about SIL and DS1's Bris (circumcision) ?

[imlikeaironingboard]

I'm Jewish (Liberal) and DH counts himself as secular Jewish (as does all of his family).
His DBro (my BIL) married out - not a 'big' thing with them due to the whole non practicing/secular thing.

I'm due to give birth to DS1 (DC2) in a week.

They do not have children and it is only DH and BIL as siblings. our DC1 is a DD.

Both DH and BIL are circumcised.

She told us tonight that she would not be coming to DS1 Bris. The idea of doing that 'disgusts' her.

AIBU to be really upset and to think that she should have realised that marrying into a jewish family secular or not would mean that these sort of things would happen?

This has really really upset me - I have never got a hint of her feeling like this before.

So in sub Saharan Africa, in populations where the is significant resistance to the use of condoms and where it is sometimes difficult to be as clean as you would want to be, the WHO says that circumcision hs an impact on the transmission of HIV and the incidence of Bala iris And in an area where male circumcision is almost universal, the WHO has madea pragmatic decision to ensure that the procedure is carried out safely and hygienically.

Hardly conditions that prevail generally in Surbiton, are they?

It isn't a comment about your faith, OP. It's a comment about the actual physical act. If I were her I would have said something more tactful, like "uncomfortable with that", but I can't blame her for a raw and honest reaction.
You have heard of Jews Against Circumcision, right? There are people who consider themselves staunchly Jewish yet don't support the Bris.

YABU

circumcision of a baby for non-medical reasons is a disgusting act. why shouldn't she say it disgusts her. it disgusts me, as all other forms of child abuse does too.

but you are actually asking someone to attend a surgical procedure as well as a ceremony of faith that she doesn't follow. Thats a big ask.

Had a non Christian member of my family felt unable to attend DS christening i would have understood and respected that - and it didn't involve any surgery!

...and a surgical procedure without anaethetic

Would you have minded if she just said she didn't agree with it and wouldn't be coming? Or would that have offended you too?

Magnum that's a good point. I would never expect anyone to take part in a Christian celebration they didn't feel comfy with, and those celebrations dont generally involve causing suffering to the child.

Irrespective of any faith I would never attend a ceremony where a child was being purposely harmed

You asked her to be your Kvatterin... If memory serves, that's the woman that takes the baby from the mother and into the circumcision room, yes?

Presumably, if she'd just replied to that offer (which you consider to be a huge honour) and she'd simply replied with 'no, I'm not coming to the Bris', would/did you leave it at that? Or did you push her for a more specific reason which led to her telling you it disgusts her?

You didn't just want her to be present, you wanted her to actively hand her baby nephew to a man who was going to cut off part of his genitals. Frankly, YABU to have expected anything less than an honest answer.

It makes you wonder why the need for a Kvatterin at all....if parents condone and justify doing this to their baby they should at least have the courage of their convictions and present the child for his procedure themselves. Presumably the Kvatterin is there to reduce the trauma and stress and the guilt for the mother. Why the trauma and stress and guilt if it is really not that bad?

FFS Atinkum, 30% of men are circumcised worldwide. If you ever go to the States will you be shouting 'vile vile person' to every woman over 60 for having had their sons circumcised in the 70s, or do you reserve that treatment to people of different faith?

Sighhhhhhh..... Why does everyone think that reading two articles on a website makes them an expert on a complicated religion with thousands of years of legal development?

Breatheslowly - I sometimes drive at above 70 mph on the motorway. However, I would not murder anyone or rob a bank. How can I pick and choose like this? Like with English law, there are commandments in Judaism that have more serious penalties than others. Failing to circumcise your sons is far worse than eating a cheeseburger. It would also rule out any participation in an organised Jewish community, and make things very difficult at a Jewish school, which many secular Jews attend.

OP - YANBU. Your SIL doesn't have to stand over the baby. She seems to be saying "why can't your religion be more like the CofE, ie involving virtually no commitment to anything except a fairly vague set of beliefs"? The answer is that for better or for worse Judaism isn't like that.

I think most American boys who are not circumcised for religious reasons do have a different more medicalised procedure though, don't they?

SamG76 that is snide and completely uncalled for. The sil is asking no such thing. She is merely declining the invitiation to be an integral part of this ritual based on her own moral convictions. And she is being honest about her reasons.

OP I'm not a fan of circumcision for religious reasons, for any reasons other than medical, but I don't think I'd turn round to a Jewish person and tell them that their practice disgusts me. UNLESS we were having a debate about it. So your SIL was a little U. However, I think you need to step back from her choice of words and accept HER belief too. She is not telling youj to stop, she's not telling you you're scum for doing it, she's simply saying that she cannot bring herself to be part of it and given you the reasons WHY.

I think you have to accept that many people see this as quite a macabre tradition and that it DOES disgust some people. Your SIL also has to accept that this is something that is important to you, and maybe should choose her words a little better to avoid family upset.

Maybe your sil had moderated her views - she said disgusted - maybe she thinks barbaric archaic unnecessary mutilation and all the other things that have been posted on here so that actually she was trying to say her feelings toned down for you.

Regarding your non Jewish friends not mentioning thoughts on circumcision - maybe it's not come up in general conversation. But I bet if you asked them directly what they thought of it, no holds barred, you'd get some fairly forthright views.

And for what it's worth, a few years ago a study was done in the US looking at crying in babies where they found that boys cry a lot more than girls in the first few months. When they tried to replicate it the UK they found it couldn't be replicated. Then they did it again in the US and found that they got the same results - boys cried much more. It took a while for somebody to click that circumcision is more common in the US and that is what was causing the difference. If you compared non-circumcised american boys with circumcised boys and with girls, it was just the circumcised boys that cried significantly more the first few months. Which might be worth remembering if your ds cries lots in the early months.

primafacie if any of those parents (you said mothers but i believe fathers are responsible for what happens to their dcs too) asked me my opinion on whether they were vile or not for having a baby unnecessarily mutilated then i would tell them i thought they were.

To misquote the divine Groucho, why would you want to be a member of any club that asks you to chop off a bit of your body before you're allowed to join?

why can't your religion be more like the CofE, ie involving virtually no commitment to anything except a fairly vague set of beliefs"? The answer is that for better or for worse Judaism isn't like that

As a committed Christian who attends a CofE church I find that comment very sad indeed. And hasn't OP said that DH and DBIL are secular Jews anyway?

"Presumably the Kvatterin is there to reduce the trauma and stress and the guilt for the mother."

Fellatio, I have never found anything to support your theory. To be Kvatter is considered an honour (similar to being a C/E godmother) and usually offered to a childless married woman, the theory being that it's a "good luck charm" for her so that she too is able to bear children. Nothing to do with preventing any guilt AFAIK.

ARGH! To be KvatterIN!

I just looked up the role of Kvatterin and I would have recoiled too if I was asked... I am sorry, but that's how I would feel (btw, I am not squeamish - I have been into operating theatres as an observer several times for work reasons).

The fact that circumcision has positive health effects is not an argument for religious circumcision. It's an argument for taking your child to a doctor or medical practitioner and having it done using the appropriate anesthetic.

I am still interested in knowing why the OP has said she would be disgusted by FGM, but not by the circumcision of her own son. OP, I'm sure your your knee-jerk reaction to the practice of FGM is that it is barbaric, wholly unnecessary, causes immense pain, and is often carried out in dubious ways by poorly trained people, on terrified little children. And you would be right.

You allow yourself to hold that belief because there is no cultural, historical or religious reason for you to need to do otherwise, and no-one has ever tried to persuade you otherwise. There is no pressure on you to try to find a benefit or a justification for it. But if you were a (backward thinking) Muslim woman in Sudan, or Nigeria for example, you'd see things rather differently. So who are you to be 'disgusted' by them, and yet still hold the beliefs that you do about the demands of your religion on your baby son, and his need to be circumcised in order to be truly accepted as a Jew?

Have you not stopped and asked yourself honestly - what is the difference? Granted, FGM is generally much more brutal and invasive, but the principle is just the same.

The fact that your son is living in the rich, modern, clean, safe UK means that his circumcision will probably be without lasting complications - or at least without ones that can't be put right by a proper urologist. But throughout time, millions of other little boys in the developing world have not been that lucky.

Anyway, as we have already said, this is not a debate about whether to circumcise or not to, but about whether your SIL is unreasonable to be disgusted by the ritualisation of it, and the archaic methods used. I hope you can see her POV a bit clearer now.

I think worral hit the nail on the head several pages ago:

If the OP was 100% certain that she was doing the right thing for her baby then she would likely not have been bothered by her SIL's comment. The fact that she was "really really upset" by it suggests that, whether conciously or not, she is now questioning herself.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but the fact OP has not been back to comment in some time and stated earlier that none of her friends had ever made their opinions clear suggest that she came here to canvas opinion. Now that it is clear that on the whole MN agrees with her SIL, she has even more cause to question her own motivations and whether she really wants this for her baby.

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. For what it's worth I don't agree with ritual circumcision and would not attend if invited.