A couple of weeks ago, Peaceful Parenting reported on some remarks Russell Crowe made about circumcision:
Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect….
I have many Jewish friends. I love my Jewish friends… but stop cutting your babies. I will always stand for the perfection of babies. I will always believe in God, not man’s interpretation of what God requires.
Rather than tackle the very disturbing way Crowe approaches the issue – treating Jews as a monolith, accusing “us” of “cutting our babies,” telling us he knows more about God than we do, ignoring the fact that circumcision is as hotly debated within Jewish communities as it is without – Peaceful Parenting puts a stamp of approval on the whole thing:
Thank you for standing up on behalf of your own sons, and for boys the world over, Russell.
The comment thread follows the same trajectory: words like “barbaric” and “disgusting” abound, and one commenter claims that Crowe was silenced by the Jewish media.
Stuff like this is the reason I don’t blog much anymore.
The problem isn’t that people are anti-circumcision. The problem is that they’re calling an ethno-religious group barbarians. Look, I’ll just bring this out into the open: I’m more on the fence about circumcision than most people I know. I know circumcised men who wish the procedure hadn’t been done, and I know others who don’t care, and still others who are glad they had it done and plan to do the same to their own sons. There’s a lot to unpack in all of that, but there’s a more personal reason why I can’t join others in their absolutist stance: I worry that, because I don’t plan on circumcizing my son if I have one, he’s going to come to me someday and tell me that other Jews are ostracizing him for not being “Jewish enough” – just like I, as a half-Jew, have been ostracized by other Jews for not being “Jewish enough.” I worry that he’ll face the same road as me: carefully navigating Jewish communities, always choosing whom to confide in, and for the most part keeping his dirty little secret to himself.
For those of you who might be tempted to tell me there’s nothing stopping him from just getting it done when he’s older – well, first off, there’s the fear and pain of an irreversable medical procedure, which isn’t nothing, and secondly, anyone who’s ever been bullied knows that once you’ve been marked as an outsider, “fixing” yourself rarely undoes the damage.
I think my children will be in a much more secure place than I was, as they’ll have a mother who will tell them in no uncertain terms that there’s no such thing “Jewish enough.” But environments still have an impact on people, and when the time comes for me to say no to the procedure, I’ll be keenly aware of the possibility that I’ll be trading a physical scar for an emotional one. Basically what I’m saying is that in order to address circumcision, you have to address the ramifications of not being circumcized.
This is why pounding on our doors and yelling “Barbaric! Disgusting! Stop it already!” doesn’t stop circumcision. Rituals and practices stem from culture, and if you don’t respectfully educate yourself on and then address the culture, you’ll never change the practices. The way I see it, if you want male circumcision to stop, there are two better ways to go about it: 1) you can either avoid framing it as a specifically Jewish issue (as circumcision is routinely performed for health and hygene reasons, as dubious as those reasons may be) and acknowledge that there’s a whole host of religious and cultural issues that maybe you’re not an expert on; or 2) if, for whatever reason, Jewish circumcision is what moves you, you can approach one of the Jewish movements, led by Jews, to stop Jewish circumcision, and ask how you can help.
Really, I don’t know how you can expect to change things any other way.
Odd that he makes it all about the Jews. Certainly circumcision is an important part of the Jewish tradition, but by far the majority of the circumcised in the western world are non-Jewish.
Jewish circumcision is not based on the idea that there is something wrong with babies and/or foreskin. The large majority of circumcisions, which are performed amongst the 98% (in the US) of the population that is not Jewish, are.
It’s also the latter, larger group that makes claims such as that the foreskin is trivial, disposable or irrelevant. The importance of circumcision in Jewish tradition, on the other hand, indicates quite a different take.
Aside from the jarring anti-Semitism, anytime you’ve got a “Who are you to correct nature?” in your argument, there are problems right off the bat. Does Russell Crowe wear clothes? Does he brush his teeth? Does he cut his hair? Well, all those things “correct nature.” It’s an argument that people use only selectively and expect to apply only to what makes sense for them.
As you say, circumcision is very complex. It’s disingenuous and even harmful to boil it down to a couple of nonsensical talking points.
I’m trying to interpret you correctly. Crowe used insensitive language with regard to Jewish people, but he didn’t make the statement that Jews are barbarians. He said that circumcision is barbaric and stupid.
Are you making the claim that a person shouldn’t say that circumcision is barbaric, or that a person shouldn’t say that Jews are barbaric? Clearly, the latter statement is offensive. Is the former statement offensive, in your view, even if Jews are not referenced?
Phil:
While the question in your second paragraph is a fair one, I suppose, the paragraph I have quoted is disingenuous. Crowe calls circumcision barbaric and then tells Jews to stop practicing what he considers to be barbarism; given that Jewish circumcision is traditionally part and parcel of being Jewish, how is that not calling Jews and Judaism barbaric for circumcising and for mandating the circumcision of their children? And, by the way, just for the record I am not a defender of circumcision: here and here, and there are a couple of other pieces scattered through my posts on this blog.
If Crowe had said that circumcision is barbaric, and then stopped there, that wouldn’t change the fact that, as you say, Jewish circumcision is traditionally part and parcel of being Jewish. So, while I can understand and acknowledge how Crowe’s second sentiment (or second and third sentiments) are offensive, I am curious what Julie, or anyone really, thinks of a statement like, “Circumcision is barbaric.” Is it a reasonable thing to say if you don’t subsequently connect the act of barbarism you have just described to Jews, or is it a wrong thing to say, because the act is part and parcel of being Jewish?
My feeling is that if circumcision is barbaric, then it doesn’t really matter who does it. But I can’t quite tell if Julie’s point is that people shouldn’t say that circumcision is barbaric, because it’s important to Jews, or if her point is that if you say that circumcision is barbaric, that’s fine, just be careful not to single out Jews as practitioners of it.
Crowe is Australian, and I imagine circumcision rates there are very different than in the U.S. But in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of people who circumcise their infants are non-Jews.
In re “not Jewish enough”: A while ago, I had the unpleasant experience of telling a friend that even though she had Jewish ancestry and liked Judaism, she didn’t count as Jewish because her Jewish ancestry was on her father’s side (she’s not Jewish by Orthodox standards) and she wasn’t practicing Judaism (not Jewish by Reform standards).
Group membership usually works by people in the group deciding on the boundaries, though occasionally there’s pressure from inside and outside the group to expand who’s considered a member. I think this usually only has partial success.
Still, I feel queasy about being an enforcer when I don’t actually believe that a person whose Jewish ancestry is on the father’s side is especially much different from a person whose ancestry is on the mother’s side.
@ Nancy … Why did you feel that you had to tell her that? What bad outcome would have occurred if you had just let it lie?
Her friend would have continued collecting all those sweet “I’m A Jew” discounts.
I don’t remember how the subject came up.
For what it’s worth, she’s enough of a researcher that she probably would have found out anyway.
Well, if it makes you queasy to be the enforcer, you could always just not be the enforcer. There are plenty of other Jews perfectly willing to take on the task. In fact, there are plenty of non-Jews who also seem perfectly willing to take on the task. I have lost track of how many non-Jews I’ve encountered who know absolutely nothing about Judaism except that they are positive that I don’t count.
chingona @8: If her friend wanted to make aliyah, or marry another Jew, or any number of things where actually being Jewish as opposed to “having Jewish ancestry” mattered. Since she could formally convert, I don’t know that there’s a lot of utility in letting her find out the hard way.
Is Nancy’s friend interested in those things or does she consider herself Jewish in a cultural sense? What does Jewish ancestry mean? Does she have one Jewish grandparent or great-grandparent? Or is her dad Jewish?
Depending on what it means, she can make aliyah, but she wouldn’t be able to marry in Israel.
But to be considered unequivocally Jewish? She can only fix that if she has an Orthodox conversion and is willing to have her level of observance held over her like a club for the rest of her life. A Conservative or Reform conversion won’t do her any good in Israel or with Orthodox Jews here.
For the record, I had an infant conversion at the same time as my mother’s conversion, and it included submersion in the mikvah. Do people care? No, they do not.
So … keep up the good police work.
Yes, chingona, everybody who has a different point of view than you is the Jewish Enforcement Police.
This is exactly what this post is about.
chingona, you don’t seem to be able to distinguish between ‘information’ and ‘enforcement’. You’re angry that you’ve run into a lot of assholes who are happy to tell you that you’re not Jewish (gosh, me too) and so you assume that nobody could possibly have a conversation like Nancy describes that doesn’t go along the lines of “Oh, well *you’re* not *really* Jewish . “
I didn’t assume that. I assume she wasn’t an asshole about it/tried to be kind about it.
Nancy herself said she felt queasy being the enforcer. And I said if she doesn’t want to be the enforcer, then she doesn’t have to be.
I was surprised at the emotional effect of what I said. I didn’t realize to what extent my friend wanted to in some sense consider herself Jewish. It had literally never occurred to me that someone who hadn’t been raised Jewish or who liked the religion enough to convert would still want to be Jewish.
Whether I do enforcement or not, those boundaries exist in a lot of people’s minds, as chingona pointed out.
“Crowe is Australian, and I imagine circumcision rates there are very different than in the U.S. But in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of people who circumcise their infants are non-Jews.”
Well, right. So since Jews are a tiny minority of the world population why follow the statement about barbarism with a pointed attack telling Jews to quit it. Why not attack the U.S. medical establishment, that created and enforces the ‘need’ for it and who make new parents feel like they’re endangering their sons’ genital health! That’s barbarism – keeping surgeons busy and well paid with elective surgeries that parents don’t understand is elective!
Meanwhile, my brother (a secular Jew) married a non-Jew and they have two beautiful children, a girl and a boy. They chose not to have their son circumcised. My brother and sister-in-law just didn’t feel a compelling cultural or medical reason to have the procedure, so they chose not to have it done. There was no pressure from my sister-in-law religiously or culturally, by the way. My late mother did say (probably more than once), ‘Gosh, what a shame, what about when the boy wants to know why he’s different from his dad, and the rest of the tribe?’ But it wasn’t a particularly compelling argument for my brother and he gave it no weight. My brother reasonably assumed my nephew will lead a secular life, as he, my brother, has largely done. So they are not burdened by this decision the way many may be. I am only giving this example so it’s known that indeed it is not difficult for everyone to choose to not get their son circumcised. For those who struggle with it, all the best in your lives as parents.
I know LOTS of Reform Jews who’d consider someone with a Jewish father, who considers herself to be Jewish, to be Jewish.
I don’t know how to comment on this thread without coming off as preachy or terrible. I’m not Jewish. The identity and complexity of it confuse me. However, there’ s something here that makes me uneasy in a way I can’t just ignore and close the window. It just seems really entitled to tell people they aren’t X enough because of (reasons here). Not Jewish enough, not circumcised enough….I mean, who are you to judge?
Perhaps the thing I’m not getting is there seems to be an inordinate amount of bullying between Jewish people, as well as outsides examples (as RJN and Amp have discussed before.) I don’t understand that at all.
I approach this from an atheist perspective, but I think an option that is far too often overlooked within the context of religious discussion is that, if you have a belief that makes you queasy or uncomfortable, you can stop holding that belief. I realize that it only sounds simple, and can in fact be very difficult to do in practice, but I think it’s worth mentioning that it’s an option for anyone who is a human being, regardless of faith, ethnicity, culture, etc.
We are often raised to believe that we have an obligation to believe the things that our parents taught us, or that our culture believes, or that were written in ancient books. But that obligation isn’t real.
I’ll add that I absolutely don’t think that Jews have any more need to stop believing things than anyone else in the world. But I absolutely, unquestionably think that the world would be a better place if every single human adult (atheists and agnostics included) took a good hard look at all of their beliefs, examined them critically, and decided to chuck a few.
I second chingona at 11. It makes me, too, queasy to be the enforcer, so I don’t do it. One can give information without endorsing it. I often find myself saying things like, “An Orthodox rabbi wouldn’t consider you Jewish unless you convert — but a Reform rabbi would. There is no monopoly on Jewish law, though. If you feel a connection to Judaism, you should explore it. You can always formally convert later, under whichever movement you like, should that become important to you.”
IME a lot of people are very curious about their Jewish roots and may be only a bit of kindness away from practicing and/or converting (if necessary). For a radically welcoming take on conversion and the future of Judaism, I highly recommend Hillel: If Not Now, When? by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. I seriously can’t recommend it enough; it’s a wonderful book.
(An aside: As a Sephardi guy in New Mexico I have to say I’m pretty stoked to read comments by a Jew called “chingona”!)
Sorry for the long silence, all – spent the day traveling for a wedding.
Phil – I’d say that if you use the word “barbaric,” and single out one particular group, you’re basically calling them barbarians. No, you’re not using that specific form of the word, but the implication is pretty blatant. Regarding whether to call circumcision in general barbaric – the term itself is so incredibly loaded that I think we should just find a different descriptor for things we don’t like.
Nancy – I second what Chingona and Phil said above. If it makes you queasy, you don’t have to say or believe it. To my knowledge, the only Jews who strictly adhere to the matrilineal descent rule are Orthodox and Conservative religious Jews, which represent only a portion of all the religious and cultural communities out there. (Perhaps a large portion – I don’t have the numbers – but a portion nonetheless.) I guess I just don’t see the point of “enforcing” socially constructed boundaries like this one. If someone (like me) doesn’t make the cut in one group of Jews, they’re just going to go to another group of Jews, and at that point, the whole question of “who’s a Jew?” starts to seem kind of meaningless. (Personally, I like Alain Badou’s take on who’s a Jew: anyone who can’t say they’re not a Jew.)
Precisely. I don’t see how doing that makes anyone the Jewish Police.
Amp, you realize that those Reform Jews you speak of are not reflecting the official views of the Union for Reform Judaism? Whether any one of us individually says “sure, as far as I’m concerned you’re Jewish” is a little different than whether somebody who wishes to be part of the organized community will be treated that way.
Simple Truth @21: Judaism isn’t a faith-based religion. Simply declaring a belief in God isn’t the dividing line, and the state of being Jewish is also inherited.
Of course, all the organized communities (note the plural) who worry about who counts and who doesn’t are complaining that young people aren’t interested in joining. The way they see it, young people just aren’t interested in being Jewish, but in my experience, we’re forming our own, more inclusive, communities instead.
This reminds me of the same-sex marriage discussions where people say “Let’s not use the word ‘bigotry’ to describe anti-SSM views.”
Which is not to say that “barbaric” is as useful or accurate a word as “bigotry,” but I think there’s a place in language, and in civilized debate, to describe actions or views or attitudes using words that make it clear that those actions, or views, or attitudes, are horrible, horrible, horrible. I don’t think that polite-sounding euphemisms are always the best alternative. If the practice of routine infant circumcision is indeed barbaric–and I’m speaking hypothetically, but I think a case can be made–then the solution is not to stop using that word; the solution is to stop routine infant circumcision.
This is the position of the URJ on patrilineal descent (somewhat misnamed, as it really is the position on any child with one Jewish parent:
The Reform Jew on the street who considers the child of a Jewish father who self-identifies as Jewish to be Jewish is really not that far out of line with the official position.
Not sure what the URJ position is on blueberry bagels, cause personally, that’s where I draw the line. ;-)
But yeah, the real irony is that the demographic crisis supposedly caused by intermarriage is entirely self-imposed.
Regarding whether or not the circumcision of infant boys per se is barbaric (and this needs to be unpacked quite a bit more than I have done here): Leaving aside Jewish circumcision, the parents who had their baby boys medically circumcised because the prevailing medical knowledge–not just wisdom, but knowledge–of the time held that circumcision was a practice necessary for a boy’s physical and sexual health as an adult were not practicing barbarism, nor were the doctors who, in good faith, promulgated that knowledge; they were doing what they thought, what they’d been taught, was an unambiguously good thing. To continue to advocate and even enforce the practice even after the ostensible benefits have been shown to be nonexistent may qualify as barbaric, but the term is so loaded with privilege, perspective, politics and even, potentially, a profound ahistoricity that I’m not sure it’s useful except to vilify both the practice and those who engage in it. And yet, even as I write that, there is something compelling about the idea of trying to get people–and I am here again excepting Jewish circumcision because I think the arguments there are a little bit different–to see the barbarism in doctors performing a painful, permanent, medically unnecessary alteration of a baby boy’s body. When I put it that way, the word barbarism does not feel quite so relative and loaded a term, and the reason, I think, is that this formulation pins the label barbaric to the fact that the practice is now known not to be necessary, that (by implication at least) the practice itself serves cultural functions connected to gender and masculinity and is therefore part of a system that, for me, needs to be undone anyway.
Crowe’s remarks – they were on Twitter, for heaven’s sake – have been ripped out of context. It started with an Australian woman who asked if she should have her son “circumstanced” and she was just playing with the word (I don’t know why). She wasn’t seriously considering it. The Jewish references were aimed at his friend Eli Roth, and banter ensued which Roth enjoyed. It just got out of hand when the media picked it up and took it way too seriously.
chingona:
Indeed!
Exactly. That’s why I’m uncomfortable with it. In my experience, the term is so often used to distinguish “us” (civilized, enlightened folk) from “them” (uncivilized savages) that I just don’t find it useful.
Hugh7 – regardless of what the original context was, I’m as disturbed – if not moreso – by the reaction on Peaceful Parenting as I am by Crowe’s remarks.
I have an Orthodox conversion and there are segments of the Orthodox world that probably would not consider my conversion to be valid. (I take solace in the fact that these are not communities where I would want to live, even if I had been Jewish by birth.) Controversy over the boundaries of the tribe is, unfortunately, a fact of life in Judaism today.
Jeffrey, I greatly admire your writing. I think this little piece is very elegant, and I agree with it entirely.
Grace
Russell Crowe forgot that Twitter is a public forum where he was posting under his real name. He was not merely exchanging Email with his friend Eli Roth, and hence his remarks were foolish and impolitic. The intactivist movement was elated by his remarks, because intactivism, despite having substantial grass roots support, has had essentially no traction in the mainstream media and allopathic medicine, and has enjoyed almost no forthright celebrity endorsements. I agree that millions of Americans would rethink routine infant circumcision (RIC) if Beyonce and Julia Roberts were to come out against it. Hating FGM and violence against women is politically correct. But opposing American gentile bigotry aimed at the male foreskin is not seen as politically correct.
Crowe finds circumcision distasteful, but the reason is not that circumcision is unfamiliar to him, given the circumstances of his birth and upbringing. Many Australasian men of his generation are circumcised. (After Crowe was born, RIC ceased in New Zealand, and declined to 9% in Australia.)
It is my impression that over the past 100 odd years, brit milah has not been controversial among nearly all rabbis and observant Jews. Many European and Latin American men of Jewish ancestry are not circumcised, but those men seldom advertise the fact, as is their prerogative. A number of men claiming to be Jews and to angry about having gone through a bris, and a number of women claiming to be Jewish mothers who deplore bris, have revealed themselves in social media this century. These men and women have had no impact on the Jewish leadership. While the growing opposition to Jewish circumcision has attracted some thoughtful commentary in the Israeli English language press, that does not seem to be the case in North America (e.g., Commentary, Forward).
American RIC is simpler than Julie and intactivists make it out to be.
1. The only First World nations where a majority of adult men are circumcised, are Israel, South Korea and the USA. There is no evidence that other First World nations are rife with STDs and urological problems.
2. A majority of RICs in the USA are still performed without anesthesia. This is indeed barbaric, and should be illegal.
3. Even though RIC gradually came into fashion among the urban upper middle class starting in the 1880s, to this day there never has been a comprehensive study, based on a large random sample, of the possible effect of circ status on sexual pleasure and function. We do not know whether being circumcised makes it more or less likely that a man will experience PE or ED. We do not know whether his female partners are more or less likely to experience vaginismus or difficulties achieving orgasm. We do not know how many adult men have damaged penises because of RIC (meatal stenosis, too much skin cut off, scar tissue, skin bridges). Extant studies do not look for damage to adult sexual function that takes decades to manifest itself. Worst of all, in my opinion, is overlooking the views of women who have been in intimate relationships with both kinds of men.