page_title: Brit milah
section_title: The anti-circumcision movement and Brit Shalom
hierarchical_section_title: Brit milah / The anti-circumcision movement and Brit Shalom
caption_attribution_description: עברית: צילום מתוך אחת ההפגנות שנערכו בתל-אביב נגד פולחן הכריתה באברי המין של עוללים זכרים.
context_page_description: The brit milah is a Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony performed by a mohel on the eighth day after the infant's birth. The brit milah is followed by a celebratory meal.
context_section_description: A growing number of contemporary Jews and Intactivist Jewish groups in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, both religious and secular, choose not to circumcise their sons. Among the reasons for their choice are the claims that circumcision is a form of child abuse that involves genital mutilation forced on men and violence against helpless infants, a violation of children's rights, and their opinion that circumcision is a dangerous, unnecessary, painful, traumatic and stressful event for the child, which can cause even further psychophysical complications down the road, including serious disability and even death. They are assisted by a small number of Reform, Liberal, and Reconstructionist rabbis, and have developed a welcoming ceremony that they call the Brit shalom ("Covenant [of] Peace") for such children, also accepted by Humanistic Judaism.
  The ceremony of Brit shalom is not officially approved of by the Reform or Reconstructionist rabbinical organizations, who make the recommendation that male infants should be circumcised, though the issue of converts remains controversial and circumcision of converts is not mandatory in either movement.
  The connection of the Reform movement to an anti-circumcision, pro-symbolic stance is a historical one. From the early days of the movement in Germany and Eastern Europe, some classical Reformers hoped to replace ritual circumcision "with a symbolic act, as has been done for other bloody practices, such as the sacrifices". In the US, an official Reform resolution in 1893 announced converts are no longer mandated to undergo the ritual, and this ambivalence towards the practice has carried over to classical-minded Reform Jews today. In Elyse Wechterman's essay A Plea for Inclusion, she argues that, even in the absence of circumcision, committed Jews should never be turned away, especially by a movement "where no other ritual observance is mandated". She goes on to advocate an alternate covenant ceremony, brit atifah, for both boys and girls as a welcoming ritual into Judaism. With a continuing negativity towards circumcision still present within a minority of modern-day Reform, Judaic scholar Jon Levenson has warned that if they "continue to judge brit milah to be not only medically unnecessary but also brutalizing and mutilating ... the abhorrence of it expressed by some early Reform leaders will return with a vengeance", proclaiming that circumcision will be "the latest front in the battle over the Jewish future in America".
  Many European Jewish fathers during the nineteenth century chose not to circumcise their sons, including Theodor Herzl. However, unlike many other forms of religious observance, it remained one of the last rituals Jewish communities could enforce. In most of Europe, both the government and the unlearned Jewish masses believed circumcision to be a rite akin to baptism, and the law allowed communities not to register uncircumcised children as Jewish. This legal maneuver spurred several debates addressing the advisibility of its use, since many parents later chose to convert to Christianity. In early 20th-century Russia, Chaim Soloveitchik advised his colleagues to reject this measure, stating that uncircumcised Jewish males are no less Jewish than Jews who violate other commandments.
caption: Secular Israeli Jews (Hilonim) protest against ritual circumcision (brit milah) in Tel Aviv
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