In the legendary days of the Yiddish Forward, Ab. Cahan, the founding editor, could leave his office at 175 East Broadway and roam the streets, synagogues, restaurants, schools yards and tenements of the Lower East Side to listen to his readers. And he did, often. It helped him keep a finger on the pulse of…
All the top Democratic candidates vying to become the next mayor of New York City are calling for greater dialogue between Orthodox groups and city officials concerning the controversial Jewish circumcision practice known as metzitzah b’peh. But among these leading Democrats, only City Comptroller John Liu says he would outright abolish the city’s regulation of…
Israel’s chief rabbinate has weighed in on the practice of a controversial circumcision rite in Germany, saying that metzitzah b’peh is preferred. The practice, in which blood is sucked orally from the circumcision wound, is under scrutiny in Germany, due to a complaint filed against a Berlin rabbi for allegedly committing bodily harm during a…
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate John Liu opposes new city regulations that require parents to sign consent forms before their baby may undergo a controversial oral suctioning technique employed as part of a ritual circumcision, Liu told the Forward today. The regulations, championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, were imposed this January in response…
A Chabad-affiliated rabbi criticized a rival group for its public disapproval of a circumcision-related ritual currently under investigation in Germany. Some Jewish leaders “decided to align themselves with those who are working against Jewish interests,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin, director of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, wrote in an editorial Thursday in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper….
University of Pennsylvania officials are crying foul over what they view as the illicit procurement and misuse by several ultra-Orthodox groups of an internal study by Penn researchers of a controversial circumcision rite. Penn’s Center for Evidence-based Practice never published or released an assessment it conducted earlier this year of evidence from prior studies showing…
The authors of a research report on metzitzah b’peh say their study is being distorted by defenders of the controversial ritual circumcision practice who claim that the procedure poses no risk of neonatal herpes to infants. In an April 9 press release headlined “Ivy League Study Casts Doubt on Claims that Jewish Tradition Leads to…
Berlin’s district attorney is investigating complaints about a circumcision in the German capital involving the controversial metzizah b’peh ritual. A spokesman for the office of the public prosecutors, Martin Steltner, told JTA that several complaints were lodged formally in the past two weeks regarding the March 3 circumcision of the infant son of Berlin Chabad…
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