Brit Milah
In May 2007 a small group of religious leaders met, in the EU headquarters in Brussels, with the three most significant leaders of Europe: Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and at the time president of the European Council, Jose-Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament.
The meeting was one of those semiformal occasions at which little is said, and a great deal of time taken in saying it. Concerned at the return of antisemitism to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust, I decided that the time had come to break protocol and speak plainly, even bluntly.
I gave the shortest speech of my life. Sitting directly opposite the three leaders I said this. “Jews and Europe go back a long way. The experience of Jews in Europe has added several words to the human vocabulary – words like expulsion, public disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, auto-da-fe, blood libel, ghetto and pogrom, without even mentioning the word Holocaust. That is the past. My concern is with the future. Today the Jews of Europe are asking whether there is a future for Jews in Europe, and that should concern you, the leaders of Europe.”
It took less than a minute, and after it there was a shocked silence. We adjourned for lunch, and over it Angela Merkel asked, “What would you like me to do, Chief Rabbi?” I did not have an easy answer for her then. I do now. It is: reverse immediately the decision of the Cologne court that renders Jewish parents who give their son a brit milah, even if performed in hospital by a qualified doctor, liable to prosecution.
It is hard to think of a more appalling decision. Did the court know that circumcision is the most ancient ritual in the history of Judaism, dating back almost four thousand years to the days of Abraham? Did it know that Spinoza, not religious but together with John Locke the father of European liberalism, wrote that brit milah in and of itself had the power to sustain Jewish identity through the centuries?
Did it know that banning milah was the route chosen by two of the worst enemies the Jewish people ever had, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and the Roman emperor Hadrian, both of whom set out to extinguish not only Jews but also Judaism? Either the court knew these things or it did not. If it did not, then how was it competent to assess the claim of religious liberty? If it did, then there are judges in Germany quite willing to say to religious Jews, in effect, “If you don’t like it, leave.” Do judges in Cologne today really not know what happened the last time Germany went down that road?
The case – like the banning of shechitah by the Dutch parliament, now thankfully reversed – illustrates the deep difficulty Jews are facing in Europe today. Both cases initially had nothing to do with Jews. They were directed predominantly against Muslims, whose population vastly outnumbers that of Jews in almost every country in Europe. They are part of the backlash against the misguided policy, adopted by most European countries in the 1970s, known as multiculturalism. This was meant to promote tolerance. Its effect was precisely the opposite. It encouraged segregation of ethnic minorities, not integration, and instead of getting people to ignore differences it made an issue of them at every stage.
The Muslim communities of Europe have been in the frontline of both the policy and its discontents. The result has been that in Germany the court, and in Holland Parliament, have sought to ban a Muslim practice, while the Jewish community has suffered collateral damage in both places.
That is part of the problem but not all of it. I have argued for some years that an assault on Jewish life always needs justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age. Throughout the Middle Ages the highest authority in Europe was the Church. Hence antisemitism took the form of Christian anti-Judaism.
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the nineteenth century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial antisemitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day: the “scientific study of race” and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. Today we know that both of these were pseudo-sciences, but in their day they were endorsed by some of the leading figures of the age.
Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life – on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state – must be cast in the language of human rights. Hence the by-now routine accusation that Israel has committed the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity. This is not because the people making these accusations seriously believe them – some do, some don’t. It is because this is the only form in which an assault on Jews can be stated today.
That is what the court in Cologne has done. It has declared that circumcision is an assault on the rights of the child since it is performed without his consent. It ignored the fact that if this is true, teaching children to speak German, sending them to school and vaccinating them against illness are all assaults against the rights of the child since they are done without consent. The court’s judgement was tendentious, foolish and has set a dangerous precedent.
In historical context, however, it is far worse. By ruling that religious Jews performing their most ancient sacred ritual are abusing the rights of the child, a German court has just invented a new form of Blood Libel perfectly designed for the twenty-first century. Chancellor Merkel, the answer to your question, “What would you like me to do?” is simple. Ensure that this ruling is overturned, for the sake of religious freedom and the moral reputation of Germany.
Our human rights originate from the fact that we are created by G-d in His image. If we forget that, we abuse human rights; I once surprised a priest by declaring that I believe in the dignity of man but not in human rights. All too often, human rights are used to assert the rights of one group against those who wish to live their lives in accordance with the Judeo-Christian principles which have formed the culture of Europe. This seems such a case, and made on spurious grounds – what of children who are born in need of an operation (for a heart defect for instance) to which they cannot give consent? Invitably, there are conflicts between the human rights of one person and another: to take human rights as the deciding factor in our actions will not therefore be sufficient; we need a dimension beyond that, which is provided by our Judeo-Christian heritage.
This decision is, it seems to me, in line with those made in our own courts, which seem totally unaware of (or, I suspect, determined to ignore) the demands of conscience, which requre us to live our daily lives in accordance with what we learn on Saturday or Sunday in synagogue or church. Circumcision is not an “optional extra” that you choose to have done if you feel like it; neither is teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman. In both cases the very nature of something is involved; what it is to be Jewish and what marriage actually is. Decisions on these matters have a much more fundamental effect than is realised. If we are not true to what we believe, they are the first to see hypocrisy, but they are quite determined to block our ability to express our belief in practice day by day.
I hope the decision is reversed.
Well said Ann Couper-Johnston. I was about to reply to the CR’s article but you have expressed my thoughts beautifully. Thanks
I, a Catholic, am disturbed by this German court decision. Let us pray that it be reversed quickly.
Molte grazie. It is an interesting way to analyze this as “justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age.” I agree with you, Chief Rabbi. In every age they try to destroy the Jews, but usually by some new strategy — This time it is just to persecute and destroy because of _______ — and you fill in the blank with the highest source of authority in the prevailing culture.
And it makes one wonder: what other works of violence do they seek to establish under color of law or justice.
What a horrible and far reaching decision. It would seem to formally reduce the status of religious belief and practice and, even more specifically, an aspect of Jewish identity to the level of a hobby in the eyes of the law. While at the same time formally removing the (human) right of the parents to bring up their children, soft totalitarianism in the name of human rights. Mind you the only really surprising thing is that it was germany who did this kind of thing first.
I am a Roman Catholic and I am totally appalled at the German Court’s decision. It is indeed anti-Semitic, and gives one the impression that the Court either is blatantly anti-Semitic, or else is so ignorant of history, or so uncaring about religious expression, that the result is anti-Semitic in any case. I immediately thought of the time of the Maccabees…
I see this ruling also as part of a broader Western secularist movement against what we might call “traditionally religious” peoples. They don’t mind suppressing religious expression and even destroying religious freedom, if it conflicts with their ideology or views. I don’t mean to minimize the specifically anti-Semitic nature of this particular ruling, but I do think it fits in a trend of increasing pressure put upon those who do not conform to the secularist mindset…we’re starting to feel it in many ways…
I do hope this ruling is reversed. It is inherently unjust, and is also a bad precedent.
This is a fine summary of the cultural/historial blindness that has inflicted Western society since the ill-named “enlightenment.” Thank you. Also, your argument “that an assault on Jewish life always needs justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age” is quite persuasive. However, authority, even in the middle ages, was less monolithic even than now. While it is true that monarchs needed, in most circumstances the Church’s blessing to have legitimacy, there were numerous periods where the institutional Church was quite week and effectively “used” by the powerful. The period of the Western Schism comes readily to mind.
Today, the temptation is to look to the heads of state of the developed world as the “highest source of authority,” and (of course) statism is becoming more of a force in the West than it has been. However, modern academia, entertainment and news is arguably equal to government as a source of authority. In the U.S., for example, academic faculties are extraordinarily hostile to religious expression (not to mention decidedly anti-Israel). More to the point, the opinion-makers of academia and the media have affected a dogmatic moral superiority that treats whatever the “politically correct thought of the day” might be as demonstrably better than any viewpoint informed by (to them, outmoded) religious beliefs. Hence, religious thought or practice must, according to the imperative, be reformed or give way to (what Benedict XVI rightly, I think, has referred to as) “radical secularism.” In the face of this onslaught, much of Protestantism has capitulated. Ultimately, I fear the problem has gone well beyond the state’s ability to address it. Armies could depose Hitler. Missiles could keep Stalin in check. Our issue today is more diffuse, and therefore more intractable.
I have unbridled admiration for Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks. However I believe that in Europe he is a classic case of pearls before swine. Europe as a home for Jews has been held in the balance and found wanting. Rabbi Sacks, your home and the home of all European Jews is in Eretz Yisrael.
I was appalled years ago when a friend of mine couldn’t have her baby legally circumcised in an Australian public hospital.
This problem has been around a lot longer than it seems.
Circumcision is a totally optional procedure,with possible complications.
(We) Jews only need to think of another way to pass the covenant from G-d to man to another generation.
I am sure we could think of something that does not endanger a child if we put our minds to it.
The German court was exactly right in its decision.
Can I propose a thought-experiment? Instead of fighting the ruling, Muslims and Jews accept it, and on the 8th day (later for Muslims), the family welcome all their friends to a Brit Shalom (see my link). The rabbi says all the right words at the right time, and the father – no need for a deputy – clips a lock of hair from the child’s head. The baby does not cry, except perhaps if he is startled by all the “Mazel Tov!”s. (This has already started, without any change in the law.)
Fast forward 100 years. Are the Jews still here? Of course they are! Has anything else changed? Probably not – except there would be a few more, children of those who didn’t die from botched circumcisions.
Interesting thought. Well, if we were founding our own religion, we could have that as one of our rules. However, our religion was founded for us, and the rules are quite clear.
I have a couple of thoughts in concurrance with Rabbi Sachs.
Western Democracy and its highest authorities, the elected leaders, have, in order to maintain the peace of their multi-cultural societies, adopted the principal of the “homogenized human being.” The core of that concept is there is some uncontroversal ideal of what the human should be and it is best if that human is docile, especially in regards to the state. This homogenization would run counter to the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In each of those expressions of humanity, men and women bear their stamps of divinity in individualized ways while remaining connected to and honored by the whole. Certainly baptism for Christians has become a much more domesticated expression of connection to the community than circumcision, and its domestication may be part of liberal Christianities slouching into irrelevance.
Judaism’s and Islam’s commitment to more physically expressed spiritual identities leaves less confusion about the core of their beliefs and identities. The German court may be uncomfortable with ritualized circumscision, but that is up to Jew’s and Muslim’s to work out, that is if religous freedom that worships anything but the state is to continue.
Lookup at the history people.
Giving up little by little we will lose everything we built. The greatest countries and greatest societies where built on jewish principals given to us by Mighty. And by destroying them we slide into the chaos. Definition of marriage – broken, definition of authority and respect – broken and it all starts from small. Table with 3 legs not working.
Brit it is our covenant with G-d dating from Abraham. Nobody except G-d can revoke it and let’s keep that way. We gave out to much already
If Abraham was 99 years old when he consented to be circumcised, would it be unreasonable to delay circumcision until 18, when informed consent could be obtained from the patient?