PETA and other animal ‘rights’ groups were involved. It was a PETA operative who was actually responsible for the violations at the Postville facility (many of PETA’s videos are manufactured by their own operatives). Germany’s last attempt at banning circumcision was not limited to the Jewish community. More and more, the attempt to ban brit milah are being connected to FGM, although the two practices have NOTHING to do with each other, and FGM is actually incredibly harmful to women’s health, whereas the same is untrue for milah.
Somehow, I doubt we’ll see PETA doing much objecting to Eid slaughter and the like.
There is something which has always puzzled me about ‘progressives’ hypocrisy.
Here is my own hypothesis, (which may be quite wrong).
Within the liberal left there is a subgroup who actually ‘lishmoh’ does care about human rights and moral principle.
In the case in point, there are some people who genuinely are concerned about cruelty to animals, and this is why they object to Halal slaughter, and more specifically, if I remember correctly, there was an outcry against brutal Islamic slaughter of sheep in either Australia or New Zealand, without any mention of Jewish Shehchita, Kapporas, etc.
There are now two questions:
(1) What happens to this subgroup when the Leftist establishment insists that Islamic activities, no matter how wrong, are not to be criticized?
Some of them see the hypocrisy and leave (that’s why my online name is ‘exdemexlib’.)
Yet, for some reason, a portion remains and follows Leftist doctrine and stay silent when they would otherwise be gushing with righteous outrage.
Which brings us to question (2):
What is there about Islam that has the leaders of the Left fearful of antagonizing them, and bending over backwards to appease them?
(It’s certainly not the love, tolerance and peace taught by the Islamic religion).
The only thing I can think of, (which again, may be wrong),
is that they are simply being BRIBED.
Bribed with lucrative positions in some Saudi funded organizations and think tanks, if not with actual large sums of money.
(e.g. Jimmy Carter, receiving a great deal of Saudi contributions for his current foundation.
Now even though it is quite clear that Carter was never a friend of the Jews, long before he became involved with his current foundation,
still, there is no doubt that he was a Christian minister and still cares at some level for the welfare of Christians.
So, what else could possibly make him overlook the plight of Black Sudanese Christians and the horrors inflicted upon them by Muslims,
as well as the atrocities by Muslims against Christians in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and many other Muslim areas ??)
If this hypothesis is indeed true, it might be an effective area to investigate and publicize which of the Democratic and Liberal voices can be traced to receiving money/material benefits from Islamic countries or organizations.
You ask: What is there about Islam that has the leaders of the Left fearful of antagonizing them, and bending over backwards to appease them?
Answer: They fear getting their heads cut off, their wives and children—male and female—raped and then sold in slavery.
How do Jews react? We write blogs and letters of outrage as Liberals squeal with laughter at our timidity.
Man’s law can never cancel G-ds law.
While I am not Jewish, I am circumcised so I would be a target by the “correct people”.
When will the “Truly Correct” start banning all spiritual and physical expression of religious beliefs ? Unless of course you belong to the correctly approved religion.