Abstract
For much of their history, European Jews viewed religion and ethnic identity as inseparable; social behavior, not belief, mattered, and conformity was essential. The Enlightenment introduced rationalism, individualism, and modernity into Western Europe—all incompatible with an ethnically segregated lifestyle. Many European Jews adopted Enlightenment principles and became at least partly assimilated. But even those who abandoned most ritual practices continued circumcising male infants as an ethnic tradition. Two partly opposed doctrines became prominent in twentieth-century thought: cultural relativism, teaching that all cultural traditions merit equal acceptance and respect; and (an essentially contrary argument) that human rights apply to individuals, not to traditions. Some defenders of ethnic circumcision use doctrinaire cultural relativism to reject the human rights argument. With this as background, I discuss contemporary Jewish-American circumcision advocacy. A key question: Since few Jewish Americans now observe the more demanding ritual practices, why the insistence on retaining infant circumcision?
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- 1.
Although I’ll refer specifically to Jewish Americans, all statements refer equally to Jewish Canadians.
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A personal anecdote may help to emphasize this point. I once invited a group of young Christian missionaries to speak to my class on anthropology of religion. When the class ended, they dispersed among the students, trying to win converts on the spot. One young man came over to me and spoke earnestly about my salvation. When he sensed that the conversation was going in the wrong direction, he asked what I thought would happen when I died. Without really thinking, I replied, “There will be one more dead Jew.” He was taken aback and abandoned the effort. I had responded, of course, with characteristic Jewish focus on community, while he was thinking of me as an individual needing personal salvation.
- 3.
“The French National Assembly: Debate on the Eligibility of Jews for Citizenship,” in Mendes-Flohr and Reiharz (1995); here, p 115.
- 4.
One recent author, claiming that the “Modern Age” is the “Jewish Age,” defines “modernization” as “everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible.” In other words, he concludes, modernization “is about everyone becoming Jewish.” Slezkine (2004).
- 5.
I discuss this history in some detail in Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, Chap. 5; and more concisely in “Jewish Circumcision: An Enigma in Historical Perspective,” in Denniston et al. (2001). See also Judd (2007) Chaps. 1–3.
- 6.
Herskovits (1948). Both Boas and Herskovits were Jewish. On Boas’s attitude to Jewish ethnicity see my article, “Types Distinct from Our Own: Franz Boas on Jewish Identity and Assimilation,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 84, 1982, pp. 545–65; reprinted in Regna Darnell, ed., American Anthropology, 1971–1995. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002, pp. 341–72. See also Herskovits (1960).
- 7.
Violations of male human rights usually involve atrocities (torture, slavery, massacre, etc.) that even the most confirmed relativists do not defend. But lest I seem to be misrepresenting categorical cultural relativism, see publications by the prominent University of Chicago anthropologist Richard A. Shweder, who finds nothing objectionable in male or female genital cutting, nor in rigorous seclusion of women in India enforced by beating of offenders. Commenting on human rights, he asks, “To whom shall ‘rights’ be granted? To male adults? To women? To children? To dogs? To the insane? To the elderly? To a fetus? To a sperm?” Shweder (1984). For his view of female genital cutting, see “What About Female Genital Mutilation? and Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place,” in Shweder et al. (2002). I should acknowledge that many defenders of human rights are equally categorical.
- 8.
The literature on human rights in relation to cultural relativism and collective rights is immense. Most publications focus on non-Western peoples, women, peasants, and indigenous (“tribal”) groups. References to children’s rights usually deal with child labor and/or female genital cutting. For some sense of the size and complexity of the literature on this subject, see Eva Brems, Human Rights: Universality and Diversity. The Hague and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2001. Of the book’s 574 pages (of rather turgid prose), 43 pages are devoted to bibliography (by no means complete). Although there is an index listing for “Female genital mutilation,” I find not even a sentence on male circumcision.
A few references most relevant for tensions between individual human rights and cultural relativism are the following: Howard (1992); Renteln (1988, 1994); Donnelly (1990); Adamantia Polis and Peter Schwab, “Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability,” in A. Polis and P. Schwab, eds., Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980.
It seems a safe generalization that male genital cutting is rarely if ever discussed by human rights scholars (most of whom are political scientists, lawyers, and anthropologists). Thus, despite the suggestive title, I found nothing on male circumcision in a book co-edited by an Israeli and including several articles on Israel: Gillian Douglas and Leslie Sebba, eds., Children’s Rights and Traditional Values. Aldershot, Eng. and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1998.
The only references to male circumcision appear to be publications by scholars largely outside the mainstream of human rights discourse and concerned specifically with this topic. Notable in this small cohort are the following: Fox and Thomson (2005, 2009); Hodges et al. (2002); Svoboda et al. (2000); Doctors Opposing Circumcision: Genital Integrity Policy Statement, Chap. 9: “International Human Rights Law and the Circumcision of Children,” available at www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org.
A widely publicized and debated defense of “parental discretion” in male circumcision is Benatar and Benatar (2003); multiple commentaries follow, pp. 49–66; and response by the authors is available at www.bioethics.net/journal/correspondence for the same issue of the journal. For a defense of parental rights by an Oxford University philosopher, see Viens (2004).
A book on “ethical universals” by a bioethicist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine discusses female genital cutting (here called “female genital mutilation”) extensively but never mentions male circumcision: Macklin (1999). Macklin says, “What I intend to show is that some things are relative, others are not. A convincing argument against ethical relativism need not conclude that nothing is relative, only that certain types of actions or practices—chiefly those that violate human rights—are not” (p. 24). She implicitly concludes that female genital cutting is a human rights violation but male circumcision is not. A summary of Macklin’s published debate with Robert Baker is available in Svoboda and Darby (2008); here pp. 289–90.
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Roth (1987). Roth does say, “out and not in,” apparently meaning out of the social mainstream.
- 10.
Francine Klagsbrun, “Circumcision may resemble female genital mutilation, but it has meaning for Jewish uniqueness,” Moment, April 1997, p. 22.
- 11.
Mark Washofsky, “Why Reform Never Abandoned Circumcision,” Reform Judaism, Fall 2008; quotation from online publication, Reform Judaism Online; italics in original. Many older Jews know the term “M.O.T.”—member of the tribe—as shorthand for saying that someone is Jewish.
- 12.
To end on a somewhat more positive note, we should keep in mind the contemporary understanding of “culture” as a dynamic process involving steady development in response to personal decisions by many individuals: “All forms of cultural relativism fundamentally fail to recognize culture as an ongoing historic and institutional process where the existence of a given custom does not mean that the custom is either adaptive, optimal, or consented to by a majority of its adherents” (my emphasis). Zechenter (1997). [Cited in Donnelly (2003). This book also includes a useful bibliography.] The same point and related matters are ably discussed in Preis (1996).
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Glick, L.B. (2013). Defying the Enlightenment: Jewish Ethnicity and Ethnic Circumcision. In: Denniston, G., Hodges, F., Milos, M. (eds) Genital Cutting: Protecting Children from Medical, Cultural, and Religious Infringements. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6407-1_18
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