The Obama administration’s anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office’s portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe. Circumcision has become a top focus for Ira Forman, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. He has been using the pulpit his office provides to warn European governments that moves to ban ritual circumcision…
Israel’s Supreme Court has overturned a ruling by a court of rabbis that would have forced a mother to have her son circumcised under the terms her divorce. Circumcision is not legally obligatory for Jews in Israel, but a rabbinical court presiding over the woman’s divorce case had ruled she must fulfill her husband’s wish…
The leader of Norway’s Jewish community praised his country’s parliament for passing an act regulating ritual circumcision for boys. “The act changes the paradigm of the debate about ritual circumcision in Norway in a very positive way and is therefore very significant,” Ervin Kohn, president of the Jewish Community in Oslo, told JTA Friday. “I…
A coalition of Cleveland Jewish leaders are protesting a graphic mural painted on a gas station wall that depicts a rabbi performing a controversial circumcision ritual. Anti-Defamation League regional director Anita Gray, and Cheryl Davis, chair of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Community Relations Committee, slammed the mural as anti-Semitic. “This outrageous and deeply offensive…
A new study from Canada indicates a possible connection between male circumcision and a lower likelihood of prostate cancer. The study, published in the British urology journal BJU International, was based on interviews with more than 3,000 men in the Montreal area between the ages of 40 and 75. The study’s authors found that men…
The leading rabbi of Agudath Israel of America, the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group, condemned non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and called the religiously progressive Open Orthodox movement heretical at the group’s annual gala. “The Torah must be guarded from the secular forces that seek to corrupt its values and the lives of [Jews], from intruders who sometimes…
There are few reported complications after boys are circumcised during their first year of life, but the risk rises considerably if the procedure is performed later in childhood, according to a new analysis published on Monday. Previous research found wide variations in the rates of complications following male circumcisions. Those studies were often small and…
Judaism has long had an uncomfortable relationship with rationality. On the one hand, our talmudic sages, classically influenced philosophers, and secular scientists and doctors have all taken rational reasoning to great, sometimes dizzying heights. Ours is a tradition of law, education and logic. Yet on the other hand, many aspects of Judaism – like most…
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