Circumcision and Moses

Circumcision and Moses
By Sigismond for Salem-News.com

"I AM A JEALOUS GOD WHO PUNISHES THE CRIME OF FATHERS UPON CHILDREN UP TO... GREAT-GRANDFATHERS..." (Second Commandment)
Salem-News.com

(PARIS, France) - In the middle of the 19th century, a movement of German Reform rabbis was the first Jewish movement in modern times to refuse circumcision, on Biblical grounds: the Ten Commandments do not prescribe it, it was not practiced during the Exodus (circumcision was set back into practice after Moses's death, in Gilgal) and Moses was opposed to his son's circumcision, were their main arguments (Encyclopedia Judaica. Keter publishing house limited; 1972. t. V, p. 571).

Previous to Moses, worshipers of the masculine phallus and contemptuous of the feminine one, the Egyptians practiced the mutilation of the specific organs of autosexuality of girls and boys, and had imposed it on the Jews as a token of slavery.

Having freed the Jews, Moses could not tolerate that some would perpetuate the barbarous pagan custom. Thinking that the denudation of the glans makes the phallus a fetish and an idol, and that a "jealous" God cannot admit idolatry of the phallus, he denounces chapter 17 of the Book of Genesis through the Second Commandment.

Deeming circumcision an attempt against the child ("a barbarous and bleeding rite" [quoted by the Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme. Paris: Editions du cerf; 1993. p. 433]) and that the custom isolates the Jews, Rabbi Abraham Geiger and his movement decided to follow Moses and abandon circumcision.

This provoked an outcry in the Jewish community, the rabbinical authorities answered their arguments and, at the end of twenty years, the Reform rabbis came back to circumcision. But the "heresy" gained the USA where several rabbis practice a non mutilating ceremony of nomination.

The reformists had perfectly understood that Moses was opposed to circumcision but, unfortunately, they had not made our discovery of the falsification of the meaning of the Second Commandment by the orthodox reading, from antiquity until now. This falsification hides that this commandment forbids circumcision, through interpreting the Biblical text:

"For I, the Eternal, your God, I am a jealous God, who punish the crime of fathers upon children up to the third and fourth generation..." (Exodus, 20: 5, literal translation of the French Rabbinate translation [Paris: Les éditions Colbo; 1966]), as if it said: "… who punish children for the crimes of fathers…", which it does not;

- first, God does not express himself in an ambiguous way; if the sentence had the meaning given by the rabbis, its construction would have been the one above,

- second, the text does not say "the crimes" but "the crime", which involves a definite, well-known crime upon children, which can only be sexual mutilation,

- third, asserting that God punishes children for the crimes of fathers, the orthodox interpretation gives the term "jealous" the aberrant meaning of suspicious till the injustice of condemning children and grand-children irresponsible of paternal criminality. This is extreme and unlikely,

- fourthly, it would illogically make the Second Commandment redundant with the Sixth: "Thou shall not kill",

- fifthly, at the contrary, the Second Commandment brings out mutilator paedo-sexual criminality as very particularly reprehensible. Moses was aware of the gravity of crimes striking a whole part of the population (children). Considering sexual mutilation as crime against creation (humanity), through which man usurps God's place, he puts it apart from ordinary crime. God (The Koran) did not prescribe circumcision to Mohamed. At the contrary, The Koran (30: 30 and 4: 118-119) shares this both theological and humanitarian argument of respect of the physical integrity, dignity, privacy and modesty of the child,

- sixthly and consequently, for the first time in history, an imprescriptible penalty strikes the elderly years after their crime,

- seventhly, since the alleged punishment of criminality in general would tyrannically and blindly extend to the whole family, why does it abate at the fourth generation rather than apply to all descendants? On the other hand, it is only natural that the punishment of circumcising criminals must stop with great-grandfathers; beyond them, it's true, there is nobody alive to punish,

- eighthly, this interpretation is confirmed by the expression "a jealous God", which simply mean jealous of his own creation that man may not alter,

At last, just a few lines below the 2nd Commandment, the Bible enlightens it saying: "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: 21-22).

Therefore God - or Moses - did not wrongly word the Second Commandment. The rabbis – very likely deliberately – did ill interpret it through introducing a nonexistent double meaning, in order to conceal that "the crime of fathers" is sexual mutilation perpetrated upon children.

We owe the great Jewish liberator and legislator, enemy of slavery and barbarity, the invention, against infantile sexual mutilation, of the juridical concept of crime against humanity, with penalty out of the statute of limitations.

You can write to Sigismond at oldsigismund@hotmail.com

You can also visit groups.msn.com/circabolition

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