Public health regulations effectively pushed acculturated Jews to abandon circumcision

Evidence

This debate about the special relationship between Jews and ritual circumcision and the health exception is reflected in the Verein der Reformfreunde (Society for the Friends of Reform) in Frankfurt in 1843, which said that ritual infant male circumcision was neither a religious obligation nor a symbolic act. This was in response to the 8 February 1843 finding of the Frankfurt public health authority that circumcision had to be carried out under medical supervision. However, the end result of concerns over hygiene and deformation was that ritual circumcision was less and less undertaken by acculturated Jews in Central and Western Europe. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 903

Categorization

• SEED: Essay seed: the ‘health exception’ as a policy lever — how medicalizing a ritual practice quietly achieves what outright prohibition cannot, in 1843 and in today’s European circumcision debates.