Recently, my colleague (I’ll call him Ben) participated in his grandson’s bris—the circumcision ritual within Jewish tradition. The circumcision was performed by a mohel–someone who is trained on removing the foreskin of an eight-day-old, male child.
Neither Ben nor his wife is Jewish. Their son converted to Judaism when he married a Jewish woman whose family celebrates the birth ritual with a host of traditions. One of those traditions dictates that the immediate family members, upon news of the baby’s imminent birth, gather together in, or around the vicinity of, the new family’s home in order to welcome the child into the world.
So Ben rushed to his son and daughter-in-law’s home a couple of states away shortly after the baby boy’s birth, staying until after the circumcision ceremony where Ben had the official role of conferring on the newborn his Jewish name. Continue reading “Is Religion Our Sacred Cow? by Esther Nelson”
Feminism and Religion 