Last year’s ruling on circumcision in Köln and the subsequent absurd debate on the matter ended with a parliamentary protection for religious communities in Germany against prosecution for the practice. During that debate, there was one argument that stuck in my mind. This was the idea that, in the name of human rights, a person should be able to decide to get circumcision himself when he is old enough to make this decision. Who the hell really thinks that one should be making cuts down there when his consciousness and his fully-formed prefrontal cortex know all too well what’s causing that unpleasant post-op pain? Another argument, that idea that parents were infringing on the rights of the child by “mutilating” him before he is too old to defend himself, was similarly silly. What if, instead, the parents are doing the kid an enormous favor? I mean quite apart from the religious obligations (which are real, by the way)? This is the true debate: whether circumcised is better, as many men and women claim, or whether the Intactivists are right, that the loss of foreskin means a loss of pleasure. This too is part of a parent’s job: to safeguard a child’s future “good life.” But who wants to have that conversation with your teenage boy?
Below, my translation of Anna Sokhrina’s short tale, Die Beschneidung. Sokhrina tells the story of exactly that moment from the perspective of a Russian-Jewish-immigrant-come-German-citizen. When the child comes asking why the parents failed him.
The Circumcision
Recently I went to visit my neighbor Sonja and found her in a terribly agitated state. Her seventeen-year-old son had gotten it in his head that he wanted to get circumcised.
“What do you need that for!?” she yelled and threw her hands up in frustration. “Isn’t the name Rabinowitsch enough for you?”
Lanky Dima crouched down into the corner of the sofa and stared glumly.
“At your age!” She screamed aghast.
“Since my brilliant parents didn’t manage to take care of it when I was eight days old . . .”
“What are you talking about!” Sonja was through the roof. “You have no idea how we lived! Your father worked at an institute with the highest security clearance! Circumcision? As if! They would have thrown us out on our ear from any job if we had even stepped foot in a synagogue! The next day they would have told on us to the KGB officer, like they did your father’s colleague Lifschitz. You have no clue about life back then…”
“Mom, I want to be a full-fledged Jew.”
“What, you aren’t already a full-fledged Jew? All your ancestors are Jews. This talk about circumcision. I bet that Jewish community youth club got you all fired up about it, am I right?”
“No. Just imagine it,” she turned with her black eyes glaring wildly at me, looking for support, “instead of giving us money to help us integrate, for German classes or for something useful, the geniuses in the community got themselves some butcher from England … “
“It’s not a butcher, it’s a mohel. A butcher slaughters chickens.”
“You see! I’m telling you, you have the brains of a bird. Right now you need to be preparing for your tests, your final exams … You tell him …” Irritated, Sonja blew a strand of hair out of her face.
Nervously, I lumbered from one foot to the other:
“Well, first, it hurts.”
“And the second time it feels good.” Sonja’s son was quoting a joke as an answer.
“Mother,” Sonja’s husband said in placating tones as he came out of the bedroom, “What’s got you so upset? Let the kid do it. What’s the problem? You yourself have a circumcised husband …”
“Who is also pretty snippy!” said Sonja venomously and slammed the door.