Oh No! It's Another Thread About Circumcision.

[bankside]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Of course it would.

We see the OP going batshit crazy because babies are dying in a fairly small sect practicing some ancient ritual and a tiny amount of preventable deaths are occurring. The OP is outraged because the cause of death has a religious origin.

Where is the comparable data for other avoidable risk behaviors that kill innocents in much larger numbers? Where is the data comparing STD deaths that are often spread to innocent partners? Where is the outrage for DUI deaths or even violent crime that results from alcohol and substance abuse? There is a very long list of risk behaviors that create many, many more times the innocent fatalities than this rare occurrence does.

A breathalizer interrupt would pretty much end all DUI fatalities, but we don't get insane at every DUI, and we have technology to prevent those deaths.

It doesn't make the practice right, but the outrage is nothing less than a rant.

Innocent lives are the cost of many controllable behaviors, but we accept those. This is nothing more than a pet peeve about a tiny population and the damage is to their own population, not bystanders.

I don't endorse it, but this thread is lame as are the dumbass shitstorm comments made after.

Speak for yourself as to what other behaviours "we accept." I assure you if a child acquired a(nother) sexually transmissible infection that proved fatal, the law would intervene. Nor does belonging to a small sect insulate parents from a normal duty of care.

If you'd care to post about all those other topics in other threads, you might get a sense of the outrage they engender. Crazy gun policy? Yeah, I think I'm on record there. Crazy social norms around lethal sexual behaviour? I do think I've put a few words down on that topic too. Pointless hypocritical unprincipled military adventurism? Done. Profit-driven insane health care system? Yup.

In fact we are as outraged by other kinds of deadly stupidity. Implying that the animus of this thread is actually some kind of anti-religious sentiment only illustrates the problem outlined by Hitchens, who said of Falwell, "you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called 'reverend'"

There is no reason to give any more standing to this practice than might be given to some discredited idea authored by Dr. Spock a couple of generations ago and now known to be unsound. And no reason not to reject it as forcefully as all those other subject areas on which we do indeed weigh in.

 

[Alnitak]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Metzitza B'peh?
is it hebrew?
poor baby 0_0

Yes.

Buzzer -- the men that are doing this are jewish rabbis.

My mohel was not a rabbi.

I think we should ban Judaism.

It has been tried many times.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

There's a whole slew of mohel jokes here. Some of them are funny—

http://forum.maplewoodonline.com/discussion/34419/post-your-mohel-jokes-here/p1

 

[Vitamin]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

As a circumcised male I am very grateful that my parents weren't mohels.

 

[bort138]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

We don't need to make Judaism illegal, just the mouth to baby penis blood sucking part. Religion should never be made illegal but instances like this it needs to be kept in check by rationally thinking people. No freedom is absolute and freedom of religion is no different.

If parents can't be bothered to think rationally about the health and safety of their child, other people will. I would prefer to live in a society where sucking a baby's penis is never acceptable for anyone under any circumstance and is punishable by law. How about you?

 

[Latimer]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

^What do welfare benefits have to do with an ultra-orthodox Rabbi, carrying out a religious rite? Even if some/many of us find this practice to be horrendous.

The ultra-orthodox are notorious in both the US and Israel for having dozens of children and no income and living off of welfare.
I believe there's an entire ultra town in New York state where almost all of the inhabitants fit this description. In Israel the men also being Yeshiva students so they're exempt from serving in the military.

And as you might imagine, THEY HATE GAYS.

 

[Alnitak]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

^^^

Yes serial childbirth, say five or more, is a cause of poverty and it is a global damper on women's education and working outside the home.

 

[bankside]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

We don't need to make Judaism illegal, just the mouth to baby penis blood sucking part.

LOL I cannot believe this point has to be made. It's 2014 ffs.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

It not suck enough that religions who practice this claim to believe in some powerful God who was then so stupid he made men born with extra skin. Thank goodness my parents did not believe in it! Religion equals stupidity

What "extra skin"????

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

No. It wouldn't.

Consenting adults take all sorts of risks (not just sexual) every day. It's their choice.

But, it is interesting that you would compare performing a circumcision to sexual behaviors. Do go on. Compare it to, and give us some statistics for, the dangers and consequences of child molesting. See if you can make us comfortable with pedophilia - not likely.

Consent is irrelevant -- it is a useful comparison, the point being to find out if this circumcision rite passes more infection than irresponsible sex.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

LOL I cannot believe this point has to be made. It's 2014 ffs.

Jewish vampires . . . who knew.

 

[sixthson]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Metzitza bpeh literally means 'oral suction.'

It is practiced by Charedi "Ultra Orthodox" Jews.

Can you tell us where in your scriptures this particular form of circumcision is commanded?

 

[Alnitak]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Can you tell us where in your scriptures this particular form of circumcision is commanded?

http://www.sefaria.org/Mishna_Shabbat.19

 

[dereperez]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

How bizarre. Perhaps its time to modify this outdated ritual. Less sucking, more sterilizing.

 

[bankside]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Jewish vampires . . . who knew.

Well, not to get too over-analytical but I can't chuckle at that. While I see you're in context in this thread, and that your emphasis is on the vampiric character of these particular mohelim, rather than the Jewish faith or the culture, I think it would be too easy for that quip to be taken out of context. Given the historic, anti-semitic blood libel floating around at the edges of our culture, I would feel responsible as a writer to avoid an association between judaism and vampiric bogeymen, even for humorous effect. I think it is an unresolved problem as to how a zinger like that can be delivered without unintended shades of meaning. In passing, I don't think this rite is essential to Judaism or the continuity of that culture. Thus I can't properly consider it Jewish, but rather simply a sectarian habit.

 

[bankside]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

How bizarre. Perhaps its time to modify this outdated ritual. Less sucking, more sterilizing.

Well, some reforms go deeper still:

http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/ritual.htm

Why circumcise when you can celebrate anyway? Much less knifey-cutty. Much more respecting autonomy and consent.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Well, not to get too over-analytical but I can't chuckle at that. While I see you're in context in this thread, and that your emphasis is on the vampiric character of these particular mohelim, rather than the Jewish faith or the culture, I think it would be too easy for that quip to be taken out of context. Given the historic, anti-semitic blood libel floating around at the edges of our culture, I would feel responsible as a writer to avoid an association between judaism and vampiric bogeymen, even for humorous effect. I think it is an unresolved problem as to how a zinger like that can be delivered without unintended shades of meaning. In passing, I don't think this rite is essential to Judaism or the continuity of that culture. Thus I can't properly consider it Jewish, but rather simply a sectarian habit.

The best of both worlds IMHO would be for circumcision to be something entered into voluntarily in adult or near-adulthood, similar to confirmation of many Christian sects. But any personal qualms I may have about the practice aside, it's really up to them to decide to modernize or reform in that way. I know that circumcision is rather core to the relationship that Jewish people have with God as far as the religious teachings are concerned, and as an outsider I am loathe to simply say "*I* think circumcision is bad, therefore they should do away with it" with extremely limited knowledge of how important this issue is to Jewish practitioners themselves within that context. So far as what little I know goes, circumcision is still common even in reform synagogues that are very lax about other things like food prohibitions.

 

[bankside]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Yes; I am not loathe to say it. To me, bodily continuity is far more important than cultural continuity anyway. It must be the person's own choice.

However if we cannot agree to ending the circumcision of people without consent, let's at least agree that applying one's infectious lips to the open wound just cut into in an infant boy's penis is a practice that can be safely made illegal.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

Yes; I am not loathe to say it. To me, bodily continuity is far more important than cultural continuity anyway.

You wouldn't say that if you'd ever experienced the collapse of your own culture. If you want to see what that does to people look up the Hmong and their sudden death syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unexpected_death_syndrome) or the problems on reserves. Is circumcision really that important to a Jewish religious identity or cultural identity? I don't know, but I'm not so arrogant as to sit here and dictate that answer for them.

 

[Alnitak]

Re: New York Baby Infected With Herpes After Metzitza B'peh Circumcision Rite

In passing, I don't think this rite is essential to Judaism or the continuity of that culture. Thus I can't properly consider it Jewish, but rather simply a sectarian habit.

Brit Milah is universally considered among Jews to be the most important rite in all of Judaism.