Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America

by Leonard B. Glick

The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision. As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation. But Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised and to this day even most non-observant Jews continue to follow this practice. In this book, Leonard B. Glick offers a history of Jewish and
Christian beliefs about circumcision from its ancient origins to the current controversy. By the turn of the century, more and more physicians in America and England--but not, interestingly, in continental Europe--were performing the procedure routinely. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians were and continue to be especially vocal and influential champions of the practice which, he notes, serves to erase the visible difference between Jewish and gentile males. Informed medical opinion is now unanimous that circumcision confers no benefit and the practice has declined. In Jewish circles it is virtually taboo to question circumcision, but Glick does not flinch from asking whether this procedure should continue to be the defining feature of modern Jewish identity.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Parenting, Health

384 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Cyn]

This book took me quite some time to read - it's loaded with tons of historical information, and the typeface is small and close together. Most people might be turned off by such an enormous amount of information, but because I'm a staunch anti-cutter (i.e., I'm *against* the non-therapeutic, forced genital cutting of infant males - commonly known as 'circumcision') I found the book fascinating and yet at the same time infuriating.

It's sad to see the lengths people will go to justify something that is morally and ethically unjustifiable. Infant circumcision is one of those things, and religion being used as a shield to excuse such brutality inflicted upon children is downright nauseating to behold. Freedom of religion should never extend to inflicting those beliefs permanently and painfully upon the body of a non-consenting human being. Most people understand this when it comes to females, but have an amazing blind spot when it comes to what happens to males on a daily basis. It's a glaring double standard that should end. As of the late 1990s, forced genital cutting of females became illegal. This was an unconstitutional act, denying equal protection to males under the law.

Most parents have no clue just how harmful and traumatic circumcision is for their baby.

Circumcision always involves some form of ripping, cutting, and clamping. It's *extremely* painful, does all sorts of crazy things to the child's stress levels, heart rate, blood pressure, limbic system - and babies often goes into shock. Many parents think their child 'slept through' the procedure, but unless the child was completely put to sleep (which doctors don't usually do for a circ - and most of the time they don't provide *any* analgesic), the child is not sleeping, he's in shock.

Some videos of circumcision in America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDuDhk...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXVFFI...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k6dWr...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MLtxC...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2PKdD...

Jewish circ:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42KsW2...
http://www.bestgore.com/torture/jewis...
http://www.bestgore.com/torture/jewis...
http://www.vimeo.com/10914234


Circumcision trauma:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGNnq...

The above video explains why many parents erroneously believe their child 'slept through' the procedure ... no, they didn't. They were actually in a state of shock from the trauma.

While rare, circumcision can and has killed babies. It happens more than you might realize. Numbers are hard to pin down but estimations range from 100+ deaths per year to 400 or 500. Deaths caused by circ are often attributed to something else such as blood loss or heart attack - which ultimately hides the true cause. Also, sometimes circs are botched so badly that further surgery is required. And *all* circs involve permanent damage to the child's penis because he will be forever denied the full functionality of his genitalia, as nature intended.

All of this ... the risks, complications, pain, damage ... all for a genital surgery that is not medically necessary, except in rare cases. No medical organization in the world recommends the routine cutting of infants, and there's a darn good reason for that.

Doctors Opposing Circumcision
This Genital Integrity Policy Statement is quite comprehensive, but it should be required reading for all medical students and parents.
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcisio...

Additionally:
A study in Finland found that the rate of medically necessary circumcision is just under 0.006%. And complication rates from circ are much, much higher than this, so statistically it's better to leave the child alone.
http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/de...


Here's a story about the number of botched circs one particular medical practice in Richmond, VA has to tend to - more than 1600 'fixes' that have to be done over the course of three years. And that's just ONE city - and ONE medical practice. Appalling!
http://www.wtvr.com/wtvr-botched-circ...


And of course, given the fact that the damage rate of all infant circs is 100%, this is a practice that needs to be obliterated in our society. Let the man decide for himself if this permanent physical alteration is what he wants to do. No one else has the right to make such a decision for him. Not even parents.

[Andrew Foote]

This is an interesting case study of one of the most prominent body modification practices in the ethnographic record, namely Jewish circumcision. It is organized historically; it starts by discussing how the practice evolved during the early days of Judaism, goes on to discuss the maintenance of the practice among Jews in the European diaspora and how this was viewed by the Christians who they lived among, and finally culminates with a discussion of how Christians in English-speaking countries surprisingly adopted a form of circumcision very much like the Jewish form for themselves during the 19th century, though as a medical practice rather than a religious one. (Although it does not say anything about the subsequent decline in popularity of the practice in all English-speaking countries other than America, instead focussing solely on America in its coverage of the 20th century, which is a bit of a pity.)

The author makes no secret of his opinion on circumcision: he thinks it is morally wrong and that it should be abandoned as a practice. However, the tone is academic rather than polemical; the author is Jewish himself, and had already circumcised his own sons before he arrived at this opinion, so his condemnation of the practice is internally directed and not contemptous.

Although the focus on Jews might be considered a limitation, the author does explain why it makes sense to consider Jewish circumcision separate from circumcision as practised by Muslims and the many other peoples around the world who practise it. There are two substantial differences in the nature of the operation, which (contrary to what you might think) make Jewish circumcision (and medical circumcision, which seems to have been modelled after it) somewhat more severe than other forms of circumcision. Namely:

* Other peoples generally circumcise boys at a relatively late stage of development, often as part of an initiation ritual, whereas Jews and doctors circumcise infants with no capacity to resist, who will remember it as the way they've always been rather than as a stage of development that they underwent.

* The operation performed in most cultures is relatively simple---just a cut taking off the protruding outer foreskin, leaving the inner part of the foreskin, which in children is strongly adhered to the glans, intact. Jewish circumcision on the other hand is a somewhat more complex operation, in which care is taken to remove the *entire* foreskin. After the initial cut, the *milah*, the surgeon carrying out the circumcision (or *mohel*) must also carry out *peri'ah*, which involves tearing off the remaining part of the foreskin to ensure that the glans is completely uncovered. The Mishnah says that circumcision without *peri'ah* is not circumcision at all, so this is an essential part of the procedure. Medical circumcision is similar; the surgical technique is not so fixed, but the aim is to thoroughly remove the entire foreskin, just as it is for Jews.

This is definitely something I was surprised to learn. To finish this review, let me just mention various other things I learnt from the book which struck me as worth noting:

* Among Orthodox Jews there is actually a third stage in the ritual of circumcision---*metsitsah*, the sucking of the bleeding penis. In ancient times it was believed that this would aid recovery. Nowadays we know that it does more harm than good, and to avoid infection, all but the most extreme of modern Orthodox Jews use a tube to avoid direct contact with the wound. Reform Jews have abolished this part of the ritual entirely, although this was only done during the 19th century amid much controversy, which you will find chronicled in the book. This is one way in which Jewish circumcision has not been a static unchanging ritual over the years, but has changed in accordance with the science and the morality of the age. In fact many forward-thinking Jews in the 19th century were in favour of abolishing circumcision altogether; it seems that the compromise of abolishing *metsitsah* took some of the steam out of a burgeoning anti-circumcision movement among Jews.

* The *peri'ah* and *metsitsah* stages were themselves innovations of the Rabbinical period; during the time of the Second Temple, the operation was more of a simple cut as in other cultures. The reason that these additional stages were invented, and that their necessity was so emphasized in the rabbinical texts, was that previously, many Jews were able to assimilate into Roman society by stretching out the remaining parts of the foreskin---by stretching it repeatedly over a long period, one can gradually get the foreskin into a permanently stretched state, thus increasing the amount of skin it is able to cover. (This is the same technique used by some men today who wish to restore their own foreskins.) The rabbis made *peri'ah* and *metsitsah* necessary in order to make it as difficult as possible for this to be done, in order to keep Jews from being able to assimilate (a natural response given the immense stress Jewish society was under after the destruction of the Second Temple). So this is the other major way in which the nature of Jewish circumcision has changed over time. (It is also thought that the routine of circumcision of infants was an innovation since the Biblical period, since hardly anybody in the Bible seems to have been circumcised as an infant.)

* From the Jewish perspective, the purpose of the circumcision ritual is to maintain the convenant (a fancy word for "agreement") of the Jewish people with God. As told in Genesis 17, God appeared to Abraham and said that he would bless Abraham with fertility and would be the God of his descendants, who would possess the land of Canaan; however, there was a price: the foreskins of Abraham's male descendants. Thus, circumcision is essentially a sacrifice. (It is not conceptualized by modern religious Jews as a sacrifice, because religious Jews believe that the foreskin is a useless piece of skin with no function, and circumcision is just a "mark". But of course the foreskin does in fact have a function, and at the time the ritual was taken up the ancestors modern Jews would presumably have regarded it as something not easy to give up.)

* The motivation for the adoption of circumcision by English and American doctors in the 19th century is not particularly straightforward; it appears to have been a sort of fad which was believed to be capable of curing or protecting against all sorts of different ailments, exactly which ailments depending on who you asked. (Although the degree of wild speculation has decreased, this would also be a reasonably accurate summary of the status of the practice within medical science today.) But probably the most compelling effect to the 19th-century mind was that it was thought to dull sexual feeling and reduce the sexual drive and thus make people more moral according to 19th-century moral standards (the same argument was also used to justify circumcision much earlier by the influential Jewish philosopher Maimonides). Nowadays this effect is seen as a negative rather than a positive, and so it is talked about by anti-circumcision rather than pro-circumcision people.

Oh, finally, one thing I should mention: part of the final part of the book is devoted to analysing portrayals of circumcision in American popular culture such as in children's books, or in TV sitcoms (such as the Seinfeld episode *The Mohel*). This is kind of interesting to read, in the same way as reading the website TV Tropes can be, though I'm not sure how far it contributes to the overall book. There are some interesting things to be said about the overall tone in which circumcision is discussed in American popular culture: basically (the author tries to illustrate) it's a tone of evasion, avoidance, and underlying doubt.

[David A Williams]

fascinating look at the history and why it is still being practiced in north america when medical organisations condemn the procedure (and some countries are looking at banning it as the child cant consent to a cosmetic procedure), how the thinking changed over time (from ancient to modern..quotes from history, early church fathers, reformation etc), how it evolved into a modern medical practice, asks if it should still be done today (authors conclusion is that should be the child's choice as it's their body (body autonomy), interacts with primary sources and well researched..

[Willa Guadalupe Grant]

A very hard book for me to read- it made me angry & sad & grateful for the choices I made for my son.

[Paul]

This thorough and, dare I say it, cutting analysis of the history of circumcision ends up on a downer, and very much falls into the Intactivist camp. A rewarding and thought provoking read, but without enough psychological anthropology to really get at the deeper questions.