In the Jewish religion, the person who performs the rite of circumcision is a mohel. And there’s an old joke: “I know a mohel who works for tips.” This cringe-worthy story could cause a revision in that joke:
A local [Pennsylvania] rabbi is being sued after allegedly botching a bris, the traditional Jewish circumcision ritual, and severing a newborn boy’s penis.
The incident detailed in the lawsuit happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill within the last year.
The Jewish circumcision ceremony was performed by Pittsburgh Rabbi Mordechai Rosenberg – who is also a mohel.
Sometime during the bris, according to the lawsuit, Rosenberg severed the baby boy’s penis.
The baby was rushed to Children’s Hospital, where doctors performed emergency microsurgery.
“If your finger, your thumb was cut off and was put back on, that is pretty exciting,” said renowned UPMC plastic surgeon Dr. Joe Losee.
Dr. Losee was not involved in the boy’s treatment and he can’t talk specifics.
But our sources say it took eight hours. The baby needed six blood transfusions and was hospitalized for nearly two months. Sources describe the reattachment procedure as successful.Dr. Losee says microsurgery advances every day, but it’s risky.
“Sometimes, it doesn’t always work,” he says. “When you’re reattaching a portion where you include nerves, sometimes the nerves don’t heal well beyond where you reattached it. So there are limitations for sure.”
The fact is, as the old saying goes, “accidents do happen” — and this isn’t the first one at a bris. KDKA’s story quotes attorney David Llewellyn, who handles cases involving injuries in circumcisions involving doctors and mohels. He says this kind of injury is rare.
“Your average pediatric urologist probably spends about 20 percent of his or her time repairing children who have been circumcised,” Llewellyn says.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one in every 500 newborn boys experience significant acute complications as a result of circumcision.
“This is pretty much unregulated,” Llewellyn said.
He says there is no regulated standard for training or certification of mohels, or any place for reporting injuries from circumcision.
“There’s virtually no regulation of this any place in the United States that I know of,” Llewellyn said. “I think the government probably should require some sort of training if this is going to be done.”
In 2011 there was an unsuccessful attempt in San Francisco to ban circumcisions. A comic book proponents used was considered by some to be anti-semetic. Editorial cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen argued in a Cagle Cartoons column that banning circumcisions would be like banning Judaism.
In recent months, a Montreal doctor has been sanctioned after botching 80 circumcisions. A county in Sweden is considering banning the practice. Jews in Norway hope that new rules governing circumcisions will head off any ban there.
Meanwhile, the practice has come under attack in Europe. But the Council of Europe may reconsider its stand after meeting with some Israelis:
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly decided to revisit its anti-circumcision position following a meeting with an Israeli parliamentary delegation headed by former Knesset Speaker MK Reuven Rivlin (Likud-Beiteinu), Israel Hayom reported.
The council’s parliamentary assembly ruled Oct. 1 that ritual circumcision violated the rights and harmed the physical integrity of young children. Concerned the resolution would encourage individual European countries to institute a circumcision ban, Israeli President Shimon Peres wrote a formal letter to Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland explaining the importance of the ritual and asking the council to reconsider its stance. Jagland later clarified that the ruling was only a resolution, and that a ban was not in the council’s plans.
The debate will be renewed in a committee meeting, with its decision to be presented for approval by the Council of Europe as a whole.
But Liliane Maury Pasquier, chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development is adamant about the practice. Writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post:
For the past two months, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has been vilified as “anti-Semitic,” “anti-religious” and “insane” and has been accused of promoting “hate and racist trends in Europe ” for adopting, by overwhelming majority, a resolution on children’s right to physical integrity. As the head of the committee that unanimously approved the draft texts in June — after two parliamentary hearings and several committee discussions — I have been saddened by this reaction, much of which has been characterized by bad faith or ignorance about what we said. So I want to set the record straight.
PACE brings together legislators from 47 countries and speaks for 820?million Europeans. Its reports and campaigns have inspired many laws in its member states and a series of international treaties that have, among other things, pioneered the protection of children’s rights.
But pioneers are seldom liked and applauded, particularly on this issue.
AND:
Regarding the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons, children’s right to physical integrity conflicts with parents’ right to freedom of religion. As many of its resolutions show, the assembly has been a strong supporter of religious rights. But in this case, when considering the relative weight of the human rights in question, the assembly gave precedence to the rights of children.
There is not, and cannot be, a “right” to circumcise young boys. Children are not mini-beings with mini-human rights. By contrast, in an accompanying recommendation, our assembly invited European governments to consider making “children’s right to physical integrity” a continent-wide standard.
The assembly’s resolution cannot be rescinded or altered. However, as we hoped, debate is underway — though not always in the most focused or productive manner. (What does it say about the quality of opponents’ arguments if calling for a public debate is seen as a precursor to oppression and pogroms?) For our part, we will do our best to take that debate forward: On Jan. 28, my committee will hold a follow-up hearing on circumcision. We hope that Jewish and Muslim religious leaders, as well as medical experts, will come together to discuss this further.
Religious practices deserve the most profound respect — but not when they result in irreversible harm to children.
But there are a large number of people who defend circumcisions for various reasons. The Pennsylvania case will most likely come up in many future debates where it will be argued that it was an unusual accident by one side and indicative of dangers deemed unnecessary by the other.
PHOTO: ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.