Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 19:43:37 -0400
From: CircInfoNe@aol.com
Subject: Action Alert, 95.04.09B (NY Press) 

   From: BarryBE@aol.com
Subject: LETTERS TO NY PRESS - URGENT
   Date: 04/09/95 01:20 AM

- The Following Letters Appeared in the April 5 issue -
  To respond, address letters to The Mail, NY Press, 295 Lafayette St.,
NYC, 10012, or fax to 212-941-7824, or email 71632.16@compuserve.com.  All
letters should include name, address and daytime phone. 

Snippy

I FOUND JEFFREY FELSHMAN'S ARTICLE regarding circumcision (NYPress, 3/29)
fairly interesting. I tend to believe that all our body parts are there
intentionally and it doesn't make sense to chop them off for no good
medical reason. However, as a matter of religion, if I do have a son I
will have him circumcised.  My complaint with his argument, albeit small,
is a factual one. He correctly claims that Moses did not circumcise his
son. What Felshman neglects to mention is that an angel of Gd waylaid
Moses and threatened to kill him for that very reason. Tzipporah, Moses'
wife, then took a stone knife and performed the operation herself,
whereupon Gd withdrew the threat (Exodus 4:2426). It would seem that
indeed it does matter a great deal to Gd whether Jewish men are or are not
circumcised.  My point is this: Jeffrey Felshman may or may not be an
expert on the "Restore the Foreskin" movement. He is not, however, an
expert on Jewish theology. Next time you choose to have a nonobservant,
intermarried, non Jewishly educated Jew, write about Jewish practices,
have a good fact-checker on hand. -FELICE BOGUS, WHITE PLAINS

A Little Off the Sides

WHILE I FOUND JEFFREY FELSHMAN'S article on the anticircumcision movement
to be generally informative, the autobiographical interlude in the middle
of the piece seems to me nothing more than an attempt to commit his own
identity anxieties to paper. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but when
examined with that time honored measuring stick- "good for the Jews or bad
for the Jews?"- Felshman's tortured airing of his psychic dirty laundry is
bad for the Jews indeed. I have little at stake in what gentiles do or
don't do with their foreskins, but Felshman's positioning of Jewish
ritualistic circumcision as a cruel and twisted practice reads to me like
seething self loathing and a bald attempt to justify to himself, and to
the world, his own son's unmarked member.  It is one thing to question the
medical value of secular circumcision-quite another to take the religious
ritual to task, especially when the only representatives of a Jewish
position are an apostate of shaky authority and selected passages from the
Encyclopedia Judaica. However tormented Felshman's sense of self may be,
his public condemnation of his heritage hardly strikes me as the most
expedient means of resolution, and it's hard to tell whether I should be
angry or just embarrassed for him. -DAVID LISS, MANHATTAN

Man's Hood

I COULDN'T BRING MYSELF TO FINISH Jeffrey Felshman's cover story on
circumcision. The whole idea of dwelling on infants' foreskins and taking
on their fates as a life crusade (as apparently Harry Meislahn and
Felshman have) makes me ill. I don't remember my circumcision, nor do I
think it's likely to rear its head in therapy as some suppressed trauma. I
can only speak from adult sexual streamlined and aesthetically pleasing.
Uncircumcised members are simply too mysterious and backwoodsy for my
taste. -NAME WITHHELD, MANHATTAN

Hotheaded

[Regarding the] article on circumcision, from a 50 year old, circumcised
at birth: while I agree that such a radical medical intrusion should not
be practiced so extensively with no compelling reason, I don't understand
the compulsive search for the lost foreskin in those who have not suffered
the extreme physical problems that can result from a botched bris. I would
guess that my own circumcision approximates the ideal. I never think about
it and it never causes me any problems. As for sensitivity; I have had
orgasms that have caused me to pass out I can't imagine any better.  From
the female point of view I discussed this with my girlfriend, right
after reading the article. She also agrees that it seems stupid to do such
an operation, without any medical reason. She did add, however, that she
couldn't imagine giving head to someone who hadn't been circumcised. Lucky
me!  To put it succinctly, the whole thing has been blown out of
proportion. -E. HORN, MANHATTAN

A Lingering Bris

I DON'T KNOW WHICH IS MORE PATHETIC- that you thought your readers needed
to be tipped off about the cartoons on March 29 or that we really needed
to go through circumcision polemics a third time in two years. Regarding
the latter, Cecil Adams presented pros and cons on both sides of the issue
and, I thought, attempted to be fair. Also, it's not as if we can't expect
Dan Savage to get around to the subject eventually, so why we need a cover
story now is beyond me.  The only arguably novel thing this time around is
that Jeffrey Felshman, the author decrying the bris, is himself Jewish.
But it is shameless of Felshman to innocuously cite a book reporting that
some Jews under Hitler practiced stretching penis skin without one
gigantic caveat that perhaps these men were not permanently trying to
change their religion's sexual heritage but were merely trying to save
their own lives. (On the other side, what about the conspiracy theory
that the anticircumcision lobby's actual eventual goal is to make Jews
easier to spot? I mean, how disingenuous are these arguments going to
get?) This from someone who thinks a publisher should feel free to print
whatever, especially if the publication is free. If the letters responding
to Cecil Adams' previous columns are any indication, God get me through
the next few weeks of further debate on this topic. CHARLES CARSON,
MANHATTAN