David Quinn Ancient ritual of circumcision is a modern-day moral dilemma
At the start of this month, a rabbi was arrested in Dublin for performing a circumcision on a baby boy without the necessary state clearance. It is believed to be the first time a rabbi has been arrested anywhere in Europe for performing a circumcision since World War II. The incident has not received too much coverage here, but it has been widely reported in Jewish media overseas.
It has left the tiny Jewish community in Ireland reeling.
The recently appointed Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Weider, is concerned that Jewish parents will have to bring their baby boys overseas from now on to have them circumcised because it might become so difficult in practice for them to do so here.
The arrest and probable trial of the rabbi is a test of Ireland’s new, vaunted multi-culturalism.
What do we think of an ancient religious practice that might offend modern, secular sensibilities?
Male circumcision is a requirement of the Jewish faith. A baby boy must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. In the Bible we are told that Jesus was circumcised in accordance with Jewish law. Muslims also circumcise baby boys.
It is a very minor procedure, involving snipping the foreskin of the penis, and it is estimated that around 30pc of all males worldwide are circumcised as infants, including most American males, the vast majority of whom are neither Jewish nor Muslim.
Apparently, there are fairly solid hygiene reasons for the practice, and it very rarely causes complications, and even when it does, they are almost always extremely minor. The comparisons some people make with female genital mutilation are very wide of the mark.
The case before the Irish courts involves a British rabbi named Jonathan Abraham. At the end of last month, Rabbi Abraham flew over to Ireland to perform circumcisions on four baby boys, none of them Jewish by the way. But that is only a detail.
The procedures were taking place in a private house, and he had performed one of them when gardaí entered the home, and he was arrested.
He was refused bail initially in case he might return to England and therefore spent several weeks in prison. On Thursday, Rabbi Abraham was finally granted bail.
The ground for the arrest is that he is not a registered medical practitioner in Ireland and therefore he was performing the circumcisions illegally. He potentially faces a fine of up to €130,000 and five years in prison under the Medical Practitioners Act 2007.
But while Rabbi Abraham is not a doctor, he is registered in Britain to perform circumcisions.
Within Judaism, someone who carries out circumcisions is known as a ‘mohel’. They are recognised by the oldest Jewish organisation in Britain, the Initiation Society.
No parent would want someone untrained and unrecognised to carry out such a sensitive procedure on their baby and the Initiation Society’s list includes Rabbi Abraham. He has carried out hundreds of circumcisions down the years, according to Jewish sources here.
There are no mohels in Ireland and that is why mohels come over from Britain instead.
Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, a leading Muslim cleric here in Ireland, says that “many Muslim parents opt to have their boys undergo circumcision abroad”, because of the difficulties in accessing the procedure here. Irish Jews may end up having to go across the water as well, or up to Belfast.
What does the average Irish person think about all this, assuming they know anything at all?
If the case goes to trial in due course, it could well attract quite a lot of international attention, given its almost unprecedented nature, and then we may have to think about it.
Will most of us deem that circumcision is an ancient and barbaric practice long past its sell-by date and that it has no place in modern Ireland?
In 2012, a court in Germany banned circumcision except on medical grounds, and the decision caused uproar, which is understandable given Germany, of all countries, was seeking to prohibit something that is central to Jewish identity.
The court decided male circumcision is a form of child abuse and a violation of the child’s autonomy. You can see how arguments like these could easily gain purchase in a western country like Ireland as well.
But as we have seen, a majority of American males have been circumcised for non-religious reasons, and does the average American man seriously think he was subjected to child abuse on this ground or that his autonomy was violated?
When the German court came to that decision, the then British Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, one of the most respected figures in Britain before his untimely death in 2020,
Male circumcision is a requirement of the Jewish faith. A baby boy must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth — and Muslims also circumcise baby boys
pointed out that banning infant male circumcision “was the route chosen by two of the worst enemies the Jewish people ever had, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and the Roman emperor Hadrian”. That is without mentioning the Nazis.
In the end, the German parliament voted to overturn the ban.
Angela Merkel, who was Germany’s chancellor at the time, opposed the court ruling.
But in the meantime, banning religious circumcision has been seriously considered in a number of European countries including Iceland, Denmark and Sweden.
In Ireland, you could easily imagine a strange alliance forming at some stage between the far right and the left to ban the practice, the far right being opposed for reasons of preserving cultural homogeneity or something of that sort, and the left on child autonomy and health grounds.
But if the left was ever to go down this route, it would be in gross violation of its commitment to multiculturalism because it would make Ireland a very cold environment for both Jews and Muslims.
The case of Rabbi Jonathan Abraham is therefore more important than you think, and it is about more than the narrow legal arguments and how they might go.
What do we Irish think of the ancient religious practice of male circumcision and in the long-term are we willing to permit it?
This will be a true test of how tolerant we really are.
Leaving Cert results day is as integral a part of the Irish summer as giving out about the weather. Too hot or too cold, it’s never quite right. Students’ grades are much the same. Too low or too high, there’s always something to complain about. This year, it’s the latter. More than two-thirds of grades have been artificially inflated once again, by an average of 7.5pc, or 60 CAO points, making this the fifth year in a row that Leaving Cert results have reached unprecedented highs.
It all stems back to the Covid lockdown when students were sent home and teachers were allowed to predict their marks instead. It was the only compassionate solution when young people’s lives had been turned upside down. The pandemic is long over, however, and the number of students achieving the highest grade, H1, is still more than double what it was in 2019.
Surely it’s time for Leaving Cert grades to return to some semblance of normality?
Education Minister Norma Foley has pledged that grades will start to come down from next year, but her language is strikingly tentative.
Last week, she talked of returning to business as usual “in stages” and “step by step”, by means of “a very small reduction over a number of years”.
That “very small” is worrying. It suggests the minister is set on kicking the can down the road, creating other problems for higher education.
Sky-high grades may be personally satisfying for students in the short term, but it doesn’t make it any easier for them to get on to the thirdlevel course of their choice if all those against whom they’re competing for limited places have also had their grades artificially inflated.
With so many students achieving top grades, CAO points are bound to go up accordingly. When offers start being sent out this Wednesday, it seems that the most popular courses may have to resort to random selection once more to whittle down the numbers. A rising tide may raise all boats, but they’re all still racing on the same water. That’s not fair to genuinely outstanding students, who risk missing out on their dreams.
Grade inflation also means students from Northern Ireland who wish to study in the Republic are now at a serious disadvantage Grades in the UK’s A-Level system are already back down to the pre-Covid norm, meaning many Northern applicants will lose out on places.
With so much emphasis now on a “Shared
Island”, that hardly sends out the right message.
It is also not good for some of the students who do get places on the most competitive courses on the basis of inflated grades. The drop-out rate increased sharply after Covid. The relief and joy many feel this week will inevitably translate into disillusionment once these students begin their studies and start to feel that they are not up to it.
These are the nettles which need to be grasped, but Foley seems reluctant to take bold action. Taoiseach Simon Harris, as a former minister for higher education, ought to know better than most that this situation cannot continue.
It’s about getting grades back into the “Goldilocks Zone”. Not too high or too low, but just right. Dragging out the moment of decision will not make that any easier, whoever happens to be minister for education after the next general election.