by Bob Johnson
A two week old infant died in a Brooklyn hospital after the rabbi/mohel who performed his circumcision also performed oral suction on the infant’s freshly sliced penis. The rabbi/mohel infected the infant with herpes simplex virus Type 1 when he used his infected mouth to suck on the baby’s bleeding penis. The name of the rabbi or mohel who committed this unnatural disgusting act has not been released.
In 2004 an infant died from this same problem. He contracted herpes from Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer when Fischer used his mouth to directly suck on the infant’s freshly circumcised penis in order to suck blood from the wound. This repulsive and unnatural practice is known as metzitzah b’peh and has been practiced by Jews for thousands of years. It is now primarily practiced by Orthodox Jews.
The New York City Department of Health and the New York State Department of Health appear to have given in to Jewish Orthodox pressure and have not outlawed metzitzah b’peh. Instead it seems they agreed to allow Jewish Orthodox groups to self-regulate. The Orthodox Union’s magazine Jewish Action online reports, ” In June 2006, the Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada, a Chassidic group in Williamsburg, agreed to the state’s health commissioner’s order to self-regulate community mohelim with new standards. These standards entail that all mohelim sanitize their hands similarly to surgeons, clean their mouths with a sterile alcohol wipe and rinse for at least thirty seconds with mouthwash, cover the circumcised area with antibiotic ointment and sterile gauze and agree to be tested for HSV if a baby shows evidence of HSV following a brit milah where metzitzah b’peh was used, along with his parents and health care workers. As of this writing, negotiations are still ongoing with the New York City Department of Health, but it appears that the city’s more public opposition to metzitzah b’peh has made it difficult to broker such a compromise.”
This is yet another example of the urgency of Thomas Paine’s call for a revolution in religion. In his powerful thought provoking book, The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition (for the Kindle version click here), Paine wrote that with the success of the American Revolution the door was now open for a revolution in religion based on our God-give reason and Deism.
Bob Johnson is a freelance writer in the Tampa area of Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after a stint in Marine Corps infantry and reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason he became a Deist.
In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists, and in 1996 he launched the first website devoted to Deism. He is the author of God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion, Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You and An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He has also written the introduction to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition and Principles of Nature by Elihu Palmer.
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