Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the modern nation of Germany, the successor state to Nazi Germany, which perpetrated the Holocaust during World War II.
Germany
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News Germany Drafts Law To Protect Circumcision
Germany’s Ministry of Justice has presented a draft law to permit circumcisions by doctors and mohels as a matter of religious freedom in response to uncertainty about the procedure fueled by a Cologne court’s ban on the procedure. The Cologne court’s June ruling, which angered Muslims and Jews, held that circumcision deprives a child of…
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Fast Forward Germany Plans Law Allowing Circumcision
Germany’s Justice Ministry proposed to amend a law on the circumcison of male children to safeguard the rights of Jews and Muslims to perform the ritual. The amendment, which aims to cement religious rights while responding to critics of the practice, would allow ritual circumcision only with parental consent and performed by a practitioner according…
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Fast Forward German Muslims and Jews Rally for Circumcision
Jews and Muslims in Berlin demonstrated for the right to carry out ritual circumcisions, a right that has been endangered in Germany. Under the slogan “On Knife’s Edge: Religious Freedom,” some 300 demonstrators rallied Saturday at Bebelplatz, the site of the 1933 Nazi book burnings, to protest the May ruling in a Cologne court that…
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Fast Forward Berlin’s State Legalizes Circumcision
One of Germany’s 16 states has declared circumcision legal. Berlin, Germany’s capital and itself a state, is the first to declare the practice legal following Cologne court ruled in June that non-medical circumcisions on children amounted to a criminal offense, according to DPA, a German news wire. National legislation is also pending to legalize circumcision….
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Fast Forward Berlin Schoolgirls Hit by Anti-Semitic Abuse
Jewish school girls were verbally assaulted with anti-Semitic slurs in Berlin on Monday, in the second attack on Jews reported in the German capital in less than a week. Last week, Daniel Alter, a Berlin rabbi, was assaulted by youths in West Berlin in a suspected anti-Semitic attack, witnessed by his 6-year-old daughter. Alter told…
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Opinion Applying American Law to Far-Off Crimes
The Obama administration recently took a troubling stance against victims of human rights abuses in a brief filed with the Supreme Court. The administration asked the Supreme Court to place strict limits on the reach of the Alien Tort Statute, an important law allowing people to file civil suits in American courts for violations of…
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Fast Forward Charges Dropped Over Berlin Circumcision
Prosecutors in Berlin dismissed a criminal complaint lodged against a rabbi for performing circumcisions. The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday that the complaint for “causing bodily harm” against Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg was dropped on August 15 as “unfounded.” An opponent of circumcision lodged the complaint last month after Ehrenberg defended the practice on a television…
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News German Jews Plan To Train Mohels
Germany’s main Jewish body has announced its intention to institutionalize the training of mohels or ritual circumcisors. Amid concerns among Jews and Muslims that their religious practice of circumcision may be outlawed, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is organizing meetings with Rabbi Josh Spinner of the Orthodox Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin and Rabbi Walter…
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