Last week, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, wrote in the Jerusalem Post about a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007 at which he said it was up to her and other leaders as to whether the rising tide of anti-Semitism would determine the future of Jewish life in Europe. He said afterwards she asked him what she could do to help. Thinking back on the question, he said he now had an answer: override the ban on circumcision handed down by a judge in Cologne last month.
While the ruling, along with the troubling growth of Jew-hatred throughout Western Europe and violence in France has raised questions about the viability of Jewish life in Europe, Merkel has answered the rabbi’s challenge. As Reuters reports, the chancellor’s office has issued a statement telling both Jews and Muslims in Germany that they should not be deterred from practicing their faith despite the court ruling. The Berlin government said it would seek a quick resolution that would enable it to override the Cologne decision that banned the circumcision of infants. Yet, while Merkel is to be commended for speaking up for religious freedom in Germany, the bris ban remains a bitter reminder of the history of German anti-Semitism. But it also shone a spotlight on the way in which Jews have been targeted not just by thugs or terrorists but also by European elites in recent years.
Swift action by Berlin is necessary, and it is likely the chancellor will get her way. Though many intellectuals throughout Western Europe appear to be slipping back into the continent’s old habits with regard to Jew-hatred, Merkel has demonstrated an understanding of her nation’s historic responsibility. But it will take more than the much needed trashing of the circumcision ruling to reassure European Jewry that they are well and truly safe.
The embrace by European elites of a brand of anti-Zionism that seeks to delegitimize all expressions of Jewish identity has complicated the defense of the rights of religious minorities in Western Europe. Where decades ago, the memory of the Holocaust might have served to deter even the most perverse judge from seeking to curtail religious freedom in Germany, today it increasingly seems as if it is open season on the Jews.
If Merkel is to answer Rabbi Sacks’ challenge, she and her fellow European leaders will have to do more than merely quash the Cologne decision. They must speak up in opposition to the delegitimization of Israel and Jewish identity. If not, the bris ban will be seen as just the beginning of attacks on Jewish rights rather than a regrettable but reversible episode.
Don't confuse our own outrage with German fear that not the Jews but 10 million Muslims in Germany will rise up.
You're assuming this ban is anti-Semitic in its origins. This ban means you're not able to circumcise your son, regardless of your ethnicity or cultural background. Now if they were outlawing Bar Mitzvahs, then that would be an attack on the Jewish community.
Tell me again why any Jew in his or her right mind would live in Europe or, for that matter, anywhere other than the USA, Israel and maybe Australia and/or Canada. Yes, yes, they should be able to live where they want and to do so without fear, but why would they want to? I just don't get it.
The recent legal ruling is related to Jew-hated in only the most remote and inverse way. Germany put its strong Basic Law in place because of the horrors of Naziism, and they enshrine human rights, including the right to physical integrity. Faced with the case of a Muslim boy who suffered excess bleeding from a circumcision, the court ruled that the operation on a healthy child broke that law and that this right overruled any right of his parents to practise their religion on him. n nIt will be hard for any higher court to reverse this decision without opening the floodgates to female genital cutting, in at least forms equivalent to male genital cutting, such as nicking or even removing the clitoral prepuce, while still claiming to protect the equality of the sexes. They may consider that too high a price to pay.
Thr Euros use Arab grievances –real, exaggerated or invented– in order to justify their old, now refurbished Judeophobia, as Jonathan suggests
It's all the more courageous of Germany knowing it's past to take the side of the innocent, intact infant and ban this barbaric, inhuman practise of mutilation. Of course they antecipated your spinal-reflex kind of protests about Jew-hatred but that proves they're real protectors of basic human rights, male infants happen to be humans. Religions have to adopt modern concepts concerning integrity rights of newborns and adolescents. If I started a new religion tomorrow advocating the amputation of all newborn's left ear as a obligitory ritual should that be protected by laws on religious freedom? n