BERLIN (AP) — Rabbi David Goldberg had performed about 25 ritual circumcisions this year before a regional court ruled in June that the practice amounted to causing criminal bodily harm.
Despite the decision, he expects to
perform the same number in second half of the year.
“I haven’t changed anything,”
said Goldberg, one of Germany’s few mohels — a person trained in
the Jewish ritual of circumcision.
Though the Cologne court’s decision has
raised fears among Muslims and Jews that circumcising their children
could get them into legal trouble, it has had little practical effect
in reducing religious circumcisions — especially since the
government has weighed in with assurances to both communities that
their practices will be respected.
But both Jews and Muslims say that a
more lasting effect may be “us vs. them” tensions that have
raised an invisible barrier between secular Germans and religious
minorities.
“It is no surprise that the
Catholics and the Protestants have stood behind the Muslim community
in this case and denounced the verdict,” said Aiman Mazyek, the
chairman of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims. “In my opinion
this is no picture of tolerance or religious freedom from a modern
civilization. It is a step backward.”
Jews are religiously required to
circumcise baby boys on the 8th day after birth in a ceremony seen as
their entrance into a covenant with God. Muslims also usually perform
the procedure early in a boy’s life, though sometimes wait until
later in childhood.
In the Cologne decision, announced June
26, the court said circumcising young boys on religious grounds
amounts to bodily harm even if parents consent to the procedure. The
charge is punishable by anything from a fine to up to five years in
prison.
The ruling came in the case of the
circumcision of a 4-year-old Muslim boy that led to medical
complications.
The boy was circumcised at the request
of his parents. He developed complications two days later and was
rushed to the hospital. Prosecutors charged the doctor, who was
acquitted when a Cologne court found that he had performed the
procedure properly, and that he had the parents’ permission to carry
out the circumcision.
But prosecutors appealed, and the
higher Cologne court ruled that in a case of circumcision for
non-medical reasons, the welfare of the child outweighed the
religious rights of the parents. The acquittal of the doctor,
however, was upheld because the court said the law had been unclear.
Though not precedent setting for other
courts in Germany, the ruling prompted an outcry from Jewish and
Muslim groups across Europe, while in Israel the German ambassador
was invited to explain the decision to the Knesset.
Germany’s main Catholic and Protestant
organizations also condemned the ruling as an attack on religious
freedom. The president of the German Medical Association said the
ruling could even endanger children, by forcing circumcisions to be
performed under possibly unsanitary conditions outside of hospitals.
Caught in the middle were people like
Moishe Furer, a rabbinical student in Berlin whose son Elchanan was
born five days before the decision was announced.
The native of Moldova said his own
parents had to bribe a doctor when he was born to certify that his
own circumcision was for medical purposes because performing the
procedure for religious reasons was not allowed in the former Soviet
Union. When he first heard of the Cologne decision, he said he
thought the court ruling was being misinterpreted.
“We thought it was a mistake, that
it could not be true that something like circumcision could be
forbidden in Germany,” he said.
But because of the religious
significance, he said, they had the circumcision done, despite fears
that other courts might follow the ruling even if it did not set a
precedent.
“It was important enough to risk,”
he said.
The most disturbing part of the ruling
for Jews and Muslims is the court’s contention that being circumcised
“runs contrary to the interest of the child to later choose his
religious affiliation,” said Josh Spinner, an American rabbi who
grew up in Hamilton, Canada, and has been in Berlin for more than a
decade.
“I’m a circumcised male, I expect
that I have the right to become a Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist
or atheist if I choose to today. But what the court is saying is that
if I am circumcised I am a Jew,” he said. “There’s a very
dark and very illiberal view of what this mark does on the
individual.”
Around 250,000 Jews live in Germany
today, and about 4 million Muslims — the largest minority among
Germany’s 82 million population.
Spinner said the ruling has the
potential of opening the door to even greater restrictions on
religious freedom for minorities — a particularly sensitive issue
in Germany given the years of state-imposed anti-Jewish measures
under the Nazis that preceded the Holocaust.
“Germany needs to understand that
if they want to tolerate Jews then they need to tolerate Judaism,”
Spinner said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged
the same concern behind closed doors in a meeting this week with her
party leaders, saying “I don’t want Germany to be the only
country in the world in which Jews cannot perform their rituals,”
according to an official who was present.
Immediately following the court ruling,
however, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was alone among top
officials to speak out on the issue. He offered assurances that “the
free exercise of religion is protected in Germany — that includes
religious traditions.”
In the past week, however, Merkel’s
spokesman Steffen Seibert has weighed in several times, promising
that the government will come up with a solution that will allow the
practice.
And in Parliament on Thursday,
lawmakers from several parties adopted a resolution urging the
government to draft a new law by the fall guaranteeing Muslims and
Jews the right to continue circumcising their boys.
“Jewish and Muslim religious life
must continue to be possible in Germany,” the lawmakers said in
the two-page resolution. “The circumcision of boys for Jews and
Muslims has a central religious importance.”
Had the government spoken out strongly
sooner, said Goldberg, Germany may have managed to prevent the
discussion from turning into an “us vs. them” embroilment.
“I get a lot of emails from
non-Jewish Germans saying things like ‘if you don’t like it, leave
Germany’ — very anti-Semitic. It’s a bad atmosphere,” said the
rabbi, who immigrated to Germany 19 years ago from Israel and now
lives in the southeastern city of Hof.
“Nobody said anything aside from
Westerwelle, so that is also partially the fault of the government.”
Joerg van Essen, parliamentary chief
whip of the Free Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner, said
that drafting the resolution to protect circumcisions took time
because lawmakers needed to carefully balance constitutionally
guaranteed religious freedoms and parental rights with the safety of
the child.
“It’s a relatively small procedure
for the child, but banning it would be a big encroachment on
religious freedom and the right of the parents to decide how to raise
their children,” he said.
Furer said he hoped that the
circumcision debate would be expose more Germans to other religious
ideas.
“I think a lot of Germans don’t
understand our religion and our religious issues,” he said.
