In this post, I present some basic facts about circumcision in Judaism, as well as a hypothesis about its social role. I discuss how this hypothesis might bear on the moral justification for this practice.
In recent years, I've had a number of stimulating, if rather unsettling, conversations with various colleagues concerning the morality of circumcision as traditionally practiced by Jews. As often happens on sensitive subjects, I left many of these conversations feeling that I failed to articulate my views.
Below are some basic facts about circumcision in Judaism, followed by some conclusions I have come to after reflecting on those conversations. Basic Facts:
Reflections: I have a hypothesis about (part of) the social role of male circumcision in Jewish culture: As a high-cost, irreversible, verifiable, and hard-to-fake act, circumcision is well-suited to serve as a public declaration of loyalty and a tool for creating and sustaining collective identity. A few immediate notes:
Here's a quick argument that makes use of my hypothesis: People have both individual and collective rights. Sometimes these rights come into conflict and have to be balanced against one another. Admittedly, even if collectives sometimes have the right to impose costs on individuals for the sake of preserving or strengthening the collective, given that individuals have rights also, there have to be limits on those costs. However, in this case the cost is morally acceptable, since, while high, it is not so high as to outweigh the benefits to the collective-- namely, strengthening and perpetuating collective identity, as per my hypothesis. Here's why I think that the cost is not extremely high:
Note: For people whose only concern is individual rather than collective rights, point #3 moots the discussion. But on my view, the morality of circumcision rests on there being an acceptable balance between individual and collective rights. So, in my view, even a mildly medically detrimental procedure could be morally justified, if it served sufficiently to strengthen collective identity. For what it's worth, I'm not claiming that individual rights are unimportant. Even if female circumcision served to create collective identity, the cost to individuals is dramatically higher; so high that I can't see how the practice could be morally justified.
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