New York, NY – New York City health officials proposed on Tuesday that Orthodox Jewish parents be required to sign a consent waiver before they can take part in a circumcision ritual that is believed to have led to the deaths of at least two babies in the city over the past decade.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The proposal, introduced at a Board of Health meeting, represents an escalation of the city’s efforts to curtail the ancient Jewish procedure of metzitzah b’peh, in which an adult male, usually the circumciser, places his mouth directly on the wound created by the removal of the infant’s foreskin to suck away the blood.
Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control for the health department, announced the city’s next step, proposing that the Board of Health, which approves public health policies, require all parents who want direct oral suction to be used to sign a consent form indicating that they are aware of the risk of infection.
The mohel, or ritual circumciser, would distribute the consent forms to parents before the circumcision and keep them on hand for at least a year. The precise warning language would be written by health officials, Dr. Varma said.
What will that gain? If it’s dangerous then the parents have no right to put their child in danger, if it’s not then why do they need to consent?
3 cheers to all of us for consistently voting into office these Pro expanding Government pol’s, now we have reached the point where they are getting involved in a very intimate part of our religious life.
I hope people wake up and start voting smartly.
maybe not a bad idea since there will be a record of the procedure they can track if some babies get sick and or die. With that information they can tell mohel to stop or get tested and only after a warning if he continues to do it they charges should be filed
The madness has gone too far. Given the uncontested reality that there is sakanas nefesh to the baby, however small, and that this is simply a minhag from a time when the risks were not known, why doesn’t one or more of gadolei yisroel have the courage to come forward and say NO MORE. They can rant on forever about the evils of the internet or riding a bike, but somehow they view metzitzah b’peh as OK.
Last week – we give out flyers. This week, we make you sign a waver (so we can prosecute you if something goes wrong). Next week we will outlaw it all together. It will be a pain to travel to Long Island to make a bris …
The gezairis is starting… Another asifa?
This initiative represents a delicate balance. On the one hand, the government is not limiting religious rights. On the other hand, parents will now have the information they need to realize that mbp is very dangerous.
Although the article mentions only two deaths, it is widely assumed that there are many others that were not investigated, not to mention cases of disease and brain damage.
Hopefully, the Charedi public will come to its senses, and follow the great rabbis of previous generations (the Chasam Sofer, R’ Chaim Solovetchik, et al.), who ruled that mbp should not be performed in the regular manner if there is any risk to the child. The situation today, with its high incidences of herpes, is at least as bad as the situation faced by those rabbis, if not worse.
I pray to Hashem that this reasonable, modest, initiative will save the lives and health of many babies.
#4 , you are ignorant. Its a halacha lmoshe mesenai and many hold the bris would be invalid without it,
Secondly, metzitzah is actually healthy for the baby as stated in the gemorah. Dont tell me nowadays is different.
Perhaps parents should sign a waiver before bringing the baby home from the hospital in a car since thousands of people die in car accidents every year. what are the odds in the case of metzitza? two deaths in the history? how many bris’en are there a year in Brooklyn every day/week/year?
This is an agenda being pushed by our self-hating jews, unfortunately, who found another thing wrong with the torahthat they can bash.
Why can’t we fix this problem ourselves. We can start requesting the services of mohelim that (voluntarily) get tested at reasonable intervals (3 months? 6 months?). Those that get tested will get more business, those that don’t get tested will get less. In short time, you’ll find most brissim with MbP performed by a tested mohel. (However, I fear that initially there pressure from within against those pioneer mohelim that lead the way in getting tested).
So let me get this- A mohel gets a 100% sterilized package of the instruments he will use to perform the bris- swabbs the area of the cut with alcohol to kill any bacteria and germs- makes the cut -then takes his mouth ( the most germ laden part of the body) and puts it in direct contact of the open wound. Sounds logical —NOT.
I knew a mohel(orthodox) who refused to perform Metzitzach even though the parents insisted. He told them , after I leave you can suck it all you want– A smart man indeed
Did avraham perform this procedure when he circumcised himself, or his son? NO!
Enough said. End this “minhag” and start practicing safe circumcision.
You are a voice of sanity #17 ! I would like to see who would argue with mohelim being tested every six months.
sadly, As soon as a mohel contracts a deadly disease ( hiv, hepatitis,other viral infections) from sucking on the wound, this practice will stop, and more hygenic and halachically valid options will prevail.
Nobody said that it is halocho lemoshe misinai. If you read the comments correctly you will see that ‘some’ hold that it is an integral part of the bris. That is correct. The opinion of the Aruch LaNer (who was college educated) in his teshuva is that metzitzah is not for health reasons, it is part of the hotzaas dam bris.
People die or contact life threatening illnesses after getting tattoos, maybe they should ban that also!!!
I made a uick calculation for how many brisos were perform in NYC in the last ten years:
There are about 600,000 orthodox Jews in the US Let’s say that one third (largely the MO) does not do mbp. That leaves 400,000. At most a quarter of those are under the age of 10. We’re down to 100,00, of which 50,000 are boys.
How many of these ten year old boys had their brisos in NYC? Let’s say half, or 25,000. Since many of these estimates err on the higher side, the actually number may be much less than 25,000.
The medical experts say that “at least two deaths” were caused by mbp. Thus, the of death by mbp is at least one in 10,000. In the medical field AND IN HALACHAH, such a risk is unacceptably high.
This rate would suffce for a halachic ban on milah itself (if the milah itself causes death)! It should certainly suffice for a ban on mbp, which is not me’akeiv and may just be a minhag.
only morons and medically ignorant people would now allow MBP, there are legitimate poskin who paskin it is ok to forgo it. the mohel and parents should be held criminally resposible if something happens to the baby, NO EXCEPTIONS
Nothing more then an attack on religious freedom. Will never stand up in court.
Question: If Metzitza is part of the Mila, why does the gmura say its permitted to do mtzitza in shabbos because its dangerous not to do it, they should say its part of the Bris and thats why you are allowed to do it?
Vienna had a famous posek Reb Yitzhak Baumgarten A’H , the Czortkover Rebbe lived in Vienna and the Kapyczinitzer and metziza was done with a pipette because it was declared a zakono
This is like allowing people to feed their kids food prepared by Typhoid Mary as long as there’s a sign in the cafeteria saying “Typhoid can kill you”
Ok everybody is wrong – including the Goverment! This is not an Halachic issue about Bris Milah – it is an issue of Dina Malchusa. The only time Dina Malchusa would not apply is if they are forcing Jews to do something against Halacha for no reason! Here, not only is their valid authority for using a tube or possibly forgoing any suction at all, but there is a valid health reason for the gov’t to step in and regulate the practice. And in my opinion, they are not going far enough. Only two deaths? What are we talking about here baby animals? Some people who have commented here, such as the one who uses the misnomer “Ehrliche Yid” sound about as barbaric as this ancient practice is with modern day Mohelim who cannot keep track of their health (let alone maintain it).
Re: ritual that is believed to have led to the deaths of at least 2 babies in the city over the past decade…
First let them address much more serious statistics, like …
New York, NY – The most deadly weapon in New York City is not be a knife or even a handgun. It’s a car.
That’s what transit advocates said today, revealing that more people were killed by cars in the last decade than by guns.
According to transit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, citing city data, 3,923 New Yorkers were killed in traffic from 2001 to 2010 – more than the 3,882 murdered by guns in that same time span.
Transportation Alternatives argued yesterday that police should funnel resources toward combating car crashes that kill New Yorkers, the way cop crackdowns on gun violence have slowed the murder rate.
So you are saying that the city should not require waivers for mbp because there is a major problem with cars? What does one thing have to do with the other?
According to your logic, nothing should be done about mbp until the car problem has been solved. But in that time, mbp might kill or cause brain damage to hundreds of Jewish babies (c’v). Is that what u want?