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Rabbis Fighting Department of Health
January 5th, 2006

A battle is brewing between Orthodox Jews and city health officials. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene now says it will launch a public education campaign against the practice of metzitzah b’peh, a widely used circumcision procedure in which the practitioner cleans blood off the wound by sucking it with his mouth. Last month, health officials concluded that five infants caught herpes from the practice. One of the children died from the disease and another suffered brain damage, according to the Health Department.

Jewish leaders are fighting the campaign, while health officials aren’t budging on their stance. Ben Smith excerpts a few paragraphs of an editorial the Yiddish paper Der Blatt and seems to point to a campaign promise that pinned Orthodox support for Bloomberg on the city’s non-interference in circumcision practices. It’s a stew of legal, cultural and political issues, and it may be, as Smith writes, “rising to a head.”

By Hilary Russ on January 5, 2006, 10:39 am
In category: Health, Law | 5 Comments »

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5 Responses to “Rabbis Fighting Department of Health”

  1. Dr Jacques Chretien Says:
    January 12th, 2006 at 1:54 am

    Male infant circumcision is gross human rights violation violating male’s freedom of choice freedom of religion and degrading disgusting deforming disfiguring genital assault and rape !!!!!!!!
    Why does the US endorse discrimnatory malpractice on some males while protcting all others ?
    BRUTAL BIZARRE and barbaric !!
    NO RELIGION IS ABOVE CHILD RAPE !!!!

  2. Andrew Kent Says:
    January 26th, 2006 at 1:47 am

    The issue in this dispute is not, as one responder suggested, the alleged barbarism of circumcision, nor is it the irony, as some comedians might suggest, that orthodox rabbis are allowed such access to a child’s genitals while pedophile priests are not. What is at issue is whether the Constitution’s Free Exercise clause supercedes the State’s power under the doctrine of Parens Patriae to protect the health and safety of children, and whether public policy has a place in regulating religious rituals that are antithetical to public health.
    Clearly, while it is the right of parents to raise their children in the religion of their choice, and the right of clergy to practice traditional, albeit bizarre and anachronistic, religious rituals, these rights, while fundamental, are by no means absolute. The abuse, neglect, or endangerment of children is no more legally permitted or Constitutionally protected than would be such practices as polygamy, cannibalism, human sacrifices, or, perhaps closer to contemporary reality, suicide bombings. Prior to the herpes incidents, health officials either didn’t know of the practice, or didn’t care. But now, compelling public interest demands that this practice be discouraged through public education, and perhaps even outlawed all together.
    Would such action, as some might suggest and others might hope, create a slippery slope leading to the abolition of all forms of ritual circumcision? Most certainly not, if the procedure remains safe and sanitary. But, if the rabbis want to keep the hand of government out of their business, then they will have to clean up their own act and bring their practices up to modern sanitary and medically acceptable standards.
    Tradition may be among the most sacred underpinnings of religion, but it should never be a license to kill.

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