NEW YORK — Most Jews aren’t flinching at the medical establishment’s most recent findings on circumcision.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending for the first time that pain relief, such as local anesthetics, be provided to infants being circumcised.
The group, which issued its latest policy statement on circumcision this week, also found the procedure’s potential health benefits are “not significant enough” to recommend the routine circumcision of newborns.
But rabbis and mohels, who perform Jewish circumcisions, alike say the report — which reflects 40 years of medical research — will have little effect on the 4,000-year-old tradition of brit milah, the circumcision ceremony by which Jewish males are accepted into the community.
“Obviously we don’t recommend circumcision for medical reasons, but for religious reasons,” said Ismar Schorsch, the chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
“It is a sign of the bond between Israel and God, a sign of Jewish identity,” he said. “And it will continue to remain a rite of passage for Jews as long as there is an organized Jewish community.”
The covenant of circumcision, first commanded by God to Abraham, is still followed by the majority of Jews around the world.
But some Jewish parents have opted to forgo what they see as a barbaric custom.
It is precisely the pain of circumcision that is at the center of the debate over the necessity of the brit milah, literally the “covenant of circumcision.”
Opponents argue that circumcision inflicts permanent physical and psychological damage.
Some 60 percent of all newborn males in the United States are circumcised, as are 48 percent in Canada, according to statistics quoted in the academy’s report — down from a peak of 90 percent in the 1960s.
Until recently most circumcisions in hospitals were performed without anesthesia. The practice among mohels varies considerably both with regard to technique and the level of pain relief provided.
The academy’s policy statement cites new evidence showing that newborn circumcised without analgesia experience “pain and stress.”
But this finding is no surprise to most Jews.
“Suddenly now, pain is a new medical condition?” asked Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a mohel and professor of medical ethics at Yeshiva University in New York.
“Pain has been with us from the time of Adam and Eve.”
Tendler also noted that the academy had issued a report in 1993 on the effectiveness of lidocaine as a topical analgesic for use during circumcision.
Among the most widely lauded benefits of circumcision are reduced incidences of urinary tract infections, penile cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
The new report, which appears in the March issue of Pediatrics, indicates that while uncircumcised males are more likely to develop urinary tract infections during the first year of life, the risk is low — about 1 percent.
“There are some medical benefits to circumcision,” said Dr. George Kaplan, a San Diego-based pediatric urologist and member of the task force that prepared the latest report. But “the benefits are not so compelling that the academy feels that it should recommend routine circumcision for everyone.”
Those who oppose circumcision question why a child’s entry into the Jewish faith requires pain and bloodshed.
“I’m not willing to harm my son just for religious practices,” said Andrew Reiver of Philadelphia, the father of a 3-year-old uncircumcised son and a volunteer counselor for the National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males, one of a growing number of national organizations that oppose circumcision.
But for most Jews, what Schorsch calls the “mark of unique distinction” is essential to the Jewish male identity.
“The bond of circumcision, besides being a covenant with God, is a bond with every other Jew,” Tendler said.
Tendler said he has insisted for a decade that topical analgesics be used during the circumcisions he has performed or witnessed.
“God gave us the duty to master nature and to improve the lot of mankind,” he said. “And if it’s possible” to perform circumcision “under anesthesia, why not?”