By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Since the end of the Second World War, Germany has come a long way in rehabilitating its past legacy of Nazism. Germany has proven itself as a good friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Germany has emerged as one of the most successful democratic countries of Europe. Jews have rebuilt their communities in many of Germany’s cities. I personally know many Holocaust survivors who have returned to Germany to receive keys to their cities and other honors. These are all meaningful steps; and most Jews do not believe that the children should have to suffer for the sins of the parents. However, our tradition warns us that children must never consciously or unconsciously follow their sinful parents’ poor example. George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I would paraphrase the citation a little differently: Those who fail to redeem the past, are condemned to relive it.
However, one thoughtless legal decision has threatened the wellbeing of Germany’s fledgling Jewish communities. On June 26th, 2012, the District Court of the Federal State of Cologne ruled that ritual circumcision for children as required by the parents, constitutes an infliction of bodily harm to the child, and is therefore—a criminal offense.
In bad economic times like we are witnessing in Europe today, it is easy for a country like Germany or other former Axis allies to revert to their history of xenophobic attitudes. One can be sure that the anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis will cheer this legal decision. The physicians at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin have already stopped performing circumcisions for fear of legal action.
For the German government, they need to ask themselves an important question: At what cost? Are they prepared to undo nearly sixty-five years of mending fences and good will? The German courts are entitled to enact whatever legislation they want—so long as it does not affect the Jewish community. However, if this court’s decision is upheld by the higher courts, Germany will have taken one gigantic step backwards toward the realization of Hitler’s macabre dream—a Judenrein Germany (a Jew-free Germany).
The Jewish people have been practicing circumcision for nearly 4000 years, and the ritual has not prevented the Jew from being a progressive force for social change and democracy. In addition, circumcision has also helped prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa—no small achievement! A significant number of the Nobel Prize winners have been Jews; the Jewish people aim to make a positive difference to the world. Whenever there is a crisis in the world, the State of Israel is always there to lend its medical and scientific expertise—no matter who the afflicted country happens to be. Israel has produced numerous new medical technologies that have improved the quality of people’s lives.
The ritual of circumcision has never turned us into bloodthirsty monsters. We are not barbarians bereft of a moral conscience. It behooves the German government to act compassionately and justly toward its Jewish minority population.
The world will always have evil people capable of making other nations’ lives along with their fellow countrymen’s lives miserable. However, thoughtless people pose a far greater problem because the forces of tyranny subsist upon the thoughtlessness of their followers to obey their orders.
We need to let the German government know that their country still owes a moral debt to the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants. The best and simplest way to fulfill payment of this moral debt is to make sure the Jewish community remains a protected and respected minority in their country. When considering the great losses that our people have endured, this is a moral obligation the German people should feel proud to fulfill.
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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Sholom. He may be contacted at michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com
Europeans are amazing people. They love to micromanage everyone’s life from the cradle to the grave. Someone should inform these folks that the Jewish community has a right to observe its ancestral traditions without being maligned by the cultured vox populi of German or Swedish societies that view circumcision as a barbaric rite. Europe has a long way to go before it ever can claim to be mentors to anyone but to themselves.
Stop referencing everything that happens in todays Germany to Nazism. That game is so played and the young generation does not give a damn anymore.
You are disrespectful to the victims of one of the most horrendous crimes in history if you do that you diminish their suffering by doing that. Everyone understands the sensibilities of this issue and there will not be a ban on circumcision anywhere in Germany in our lifetime. In a secular society it should still be allowed to criticise religious practises of whatever religion. I for one will not be intimidated by the religious folk and stop calling ancient harmful and useless rituals an ieny and useless and harmful. Grow a pair and deal with it.
Nobody is proposing a ban on circumcision, only an age-restriction.
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Abolute nonsense. The decision to not allow people to mutilate their infants is not Nazism, it is concen for bodily integrity. The desire to not cause pain, torture, and permanent scarring to children is not equivalent to the evil of Nazism. The attempt to insult and villify a country for protecting it’s infants is reprehensible.
You americans allways seem to get so emotionaly about everything.
But saying this has anything to do with nazism? laughable.
Why would you even suggest such a thing?
All this ruling has to do with is a child’s right to be protected from bodily harm.
Any non-essential or elective surgery on children is prohibited untill the child reaches the “age of consent”, which is 16 in
germany.
At which point the child can decide for itself if it wants the surgerery.
You insinuate there to be evilness and or antisemitism at the core of this decision. Preposterous, it’s a regional courts
decision that may well yet be overturned by a federal, national or even the constitutional court.
The court system in germany is very firmly dissconected from the political parties.
It is my personal (and the german) belief that one individuals religious freedom ends, when that individual’s knife touches
his neighbour.
Particularily without that neighbors consent, and consent can only be given when that person can understand the consequences,
which a baby cannot do.
So why call nazi?
Perhaps the lesson you took from the holocaust is that now everyone who feels jewish should discriminate against any people
who feel german?
If so I pity you sir.
And if you feel that your life would not be worth living without the chance of cutting you’re little boys penises, then you
are more than free to choose from a number of different countries to live in that believe religios principles should allow
for such things.
Iran for example.
Iranian jews are absolutely free to cut thier childrens genitalia into any shape they desire.
but perhaps I do you wrong sir,
perhaps it is not a lingering dislike of germans that drives you to write such hate inciting nonsense.
Perhaps it is merely ignorance.
If I interperet you’re titel on this website correctly you are a Rabbi?
I know very little about the jewish system of faith but I gather a Rabbi is seen as a person of respect and wisdom, a teacher
of sorts.
It is alarming to think young impressionable people might be listening to you, expecting guiding words of wisdom, and
recieving this bias without even knowing it.
One last thing.
You write:
“We need to let the German government know that their country still owes a moral debt to the victims of the Holocaust and
their descendants”
Would you accept someone dissagreeing to that sentance without him beeing a Nazi?
I am personally rather upset with such demands.
I am a 25 year old living in Germany, and I do not feel that my tax money should be spent in reperation for things done 40
years befor my birth.
I do not feel “guilt” over the holocaust.
I do think it was one of the deepest horrors in which mankind has ever found itself, but I feel no personal guilt,
and I do not feel that the people who live around me are guilty either.
I would prefer the money spent on schools and roads here.
Especially when that money is often used by Israel not to improve the lives of holocaust survivors, but to worsen the Human
rights situation for palastinians.
Or on nuclear weapons capable submarines.
Good day to you Sir.
And you, sir, will please keep your nose out of the personal family affairs of others. Worry about your own kids. Children belong to their parents and not to the state which more and more is becoming the attitude of Northern European moral decency. The right over one’s own seed is the most fundamental, inalienable right of mankind. Mind your own business!
“Children belong to their parents” They do, but in a special sense of “belong”. They are not chattels, to be cut and sculpted to suit the parents’ wishes and beliefs. They are held in trust, because as adults they are free, and their bodies belong to themselves, and should be left in a condition that will maximise their options.
Well said sir. Let them and like minded muslems carry out the mutilation of their children somewhere else. Roll on a Europe wide ban. Next we will tackle aniimal rights and the kosher/halal issues therein. I have great respect for jewish and arab people but both have (now) ther own homeland(s) and if they want to perform acts that are repugnant to the moral code of the majorty of EU folk then the answer is no.
I find your comment amazing. Europeans think they are the embodiment of culture and civilization. Frankly, the ascent of Hitler should have dispelled that nonsense. Europe can learn a lot about morality from the “primitive” peoples of the world that they castigate.
For once it would be nice if the civilized peoples of Europe left the Jews alone to practice their own faith.
This is an excellent article! I have been writing likewise on various internet forums since the announcement of this odious legal decision, criminalizing a millennia old ritual that is held sacred by Jewish people. This decision strikes at the very heart of Jewish identity.
In addition to this attempted abridgement of religious freedom and insult to the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, the parent religion of Christianity and Islam, it further reinforces the tendency in the Western world—especially in Northern Europe (with Sweden carrying the notion to extremes)—that children belong to the state which graciously permits parents to raise them, subject to state scrutiny.
It doesn’t take a village to raise a family, it takes a family. Once people are cowed into accepting that children belong to the state and not their parents, then all other individual rights and freedoms are jeopardized. We have seen the result of this malevolent philosophy in Nazi Germany and are witnessing it today in Sweden where parents who desire to educate their children privately or by home schooling—to free them from the propagandized state curriculum—are persecuted by the Gestopo-like social services legal system.
I see two FB Nazis have posted their “opinion”, if it could be called such. They now have the culpability of spreading modern Germany’s vile propaganda. What next, no more ear piercing too?
Kudos to the Rabbi for telling it like it is. Modern Germany and the EU are taking a dangerous turn for the worse, and too many people are too blinded to it. The USA will pay for its blindness.
Absolute rubbish. Leave the kids alone and foget your silly rituals.