Barbaric Brits

For many years now, we’ve been led to believe that inter-marriage is the greatest threat to survival of Judaism. However, perhaps we are now about to see a new threat to Judaism at one of its most fundamental tenets – circumcision.

Having read Simon Round’s, what can only be described as bizarre, feature in this week’s JC about the supposed attitudinal change towards Brit Milah, I attended the Brit of my friends’ son this morning, with the fantastic mohel who circumcised my own son. Knowing that our friends are not in the least observant, I felt some satisfaction that they were bucking this supposed trend identified in Simon Round’s article, and were “making their son Jewish” as my friend explained to her older four-year old son today.

Securing myself a position near the front – I might be squeamish, but I appreciate and value the significance of this age-old ceremony going back to Avraham and Yitzhak – I was mentally ready for the occasion. However, with murmurings such as “you should see how he cuts his meat” and “this is barbaric”, I removed myself to another part of the room which was vacant, where I was able to once again concentrate on what was happening rather than be diverted by the ‘here for the pastries brigade’.

If Round’s claims, as well as what I heard this morning, are the way things are going, it's a very sad state of affairs. But perhaps it's just symptomatic of the general malaise that seems to be sweeping British Jewry in general who take their Yiddishkeit a bit too much for granted and use it as a status symbol when it suits them!