Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender & Covenant in Judaism

by Shaye J.D. Cohen

Why aren't Jewish women circumcised? This improbable question, first advanced by anti-Jewish Christian polemicists, is the point of departure for this wide-ranging exploration of gender and Jewishness in Jewish thought. With a lively command of a wide range of Jewish sources―from the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholars―Shaye J. D. Cohen considers the varied responses to this provocative question and in the process provides the fullest cultural history of Jewish circumcision available.

Genres: Nonfiction, Judaism

336 pages, Hardcover

First published August 7, 2005

About the author

Shaye J. D. Cohen is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Ancient History, with distinction, from Columbia University in 1975. He is also an ordained rabbi, and for many years was the Dean of the Graduate School and Shenkman Professor of Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Before arriving at Harvard in July 2001, he was for ten years the Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. The focus of Cohen's research is the boundary between Jews and gentiles and between Judaism and its surrounding culture. He is also a published authority on Jewish reactions to Hellenism and to Christianity.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

He makes a great case throughout the book for why circumcision is unnecessary in Judaism but then attempts to justify it by comparing hysterectomies with circumcision.

[Nasrikhné AK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointingly, seems like he is a supporter of Jewish circumcision. I liked the book overall though, I felt like his focus was overwhelmingly on European Jews & just Europe in general, so I felt like the book largely excludes Jews in the Islamic lands from its history, but overall a great book. He has a sense of humour, and a line from the book made me laugh. He's overall neutral, and his support of Jewish circumcision only comes out a bit in the conclusion of the conclusion, but otherwise, it's a great book, I found it a fun read.

He examines many philosophers, thinkers, and theologians throughout the centuries & his notes are also something to not miss, his notes were very informative, they aren't usually just citations but rather provide extra information about the subject.

He has a pro-Jewish bias I felt like, for example, he used sarcasm in a line to mock a Christian theologian's argument but I found a Jewish theologian's argument to be equally stupid yet he didn't mock the Jewish theologian's argument via sarcasm like he did with the Christian's. Regarding his defense of Jewish circumcision, to talk about its health benefits, he seems to have used personal stories on a website as his source (that website is no longer accessible, however I got the impression from the citation that they were personal stories). He also compared cutting off the foreskin of male babies due to their parents' beliefs, and thus the baby obviously having the procedure done against its consent, to adult females in the US consensually choosing to remove their uterus, this comparison is obviously very puzzling due to its "excellence".

Furthermore, I felt like chapters 3 & 4 were completely useless to the question of why Judaism doesn't also prescribe female circumcision, but rather it just explores the reaction to Judaism prescribing male but not female circumcision, and chapters 7 & 8 I felt like were also not very relevant to the question due to those being later developments.

I also don't like that he uses modern Hebrew transliteration for the Hebrew terms, which makes it a bit hard to find the Hebrew spelling of the terms (compare מִן 'from' vs מִין 'heretic', both, in modern Hebrew, are 'min', but the latter is usually transliterated as 'mīn' in Biblical Hebrew), likewise it was hard to figure out the spelling of 'gaon' because of the way it's pronounced in modern Hebrew making it a bit hard to find the spelling in Hebrew if you don't know the spelling, whereas this problem doesn't exist using Biblical Hebrew transliteration. Likewise, שחת & שחט are pronounced the same in modern Hebrew, but weren't in Biblical Hebrew, and so if you don't know the word he's referring to, then you find it hard to know which word is a common synonym of Gehenna in rabbinic literature, as language can go in multiple different ways, and so the obvious answer isn't always obvious.

I found the jabs against Hoffman in the 1st chapter's notes to be funny.

Overall, I felt it was a pretty good overview of the material & I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, I would recommend it to someone who wishes to know in quite a bit of detail as to why Judaism prescribes only 1 genital set to be harmed & not both genital sets.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Cohen is pretty explicitly a defender of penile circumcision—and actively claims that "female circumcision" always means excision if not infibulation to argue that there is no comparison between the two procedures—this is quite interesting as an academic history of Jewish circumcision and the history of Jewish understandings of its religious and gendered meanings.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough, well-annotated history. Useful for interested persons of all faiths (or none), but of particular usefulness to those concerned with the history of Jewish and Christian confrontation before the 20th century.