A deadly ritual — Religious Child Maltreatment

Thanks to Rob Robinson over at The Free World Project for the heads up.

If you want to understand just how religious authoritarianism harms children, look no further than the actions of a powerful group of rabbis in New York known as Agudath Israel. AI is a Jewish communal organization that represents the most conservative Jewish believers, Haredi or ultra-Orthodox Jews.

These rabbis are seeking to sue the City of New York after the health department announced it would adopt a measure that requires parents to sign a written consent form warning them of the dangers of a circumcision ritual called metzitzah b’peh. (The policy was just passed.) If you have not heard of metzitzah b’peh, brace yourself: It involves the sucking of the bleeding penis by the circumcising rabbi or mohel.

The practice of metzitzah b’peh was added to the Jewish circumcision ritual known as brit milah around 500 CE. Originally, it was believed to prevent infection by drawing blood from the wound. Fast forward to today and you find that Haredim commonly practice metzitzah b’peh, and authorities allow it. This is confounding because in just about every other segment of society, such an act would be considered sexual abuse. What’s more, the ritual has led to babies dying or suffering brain damage after contracting the herpes simplex I virus.

Neonatal herpes infections of all kinds are nearly always fatal in infants. An investigation by the New York City Board of Health found that, in the last decade, an average of one baby per year who underwent metzitzah b’peh contracted the virus. Two of the infants died, and two suffered brain damage.

“This is a ritual. . . that’s come down through the ages, and now it has met modern science,” the chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University told ABC News. “It’s certainly not something any of us recommend in the modern infection-control era,” he said.

A deadly ritual — Religious Child Maltreatment