Topic: A sad story to add fuel to the circumcision debate

[Halleyscomet/Wakefield]

I think there is a huge problem there.  It's like Catholics don't really endorse fucking children, but they don't openly oppose it either?

Or xian fundies don't really endorse killing abortion doctors, but they don't openly oppose it?

I think snake handlers among Christians is a better comparison. It's dangerous and stupid but most the people who know this are not in the churches that practice it.

[Eternally Learning]

Wait.  So Jews *literally* endorse sucking babies' dicks?

What the fucking fuck is wrong with these fucked up fuckers?

Correction:

A sect of extremist Jews endorse sucking an infant's penis during a circumcision.

Please, let's separate the extremists from the masses on this one, shall we?

I'm unclear on something:  Is orthodox/ultra-orthodox just an indication of holding to the universally-held rules while the non-orthodox accept the same rules as legit but are liberal in their application of them?

It's more complicated than that, but you have part of the general idea. Most the Jews I know are reformed. Some keep kosher, others do not.

The whole "sucking the blood out of a circumcised penis" thing is practiced by a subset of the ultra-orthodox community. Even then most of the people who do this use a sterile tube as an intermediary between the penis and the mouth. It's more like the oral suction devices you can get for removing snot out of an infant's nose.

Even THEN the ultra-orthodox Jews who do practice oral suction without a sterile suction tube have rules requiring the person performing it to be on anti-herpes medication for a set number of days before the procedure, AND to be herpes free.

So what we have here, is someone ignoring a medication rule for an extremist segment of an extremist segment of an ultra-orthodox community. It would be a bit like someone getting kicked out of the WBC for being too hard on homosexuals.

Hell, most the Jews I've discussed this with have dismissed the entire phenomenon as a revived blood libel because the prospect is just too damn absurd to contemplate. I didn't have this news story to show them though.

Right, I get the practice itself isn't common.  My question is more about the commonness of the rule/law itself.  Is it actually something officially valid or is it something unique to this subset?

[Xptical]

@EL
Wikipedia says it's in the Talmud under Mishnah Shabbat 19:2.  I have no idea about any of that.  But the references seem to suggest that it was done back in the day to prevent disease.

Yeah, because your invisible sky monster said that saliva was clean?  What a bunch of fucking morons.  They all need to be taken to jail for conspiracy to commit child molestation.

[Eternally Learning]

@EL
Wikipedia says it's in the Talmud under Mishnah Shabbat 19:2.  I have no idea about any of that.  But the references seem to suggest that it was done back in the day to prevent disease.

Yeah, because your invisible sky monster said that saliva was clean?  What a bunch of fucking morons.  They all need to be taken to jail for conspiracy to commit child molestation.

Yeah... this is really strange that it's allowed in the US. 

[Halleyscomet/Wakefield]

@EL
Wikipedia says it's in the Talmud under Mishnah Shabbat 19:2.  I have no idea about any of that.  But the references seem to suggest that it was done back in the day to prevent disease.

Yeah, because your invisible sky monster said that saliva was clean?  What a bunch of fucking morons.  They all need to be taken to jail for conspiracy to commit child molestation.

Right, I get the practice itself isn't common.  My question is more about the commonness of the rule/law itself.  Is it actually something officially valid or is it something unique to this subset?

Apparently the Jews have been debating this for a few generations. According to the essay Metzitzah B'Peh--Oral Law? the requirement is not a religious one, refers only to "suction" to draw out blood, and the health of the child is the paramount concern. The same passage also refers to applying cumin powder to the wound, but that practice has been discontinued thanks to modern medicine.

While this is not the first time death has been linked to oral suction of a circumcision wound, this is the information age. Hopefully we're about to see the end of a barbaric practice.

[superdave]

Yeah to be clear, the amount of people in the US who practice this as described in the article probably numbers in the thousands or fewer.  The real story here is will moderate Jews do anything?  Well I'm a moderate Jew...at least I posted about this here.

Two answer another question about the difference between liberal and orthodox Jews..it's complicated. Conservative and Orthodox both hold that traditional Jewish law defines Judaism, but Conservative Jews allow for more creative interpretation, while Orthodox Jews allows less wiggle room. 

The Reform movement basically doesn't hold any part of Jewish law as mandatory at all.

[Halleyscomet/Wakefield]

Yeah to be clear, the amount of people in the US who practice this as described in the article probably numbers in the thousands or fewer.  The real story here is will moderate Jews do anything?  Well I'm a moderate Jew...at least I posted about this here.

Sadly, the few people who do this are part of a deliberately ignorant minority:

The other element of this discussion is that the Hareidi community does not recognize the opinions of secular individuals or government authority in relation to religious matters. Not long after the metzitzah scandal in 2005, I was a guest on a radio program pitting me, a modern mohel, against a representative of the Hareidi community. The topic was metzitzah. Certain things became very clear to me as a result of that radio program. The Hareidi community does not recognize the opinion or authority of anyone who is not part of their community. When I asked what would happen if it could be shown that a child could become ill, or God forbid, die as a result of a mohel transmitting a communicable disease, the response was that "The people in our communities don't get those diseases. Our people are holy;" and "We have been performing metzitzah b'peh on thousands of babies. How come they did not get sick?" Change, in this case, has been rendered virtually impossible.

[jack wooster]

Genital mutilation of babies seems like taking cultural practices to an extreme to me, adding dick sucking to it is an extreme of an extreme, it doesn't make the rest of it any more palatable.

[David E.]

As I said, I want to be wrong, but Nothing will be done.

[superdave]

As I said, I want to be wrong, but Nothing will be done.

To be fair, what can they do?  Any Jewish person with at least a decent bit of secular contact finds this practice disgusting and won't do it.  The people who are doing it are so extreme and self selected that I can't imagine anything you could do to stop them. 

[Xptical]

As I said, I want to be wrong, but Nothing will be done.

The new AA poster can be "Slaves, obey your masters" with a picture of a rabbi sucking off a baby.


On a side note, if I converted to this sect, would I need to get head from Mr. Herpes Mouth too?

[Eternally Learning]

Thanks for the clarification guys.

[Skeptress]

IIRC there was a similar case last year.