ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

perform those practices one chooses – than in religious duties or requirements. However,
this explanation is inadequate because Jewish egalitarians are neither agitating even for a
religious right to circumcise Jewish girls, nor actually circumcising their daughters in all
cases that they would (or do) circumcise their sons. Thus even if circumcision is
understood as a religious option rather than a religious requirement, it is curious that
Jewish egalitarians do not exercise the option for girls when they do for boys.
Jewish egalitarians’ failure to extend circumcision to girls is particularly strange when
they take brit mila to be a sexist ritual on the grounds that it is only for boys 107 . Why, one
wonders, not avoid this purported sexism by extending the practice to girls, given that
one is extending every other previously exclusively male religious practice to females?
This is particularly so, given not only the Jewish religious significance of circumcision as
a sign of the covenant between God and the Jews 108 , but also the strong attachment that
many otherwise non-practising Jews have to circumcision. The Jew bears this sign in his
flesh, but the Jewess does not. Half of the Jewish people lack the physical mark that is
widely associated with Jews. One would have thought that egalitarians would want to
rectify this oversight.
What explains the apparent blind-spot in an otherwise vigorous Jewish egalitarianism? A
number of possible justifications might be offered, but none are compelling within the
egalitarian paradigm:
Female circumcision is not a mitzva or precept.
First, it might be suggested that whereas circumcision of males is a mitzva, a
commandment or religious precept, circumcision of girls is not. But this justification for
not extending circumcision to girls is a non-starter for egalitarians. That a mitzva or any
other religious practice has not applied, historically, to females, is no impediment to an
egalitarian extending it to females. They are in the business of rendering such unequal
precepts equal. That is why they count women in minyan, why they allow women to wear
tallitot and tefillin, why they call women to the Torah, ordain female rabbis and are led in
prayer by female cantors. It is why they create neonatal ceremonies for girls to parallel
the brit mila for boys.
Nor would it be very convincing for egalitarians to retort that female circumcision could
never become as deeply culturally entrenched a practice as brit mila is for boys. First, one
could say the same about so many other practices. Second, egalitarians are not usually
that easily deterred. Even if it were unlikely that a female version of a religious practice
were unlikely to become as culturally entrenched as the historically male version, the
egalitarian quest is to get as close as possible to the egalitarian goal of complete equality.
Why give up before one has even made an attempt?
Female “circumcision” is a more radical procedure.
107 Dr Marjorie Cramer, for example, when asked by her Reform rabbi to enrol in a course to train Jewish
ritual circumcisers, initially said “Why would I want do such a sexist thing, a ritual only for boys?” (Nadine
Brozan, “Religious Circumcision in a Changing World”, New York Times, 19 October 1998.
108 Genesis 17:10ff.