A recent story in The New York Times looked at the rise of American girls who are being sent abroad to undergo female circumcision, which has been banned in the United States since 1996. As Julie Terkewitz reported, about 228,000 women and girls in the United States, members of an African immigrant population that has…
A Canadian review board cleared of “sexual motive” a doctor who practiced “metzitzah b’peh,” a controversial circumcision practice. The Ontario Health Professions Appeal and Review Board said in its conclusion published Tuesday that there was no evidence supporting the accusation of anti-circumcision activists that Aaron Jesin acted out of sexual motive in carrying out the…
The Obama administration’s anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office’s portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe. Circumcision has become a top focus for Ira Forman, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. He has been using the pulpit his office provides to warn European governments that moves to ban ritual circumcision…
Israel’s Supreme Court has overturned a ruling by a court of rabbis that would have forced a mother to have her son circumcised under the terms her divorce. Circumcision is not legally obligatory for Jews in Israel, but a rabbinical court presiding over the woman’s divorce case had ruled she must fulfill her husband’s wish…
The leader of Norway’s Jewish community praised his country’s parliament for passing an act regulating ritual circumcision for boys. “The act changes the paradigm of the debate about ritual circumcision in Norway in a very positive way and is therefore very significant,” Ervin Kohn, president of the Jewish Community in Oslo, told JTA Friday. “I…
A coalition of Cleveland Jewish leaders are protesting a graphic mural painted on a gas station wall that depicts a rabbi performing a controversial circumcision ritual. Anti-Defamation League regional director Anita Gray, and Cheryl Davis, chair of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Community Relations Committee, slammed the mural as anti-Semitic. “This outrageous and deeply offensive…
A new study from Canada indicates a possible connection between male circumcision and a lower likelihood of prostate cancer. The study, published in the British urology journal BJU International, was based on interviews with more than 3,000 men in the Montreal area between the ages of 40 and 75. The study’s authors found that men…
The leading rabbi of Agudath Israel of America, the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group, condemned non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and called the religiously progressive Open Orthodox movement heretical at the group’s annual gala. “The Torah must be guarded from the secular forces that seek to corrupt its values and the lives of [Jews], from intruders who sometimes…
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