Books

‘Clueless’ Advice: Alicia Silverstone Won’t Circumcise Son

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By Anne Cohen May 5, 2014

Someone should have told Alicia Silverstone that once your claim to fame is a movie called “Clueless,” it’s probably a good idea to avoid spouting real-life clueless rhetoric.

In her her new book, “The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning,” the 37-year-old wrote that she will not have her son circumcised because: “If little boys were supposed to have their penises ‘fixed,’ did that mean we were saying that God made the body imperfect?”

Ah, the glory of logic.

Apparently, her parents weren’t too pleased by the decision.

“I was raised Jewish, so the second my parents found out that they had a male grandchild, they wanted to know when we’d be having a bris (the Jewish circumcision ceremony traditionally performed eight days after a baby is born),” she writes. “When I said we weren’t having one, my dad got a bit worked up.”

According to Haaretz, Silverstone has long been open about her Jewish upbringing. In a profile written for interfaithfamily.com in 2000, Silverstone said that she grew up in California attending a Reform Temple.

“I was reared in a traditional Jewish household,” Silverstone . “We lit candles Friday night and had seders. My brother David and I went to Hebrew school and had our bar mitzvahs. I have wonderful memories of my bat mitzvah.”

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

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