Kulturkampf

[TylenolJones]

Tony should’ve stayed in his fucking lane. 

My Adult Circumcision
How I made the cut for my new religion

I understand the world doesn’t usually think much about adult male circumcision. 

I get all this (and so much more). And yet as someone who knows the sting of this particular ritual—who volunteered for it, in fact, and signed his own check to the part-time reaper who did the job—I have to say: It’s not so bad. There’s no need for any of us to go on treating our junk like our father-in-law’s scratch-free Ferrari. It’s much tougher than you think.

Medically speaking, I was already circumcised, along with most of the other babies born in America in the Eighties. But that’s no good for God. I needed a hatafat dam brit: a drawing of blood. To remain uncut, I was told, is to remain spiritually cut off from the Jewish people. That’s the idea of the “covenant.”

When the mohel arrived, he looked, I’m sorry to say, like Danny Devito in curls. We stood in silence. I opened my towel. Hello, groin. He opened a shaving bag with glinting instruments. Hello, knife. My mohel produced a pen-sized lance, which he wielded ever so gently, like Lady Grantham with a paring knife. He sliced, sliced, squeezed, dripped, and was done. The whole transaction was over in seconds, long before I could scream, or faint, or decide if I liked it.

Instead I felt the way I remember feeling as a child when, rising early, I could watch light fill the woods behind my house, revealing nothing at all scary. When the mohel finally spoke, he spoke in Hebrew and I couldn’t make out a word of it. But I had the feeling that the substance of his words was important and that if I could understand him I would be in the possession of something profound, a message from God: It’s only a penis.

https://newrepublic.com/article/117322/adult-circumcision-why-i-made-cut-judaism