'Thou Shall Not Circumcise'

A Three-Millennial Falsification (*): The 2nd Commandment forbids Sexual Mutilation.

Max Ernst. The Virgin thrashing the Child Jesus in front of three witnesses: André Breton, Paul Eluard and the painter (Köln: Museum Ludwig). - Notice the falling halo evoking the cut off foreskin -

(PARIS, France) - (Editor's note: Michel Hervé Navoiseau-Bertaux has been a friend of Salem-News.com for the last several years, and his passionate articles about circumcision tend to draw high readership. Michel's native language is not English, please bear this in mind as you read his work. He is extremely devoted to this study both in terms of history and social impact, thanks.)

John the Baptist, Jesus and the Machabees gave their lives for baptism by water rather than by the trauma of the “original” punishment, intended to prevent the famous “sin”. Queen Jezabel, Spinoza, Olry Terquem, Bernard Lazare, Freud, Bettelheim, Wald, Alice Miller, Derrida and Tobie Nathan also stood up against circumcision. A very accomplished criticism came from German Reform rabbis in the 19th century. They did not only base on socio-political and juridical motives (the criminal and segregationist custom is the deep cause of Judeophobia); they also grounded on religion: circumcision was ordered to Abraham, not to Moses, the Book of Deuteronomy (Moses's book, and the Ten Commandments) does not order it, Moses opposed that of his son (Exodus, 4: 24-26), it was not practised under his reign (it was set back into practice in Gilgal, for men only, after his death – Joshua, 5: 2-9), there is no (no longer) equivalent for girls. (cf. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Jerusalem: Keter publishing house limited; 1972. t. V, p. 571).

Prior to Moses, worshipers of the masculine phallus and contemptuous of the feminine equivalent, the Egyptians practised, and still do, upon children, the most terrible repression that can be imagined of infantile sexuality. Spanking already chastises behind the gentle caresses done in front but, as illustrated by Ernst's painting: “The Virgin thrashing the Child Jesus” (Ludwig Museum, Köln), where the fallen halo hints at the cut off foreskin. Sexual mutilation adds up to it, castrating the human person from the specific organs of autosexuality (clitoris and foreskin). It had been imposed on the Jews as a measure of enslavement and Moses the liberator could not tolerate it. Considering that these ablations make the phallus a fetish and that a “jealous” God cannot admit such idolatry, the Second Commandment denounces chapter 17 of the Book of Genesis. Similarly, after having killed the Egyptian murderer (Exodus, 2: 11-12), the son of Bedouins chooses nomadism praised by present day Jewish writers rather than the genocide of his Canaanite brothers. This was fatal to him; according to Freud and a few Egyptologists, keeping his skin whole could not save it from the Levites.

Similarly qualifying circumcision “a barbarous and bleeding rite” (quoted by the Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme. Paris: Editions du cerf; 1993. p. 433), Rabbi Abraham Geiger and his mosaicistic, democratic and feminist friends founded the first post-Renaissance Jewish movement refusing circumcision. The community responded with an outcry orchestrated by Hirsh (a founder of Zionism). Though having perfectly understood Moses, the reformist refused to believe their eyes of the falsification of one of the Ten Commandments. When the Orthodox rabbis attacked their arguments, most dissidents, after twenty years resistance, came back to circumcision. But the “heresy” had reached the United States where many practise non-mutilating nomination.

But the Second Commandment forbids circumcision and God seems to have changed his mind between both Covenants. Indeed, the following verses:

“You shall have no other God than I. You shall not make yourself idols, nor whatever image... for... I am a jealous God, who prosecute the crime of fathers upon children up to the third and fourth generations for those who offend me, and who extends my benevolence up to the thousandth for those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exodus, 20: 4-6, French Rabbinate translation (literally translated). Paris: Les éditions Colbo; 1999),

are read as if they said: “… who punish children for the crimes of fathers” but,

- if the sentence had this meaning, it would also have this construction,

- for the rabbinic interpretation, “the crime of fathers” indicates criminality in general but on the one hand, it would be improbable that there should be two commandments, the Second and the Sixth (“Do not commit homicide.”), condemning common criminality,

- on the other hand, the text would then either say “the crime of the father” or “the crimes of fathers”. “The crime of fathers” can only be the well-known crime upon children: sexual mutilation,

- indeed, the conjunction “for” marks the link of cause to effect between the ban of idols and images and “the crime of fathers upon children” that precisely alters the image of the human body,

- the Second Commandment brings out mass paedo-sexual criminality because it is particularly reprehensible. Stigmatizing sexual mutilation as a crime against creation (humanity), Moses punishes it in an imprescriptible way, hitting the elderly decades after their crime,

- whereas the orthodox interpretation gives the term “jealous” the immoderate meaning of suspicious till the injustice of condemning irresponsible children, a jealous God is very plainly jealous of his own creation, which man cannot alter without usurping God's place,

“If however you build a stone altar for me, do not build it with carved stones for by touching them with the iron, you made them lay. (Exodus, 20: 21-23)

- the dissymmetry between a boundless reward and a limited in time punishment is due to the dissymmetry between ascendants and descendants,

- the version of the Second Commandment in the Book of Deuteronomy (5: 9), a book of priests which was easy to modify, rubs the terms: “upon children” out. But how could the most sacred text of the Torah, carved in stone by God in person, have varied?! This physical falsification favoured the intellectual falsification of the Book of the Exodus, impossible to alter since it was well-known to the people. The blue-pencilling could have been operated at the return from the exile of the Jews in Babylon, at the time of the alleged discovery of the manuscript buried in the temple. It enabled re-establishing circumcision that had to be given up in Nebuchadnezzar's jails; it was a custom of the Egyptians, his worst enemies from whom it was vital to be distinguished (cf. Sabbah M. and R. The secrets of the Exodus. London: Thorsons Ltd; 2002),

- at last, through abolishing sexual mutilation, Moses tolls the bell for the inhuman “exclusion from the people” of opponents of sexual mutilation; it instituted, for the sake of the “elected”, universal discrimination and segregation, allegedly conferring collective identity through a so-called divine order.

The divine periphrasis: “the crime of fathers”, was therefore denatured. Moses abolished Abraham’s commandment because law may not speak against life (the foreskin is a very erogenous organ). Against the alliance through submission (Gen., 17), he contracted the alliance between equals (Deut., 5: 4) of the great Judaism, authentic and universal. The legislator founder of a judicial system with three degrees of jurisdiction uttered the first historical abolition of the death penalty and the first ethical condemnation of sexual mutilation. So, the Second and Sixth Commandments make the Decalogue, the first declaration in history of the duties and rights of man, a declaration of the human person’s very first, indivisible, inalienable and sacred right: the right to the body. We are requiring its inscription as article 1 of the Universal declaration of the rights of the human person.

For through demonstration and detailed information, visit circabolition.

(*) This text is quoted in the discussion of the article “Ten Commandments” of WIKIPEDIA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ten_Commandments#The_trimillenial_falsification_of_the_2nd_Commandment

An abstract has been published by the British medical journal: Sigismond. 15.01.08 letter to the editor. bmj.com/cgi/eletters/335/7631/1180#183746 (bottom of the page)