The German Circumcision Debate

By David Rising, AP, Jul 22, 2012 BERLIN (AP)—Rabbi David Goldberg had performed about 25 ritual circumcisions this year before a regional court ruled in June that the practice amounted to causing criminal bodily harm. Despite the decision, he expects to perform the same number in second half of the year. “I haven’t changed anything,” said Goldberg, one of Germany’s few mohels—a person trained in the Jewish ritual of circumcision. Though the Cologne court’s decision has raised fears among Muslims and Jews that circumcising their children could get them into legal trouble, it has had little practical effect in reducing religious circumcisions—especially since the government has weighed in with assurances to both communities that their practices will be respected. But both Jews and Muslims say that a more lasting effect may be “us vs. them” tensions that have raised an invisible barrier between secular Germans and religious minorities. “It is no surprise that the Catholics and the Protestants have stood behind the Muslim community in this case and denounced the verdict,” said Aiman Mazyek, the chairman of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims. “In my opinion this is no picture of tolerance or religious freedom from a modern civilization. It is a step backward.” Jews are religiously required to circumcise baby boys on the 8th day after birth in a ceremony seen as their entrance into a covenant with God. Muslims also usually perform the procedure early in a boy’s life, though sometimes wait until later in childhood. In the Cologne decision, announced June 26, the court said circumcising young boys on religious grounds amounts to bodily harm even if parents consent to the procedure. The charge is punishable by anything from a fine to up to five years in prison. The ruling came in the case of the circumcision of a 4-year-old Muslim boy that led to medical complications. The boy was circumcised at the request of his parents. He developed complications two days later and was rushed to the hospital. Prosecutors charged the doctor, who was acquitted when a Cologne court found that he had performed the procedure properly, and that he had the parents’ permission to carry out the circumcision. But prosecutors appealed, and the higher Cologne court ruled that in a case of circumcision for non-medical reasons, the welfare of the child outweighed the religious rights of the parents. The acquittal of the doctor, however, was upheld because the court said the law had been unclear. Though not precedent setting for other courts in Germany, the ruling prompted an outcry from Jewish and Muslim groups across Europe, while in Israel the German ambassador was invited to explain the decision to the Knesset. Germany’s main Catholic and Protestant organizations also condemned the ruling as an attack on religious freedom. The most disturbing part of the ruling for Jews and Muslims is the court’s contention that being circumcised “runs contrary to the interest of the child to later choose his religious affiliation,” said Josh Spinner, an American rabbi who grew up in Hamilton, Canada, and has been in Berlin for more than a decade. “I’m a circumcised male, I expect that I have the right to become a Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or atheist if I choose to today. But what the court is saying is that if I am circumcised I am a Jew,” he said. “There’s a very dark and very illiberal view of what this mark does on the individual.” Spinner said the ruling has the potential of opening the door to even greater restrictions on religious freedom for minorities—a particularly sensitive issue in Germany given the years of state-imposed anti-Jewish measures under the Nazis that preceded the Holocaust. “Germany needs to understand that if they want to tolerate Jews then they need to tolerate Judaism,” Spinner said. In the past week, however, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert has weighed in several times, promising that the government will come up with a solution that will allow the practice. Had the government spoken out strongly sooner, said Goldberg, Germany may have managed to prevent the discussion from turning into an “us vs. them” embroilment. “I get a lot of emails from non-Jewish Germans saying things like ‘if you don’t like it, leave Germany’—very anti-Semitic. It’s a bad atmosphere,” said the rabbi, who immigrated to Germany 19 years ago from Israel and now lives in the southeastern city of Hof. Furer said he hoped that the circumcision debate would be expose more Germans to other religious ideas. “I think a lot of Germans don’t understand our religion and our religious issues,” he said.