New York City has denied a second attempt by the Jewish Daily Forward to obtain information about consent forms gathered under a regulation that warns parents about metzitzah b’peh, a controversial circumcision rite. The city also refuses to say whether such forms even exist. A regulation that came into force at the beginning of 2013…
Hey, Mr. Mayor! When you were the public advocate of the City of New York — an office with little more than a megaphone — you criticized city agencies for failing to respond to Freedom of Information Law requests. Government, you said, must be held accountable! Now, Mr. de Blasio, you’re the mayor, and it’s…
It’s been more than one year since New York City announced a new regulation to protect infants from contracting herpes during metzitzah b’peh, a controversial circumcision rite that many ultra-Orthodox mohels employ. Since then, two babies in the city that were subjected to MBP, as the rite is known, have been infected with the herpes…
Zac Efron is Jewish. Really. He can prove it. In fact, he did. In a new video for Comedy Central’s “Workaholics,” Efron and Seth Rogen (his co-star in “Neighbors”) interview for a job with Adam (Adam DeVine), Blake (Blake Anderson) and Ders (Anders Holm). “I think if you add a Jewish person, you’d probably be…
Resisting calls to ban the non-medical circumcision of boys, the governments of Norway and Denmark have taken steps to preserve the practice’s legal status. Norway’s health ministry has submitted a bill that proposes placing some limitations and fees on ritual circumcision but not banning it outright, while Denmark’s health board issued guidelines stating that the…
(JTA) — In the circumcision wars, circumcision has been winning some big battles. A new survey of medical data going back more than two decades has found that the health benefits of circumcision far outweigh the risks. The publication of the article on April 4 by the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings is the latest…
An Australian-American team of researchers recommended circumcising infant males to avoid diseases in a new study that compared the practice to vaccination. The team, led by Brian Morris of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney, asserted in their newly published study that half of uncircumcised males will contract an adverse medical…
After cutting off the infant’s foreskin, Rabbi Avrohom Cohn leaned down toward the baby boy who was cradled on a white pillow atop his grandfather’s knee. Standing fully over the child, with his back to the dozens of immaculately dressed guests at the Syrian Jewish gathering in Brooklyn, it was impossible to see what Cohn…
אויף דער אונטערבאַן האָב איך זיך אויסגעלערנט מײַנע ערשטע זאַצן אויף שפּאַניש.
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