I just watched some weirdo from the Bay Area debate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on CNN about the issue of circumcision. Using a very conventional and worn-out approach, Shmuley defended the practice by highlighting its merits from a medical and physiological perspective--it helps to prevent HIV infection, it enhances the sexual experience for both men and women, etc.
While I am on his side, Shmuley is all wrong.
It is precisely in its primitivity, the tribal character of the brit ritual--with its blood, pain, and mystery--that the power (and hence the validity and relevance) of circumcision lies. The "hygiene" or "medical" argument is not the correct tactic to use against radical, dogmatic secularists who decry the "barbarity" of our millennia-old ritual; rather, a defense of circumcision should rely on what it has always relied on: fidelity to tradition, a link to our ancestors, the spirituality of the experience.
Muslims practice circumcision as well and have for many centuries. Do we see them retreating like weasels behind the perceived protection (and supposed validation) of modern science? Do they feel the need to make justifications and apologies for their ancient religious observances?
Hey, fellow tribespeople: Where is our backbone?
I've witnessed and participated in brit milah rituals from Brooklyn, New York to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and without fail, they have been some of the most moving spiritual moments in my life--as well as in the lives of the families and communities themselves. Sure, it's discomforting to watch a baby cry; nevertheless, like the howl of a ram's horn during the Days of Awe, that cry awakens something so deep, so profound, and so transformative in the souls of all those who hear it that its psycho-spiritual power is impossible to deny. And its practice would be totally myopic and inane to reject.
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