On 5
May 2012, a German regional court in Cologne
held that the
circumcision of male children for religious reasons constitutes a
criminal act under German law. According to the judgment, parents
cannot validly consent to an irreversible bodily injury to their
children. The child's right to physical integrity and
self-determination prevails over the parents' right to religious
freedom.
If the court's
interpretation is upheld in later cases, Germany may be one
of the few countries in the world in which circumcision of children
for non-medical reasons is banned.
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| Fiddler on the Roof. Dir. Norman Jewison. United Artists, 1971.
|
The
judgment, which was discovered by the press in late June 2012,
provoked ferocious debate in Germany and received much international
attention. Under-standably, Jewish and Muslim communities, which
traditionally exercise the practice, became quite nervous. One
Russian rabbi in Berlin to discuss the judgment called it "perhaps
the most serious attack on Jewish life in Europe since the
Holocaust". Supporters of the ban, however, argue that the
decision on this serious question should be reserved for the child
upon reaching legal age.
One of
the disturbing facts I encountered while following the debate was the
complete ignorance of what circumcision means to the Jewish
community. While many Muslims follow the custom of circumcision as a
tradition, the practice is not prescribed in the Qur'an and Muslim
religious scholars do not agree on whether it is obligatory or only
recommended. In the Jewish community, by contrast, circumcision is
not a mere custom but a clear command of God. More than a command: It
is the sign of the everlasting Covenant between God and the Jewish
people, on which the whole Jewish life with all its commandments is based.
