My son and daughter had a joint bar and bat mitzvah a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic. The service took place in our temple and was broadcast on Zoom. On the bema, our rabbi stood apart from our immediate family and just a few congregation staffers were physically present. Everyone else, including grandparents, watched…
A Jewish couple in New Zealand decided to perform a ritual circumcision on their son themselves, after determining that the country’s travel restrictions would make getting a mohel to fly in for the procedure impossible. Noam and Elisheva Fogel waited five months to conduct the circumcision ceremony, called a brit milah or a bris, which…
(JTA) — The religious Jewish world has created some unusual jobs, from shofar makers to etrog pickers to mashgichim – kosher certifiers whose job is literally to watch others cook. But one of the more bizarre surely belongs to Dr. Yeshaya Shafit, who is Russia’s only mohel, or professional circumciser, for adult men. Shafit, a…
Becky Lustgarten is due to give birth to her first child, a boy, at the end of April. Pre-pandemic, she and her husband, Taylor, felt committed to following the Jewish mandate for circumcision on the baby’s eighth day of life, though she admitted being “a little not-so-thrilled” anticipating the painful procedure. Now the couple, who…
At least four infants have contracted herpes in New York City in the past six months after undergoing a circumcision rite in which the ritual circumciser, or mohel, cleans the circumcision wound by oral suction. Three cases of herpes have been reported since December and four since September from the rite called “metzitzah b’peh,” WPIX-11…
“Jews are like, my favorites,” says Zach Galifianakis, sweating, clutching a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates, as three Jewish grandmothers take him in. “I gotta tell ya, man, I love the Jews,” he rambles on moments later, the three women eying him like the fates toying with a piece of thread. “I have always…
Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate who has come out against circumcision and gotten the attention of the “alt-right,” will participate in the Democratic primary debate on Thursday. Yang will be up against nine other candidates in the second night of the first 2020 debate, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Kamala Harris and Senator…
Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who recently revealed he is against circumcision, has met both the poll and donor requirements to qualify for the Democratic debates, The New York Times reported. Yang confirmed in March that if he were elected, he would work his views on circumcision —the practice of cutting a newborn’s foreskin, which is…
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