A traditional Brit Milah, with surgical instruments and a bottle of sweet wine

FEW EVENTS HAVE SHOCKED Germany’s Jewish community more since the end of World War II than a recent state court decision banning the practice of circumcising underage boys for religious purposes. (I have already written in depth on this case HERE and HERE). German Jews call it an “attack” on the very “foundation” of their religion and claim that, if the court decision should become universally binding or even be codified as the law of the land, it will mean “the end of Jews in Germany” after some two thousand years of good times and bad in this fast-moving country. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative government, which is eager to stay on good terms with Israel and its own growing Muslim minority, has been so spooked by the Cologne court’s ruling that the foreskin-cutting of helpless children represents “unlawful bodily injury” that it rammed through a pro-circumcision resolution last month. It has also announced that it will do all it can to protect the practice through corresponding legislation this coming autumn. But since this case represents a clash between Bronze Age blood rituals and twenty-first century notions of child welfare and informed consent, the government’s initiative promises to be a very hard slog indeed.

Now the Chief Rabbi of Israel’s Ashkenazi community is offering an olive branch. Speaking in Berlin, Yona Metzger (59) has left no doubt that circumcisions must continue in Germany, and must occur on the eighth day of life and be performed by an approved mohel without any anesthetic apart from “a drop of sweet wine.” He denies that any pain is involved with the procedure and insists that all stories of lasting post-circumcision trauma are nonsense, since millions of Israelis have been circumcised and none of them have ever suffered a trauma. “Even the founder of Facebook is Jewish, and look what he created,” he told journalists.

Bearing an olive branch: Israeli rabbi Yona Metzger 

None of this is negotiable, Metzger says. “The Brit Mila, circumcision, is a covenant, an agreement, that each {male} Jew has with God.” It is a “stamp, a seal on the body of every Jew. A stamp that he can never remove.” In this way, a Jewish man “will be reminded, even at the most remote spot on earth, that he is a Jew.”

So far, Metzger is avoiding the “N” word (you know which one I mean) for diplomatic purposes, but he has no qualms about comparing the modern Federal Republic with Stalin’s Soviet Union, where circumcision was banned outright. “I don’t think you want to have a communist regime here that leads to a situation where a Jew cannot uphold a commandment,” he scolded. Ouch!

Metzger’s solution? Create a certified circumcision school in Germany, where professional mohels can be trained by non-Jewish German physicians. In this way, he is certain, the ten existing mohels in the country, and all future ones to follow, can meet both the legal requirements of the German medical community and the commandments of the Jewish religion.

While this might sound like an offer worthy of the great Solomon himself, it is unlikely to convince many German lawmakers when the leaves start to fall this autumn. For one thing, the “non-negotiable” practice of cutting infants without anesthesia, aside from a dose of alcohol, along with the rare but still familiar practice of metzitza be’peh, whereby some ultra-orthodox Mohels literally suck on a boy’s freshly circumcised penis to staunch the flow of blood, directly violate modern German medical practice. In fact, the notion that newborns are impervious to pain went out the window some three decades ago. (Speaking of religion, Christian pro-lifers claim that fetuses already feel pain just twenty weeks after fertilization. Just sayin'.) Moreover, German pediatricians regard the preventive, non-religious circumcision of healthy infants as both unnecessary and highly unethical.

The Circumcision of Isaac. Regensburg, Germany, c. 1300 

But other problems will likely appear as well. Of course, Article 4 of the German constitution – the Basic Law – clearly states that: “The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed.” That is the foundation of the Jewish and Muslim case against the government. However, the state court of Cologne claimed last June that this basic right is trumped by the right of informed consent, which is subsumed under the first article of the German constitution: “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” Moreover, Article 2 states: “Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable. These rights may be interfered with only pursuant to a law.”  Many legislators, particularly from the Green and Left parties, believe that any form of non-voluntary body modification performed on children egregiously violates these most fundamental principles.

The gender aspect may also become an issue. Article 3 states that “Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist.” So why should the cutting only be performed on boys? And why can’t women have a covenant with God carved into their own genitals? (The cruel practice of female genital mutilation and infibulation has been outlawed in Germany for years now.) The question is bound to come up some time or other.

With such protections anchored in the constitution, it’s hard to see what Germany’s Jews and Muslims can use to counter it. Will the Old Testament and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, who taught that khitan is “law for men and a preservation of honor for women,” be enough to sway the legislators away from the oath to their Basic Law?

I’m not a constitutional scholar, and yet I do perceive a loophole for them in the coming parliamentary battle. The preamble of the constitution begins with the words: “Conscious of their responsibility before God and man... the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law.”

“God” goes before “man” in this formulation. And there is indeed a precedent for placing religious concerns ahead of human rights: In 1957, the German Constitutional Court upheld laws against homosexuality by pointing to the established churches’ theologically-based opposition to it. But even if God didn’t take precedence in the preamble: The “men” of the German population now include up to a ten thousand practicing and non-practicing male Jews and around two million male Muslims, and they all have an opinion. So with a lineup like that, who will win out this autumn?

Since I neither hold a German passport nor belong to any of the religions involved in this case, I have no particularly strong opinions on the matter – although, as I’ve said before, when in doubt I’ll always side with twenty-first century conceptions of human rights and child welfare (and I most certainly never let any surgeons or mohels anywhere near my own children). But I find the “clash of civilizations” it represents fascinating and will certainly pick up on this story again when it goes up for debate before the Bundestag. There’s one thing I can tell you already, though: You can safely keep your autumn wardrobe put away until Christmastime, since forecasters are anticipating a lot of hot air coming out of Berlin this fall.

Photos from Wiki Commons