Left Behinds: Lil' Baby Sexpert

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Lil' Baby Sexpert

This post is totally gratuitous and gross. Be warned.

Ready?

Okay, I warned you.

Metzitzah b'peh (Hebrew for "oral suction") is a practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, whereby the blood resulting from an infant circumcision is orally sucked up by the person doing the circumcising. This practice, claims the City Department of Health, potentially exposes infants to herpes and has in fact fatally infected at least one child. In consequence, the NYC DoH is seeking to impose strict limits, up to a ban, on the practice, while Hassidic groups are seeking an accommodation with the less assertive (and politically malleable) State Department of Health.

Two reasons I thought it would be a good idea to blog about rabbis sucking on itty bitty bloody baby dongs:

1) Left Behinds is (or at least should be) your expert center on all things foreskin.

2) While I am admittedly no doctrinal authority, I am a Jew, and the religious argument for maintaining this practice is murky to me. I always thought that the basic Jewish approach was not to follow any laws that pose a risk to health. If you are sick, for example, you are not supposed to observe fasts. How is this different?

4 Comments:

At 11:51 PM, Antid Oto said…

But you don't have to have an active sore to transmit herpes, far from it.
At 4:56 PM, Solomon Grundy said…

Heh, that answer is so hermeneutic, AO. It's like, "I'm going to ignore the main point and focus on the minutia of the complex laws as I choose to interpret them." You're becoming a Talmudic scholar before my very eyes...
At 5:16 PM, Antid Oto said…

I missed the main point? I thought it was that you could avoid the risk to health by not sucking on baby penis if you have a sore, and that therefore you can suck on baby penis otherwise. What did I miss?
At 5:52 PM, Solomon Grundy said…

You are so right. Suck away, rebbe.

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Left Behinds

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Lil' Baby Sexpert

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