Do New Hasidic Circumcision Illnesses Show New York’s Rules Are Toothless?
Bill de Blasio. Image by Getty Images
By Dave Goldiner March 14, 2017
After New York reported six new cases of herpes contracted by Hasidic infants who underwent a controversial circumcision rite, the city admitted that no action has been taken against any of the mohels involved.
In fact, the rabbis have been identified in only two cases — and they were simply warned to avoid carrying out the potentially dangerous metzizah b’peh rite, the New York Post reported.
Mayor Bill De Blasio insisted the apparent lack of cooperation from the Hasidic community does not reflect a failure in his policy, which took a much softer approach than ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“We’ve made it very clear what we expect from the community,” he told the paper. “We’re evaluating the situation, when we get through with that evaluation we’ll have an update.”
Health officials say the rite, in which rabbis suck blood directly from the infant’s genitals, is dangerous.
Under Bloomberg, parents were required to sign parental consent forms. But De Blasio, who enjoyed support from Hasidic powerbrokers in his election campaign, rolled back the rules in favor of a plan that called for mohels to be voluntarily tested if infants contract diseases.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
