Two Jewish infants in New Jersey were recently infected with — but survived — a herpes virus attributed to their ritual circumcisers’ use of an oral suctioning technique that is said to have caused the death of an infant in New York in September. Dr. Margaret Fisher, chair of pediatrics at Monmouth Medical Center, told…
The debate over circumcision has spread to Colorado, where two lawmakers are seeking to reinstate Medicaid funding for the procedure after it was cut last year. The proposal, which is snaking its way through the state legislature, has sparked a broader conversation about circumcision in Colorado and beyond, with Jews on both sides of the…
When hundreds of thousands of immigrants flocked to Israel from the Former Soviet Union, they never dreamed that their absorption process could prove a missing link in a massive plan to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. At the height of the wave of arrivals in the 1990s, Israeli doctors came face to face with a huge…
The Shmooze can think of at least one guy who won’t be performing a bris anytime soon. John Patterson, a doctor at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., is in court this week, facing a lawsuit for amputating a penis during what was intended to be a circumcision. He’s being sued by Phillip Seaton, who’s already…
The recent ballot initiative to ban circumcision in San Francisco, which was recently dropped, ignited a hair-raising and soul-searching debate on the topic between Jews and non-Jews, and Jews and Jews alike. For some of us at the Sisterhood, one of the more confounding elements of brit milah conversation was whether we should endorse a…
The Sisterhood, of course, isn’t the only place where “Jewish women converse.” The blog also co-produces with Lilith magazine a Women’s Roundtable podcast. And Forward editor Jane Eisner co-hosts with Rachel Sklar The Salon, a Jewish Channel television show that brings together Jewish women with a wide range of perspectives. On the latest Women’s Roundtable,…
To cut, or not to cut, that is the question. At least, that seems to be the dilemma du jour as residents of San Francisco gear up to vote this fall on a proposal to legally ban circumcision of males under the age of 18. Leaders in the Jewish and Muslim communities, along with others…
Phone-throwing Oscar winner Russell Crowe has come out swinging against circumcision — specifically the Jewish kind — in a Twitter rant he subsequently retracted (sort of). Calling the ritual “barbaric and stupid,” Crowe said he “love[s] my Jewish friends,” but that ” if u feel it is yr right 2 cut things off yr babies…
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