Howdy Knights. Just stumbled across this here. It's about kosher schlongtwaddlin - on dead tykes. One has to wonder: does the More-hell also fellate the dead baby's penis just like he does the live ones? What is the position of the Tar-mud on this critical issue? Inquirin heebs - and utterly shocked rednecks - is all eager to find out.

Is it bad to circumcise a dead baby?

cached from ilxor.com which is a copy of the nytimes article for which you must register to read

January 24, 2011
A Young Life Passes, and a Ritual of Birth Begins
By MARK S. LITWIN, M.D.

My hands trembled as I grasped the tiny sleeve of skin with my forceps and separated it from his pale, still penis. He lay weirdly motionless on a utility table, which I had draped with a slate-blue operating-room towel.

A few feet away, his young parents sat quietly wrapped in each other’s arms. Several family members and friends stood silently around the periphery of the small hospital room, whose gray-green walls enveloped us dispassionately.

The pregnancy had been uneventful. A month before the due date I had received a familiar, reluctant, yet eager call about arranging a bris, the ritual Jewish circumcision performed on the eighth day of life. The expectant parents promised to call back after delivery to confirm the date and time so they could order the deli platters.

Like many parents nowadays, this couple preferred a medical circumcision — respectful of religious tradition but performed by a physician, with local anesthesia and sterile technique easing the anxiety associated with an old-fashioned bris on a kitchen counter. This is where I came in.

As a urologic oncologist, I ordinarily focus on those afflicted with cancer, often at life’s end. So 17 years ago, I became a certified mohel, hoping to marry my surgical skills and my knack for calming nerves with the hopeful optimism of growing families. A bris provides an intimate and reinvigorating view of life’s beginning.

The ninth month passed, but the happy call never came. A week after the mother’s due date, I learned, the fetus’s heart rate had slowed alarmingly and he was delivered by emergency Caesarean section. Born limp and gasping, he was resuscitated and whisked to the neonatal intensive care unit.

But three days of 21st-century medical heroism failed to provide even a glimmer of hope. A flat electroencephalogram confirmed the dire prognosis. His brief life was waning.

The mother’s best friend called me with the news.

“They’d still like you to perform a bris but don’t want to put him through any unnecessary pain,” she said. “Can you do it after he dies?”

I could, it seemed. My rabbi assured me that Jewish tradition allows for such circumstances. The ceremony is different, of course — there’s no talk of bar mitzvah or marriage, and the prayer for healing is redirected at the grieving family. A post-mortem circumcision allows a moment of normality before the immense loss must be confronted. The rabbi taught me what to say to make the ceremony kosher: the Hebrew phrase “Ani hu ha’Elohim” (loosely translated as “Above all else, there is God”), repeated seven times.

The hospital staff removed the baby from the ventilator, took out the intravenous lines, swaddled him and handed him to his parents. They were led to the hospital room, where they sat gently cradling their warm newborn son for just an hour as pink faded to gray.

Then, like a candle suddenly extinguished by a gust of wind, life left. A sad emptiness remained, as if the air were pierced by a pungent, thin plume of black smoke, rising and quickly dissipating. He was gone. No future, only a past.

Explaining to those now gathered the meaning of what we were to witness, I began the procedure I had done a thousand times. I took the baby from his father, unwrapped his soft blanket and gently laid him on the utility table. But today there were no squirming legs, no lidocaine injection, no smiling grandparents recalling their own son’s bris a generation ago. Just a drop of purple blood.

I must have fumbled with the instruments a little too long. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Doc,” the young father called out, breaking the tension that had gripped the room. Cool relief wafted through in quiet chuckles.

Actually it does, I thought — this one has to be extra perfect. This was their only unsullied moment with him, all they might remember. With no life ahead to pin dreams on, he had paused for one intense and ephemeral instant before being wrapped in the ancient tradition of his ancestors.

“Ani hu ha’Elohim...Ani hu ha’Elohim... .” I barely recognized my own voice echoing the incantation, the words punctuated by muffled sobs in the room. As I faltered, I drew strength directly from the young parents. Lost as they must have felt, their faces remained strangely calm. I could feel their approval, their encouragement, their stamina. In turn, I reflected it to support them. I was the instrument, and they allowed no fumble. Amen.

Two years later they called again: “We’re having a boy, and we’d like you to do the bris.” The pregnancy had been uneventful. I melted into my chair, almost overcome with dual emotions. My heart throbbed with the memory of their pain, yet that pain was tempered with their resolution and new enthusiasm. It felt like water of such extreme temperature that it could be either hot or cold.

A month after that, we had a happily pedestrian conversation about date and time. Eight days later, the spring sun radiated through a brilliant blue sky into their home. The smells of brewed coffee, warm bagels and fresh lox overlay the chatter of arriving guests. Suffused with morning light, the living room slowly filled with each of the previous attendees. Wearing giddy smiles and energized with new hopes and dreams, the young parents again handed me their newborn son.

Meet the kosher necrophiliac and author of above article

Dr. Mark S. Litwin is chief of urology at UCLA. This means he makes sure the maximum number of boys will be mutilated under his tenure, and that no child - dead or alive - is safe. This necrophiliac who worships the devil and vows to his sin-agog that he'll never keep his word with a goy, gives us delightful lectures us on ethics. He informs us happily that if you find a random stone in your ballsack, he can help you cut it off.

A curious reader asks to confirm the above article's assertions, and the tarmudic womb-man is-perv answers "Yes! We chosen people are certainly allowed to sexually mutilate dead babies." Not to make ya lose your lunch, but such is the art of hebronics:

Ask the Expert: Post Mortem Bris

Do we circumcise a baby who died before he was eight days old?

www.myjewishlearning.com/ask_the_expert...Post_Mortem_Bris.shtml

Question: I recently read this New York Times article about a circumcision for a dead baby boy, and it seemed strange to me. Is there really a custom of circumcising babies that are no longer living? Is there any liturgy for such a circumcision?

Answer: I read the same article, Marsha, and I had a few questions myself, so I did some digging to find out the history of this practice.

The busiest morehell in jewyork, Cantor Sherman, isn't sure if slicing up the penises of dead babies is wrong

First, I consulted with my go-to mohel, Cantor Philip Sherman, who has been called "the busiest mohel in New York," and asked what he knows about all this. He said, "From a traditional halakhic (Jewish legal) perspective, this is a very problematic issue and there are many who disagree with it. To answer your question (if it is done), there is usually nothing recited other than giving the child a Jewish name. I have never heard of anyone reciting the verse that this doctor recited but there may be many customs and/or superstitions surrounding this practice."

That was a good starting point, but I wanted to know more about what made this such a problematic issue. I turned to a book called Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism by Shaye J.D. Cohen, a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. In his book, Cohen examines the history of circumcision after death. He cites a midrash that claims that all circumcised men make it into the World to Come, and escape Gehenna. But what of infants who die before they can be circumcised? The midrash explains that God removes the foreskin of these baby boys, which seems to imply that there is no need for circumcising a baby who has died before he could have his brit milah, because God will do it for him.

Later, in the 9th century, R. Nahshon Gaon of Babylon wrote that it was the practice of his community to circumcise boys who had died before their eighth day at the graveside, without any blessing. These boys were given Hebrew names, "so that when mercy is shown on him in heaven, and the dead are resurrected, there will be knowledge in that child and he will discern his father."

Cohen then cites Rashi, an eleventh century rabbi and commentator from France, who wrote a letter to some elders in Rome asking whether or not it was appropriate to circumcise infants who died before they could have their brit milah. The response he received seems to contradict itself, saying both that it doesn't accomplish anything, but is alright, and that it's prohibited. Cohen believes that the prohibition was added by a later redactor.

Ibn Ezra, another eleventh century rabbi and commentator, opposed the custom of circumcising the dead, and wrote that there was no concern that someone who was buried with their foreskin would be prohibited from entering the World to Come. But apparently the custom was prevalent enough, that in the 16th century Rabbi Joseph Caro included it in his legal code the Shulhan Arukh, writing decisively that an infant who dies before his eighth day should be circumcised without a blessing at the graveside, and given a name. (Yoreh Deah 263)

In the article you and I both read, the mohel writes that his rabbi told him to say "Ani hu haElohim" seven times in order to make the ceremony kosher, and that "Ani hu haElohim" is loosely translated as "Above all else, there is God." All of that seems suspect to me. I wasn't able to find anything about liturgy for a post-mortem circumcision, but the words Ani hu HaElohim mean "I is God" and appear nowhere else in the Bible or in any liturgy that I've found (which isn’t surprising since “I is God” is grammatically problematic). I suspect that he was actually told to say "Adonai hu HaElohim" which means "Adonai is God." This phrase is said seven times at the very end of Yom Kippur, right before we blow the shofar to end the holiday. It makes a lot more sense for that to be the phrase said at a post-mortem bris, but Cantor Sherman had never heard of any liturgy at all for this ritual, so it's hard to know for sure.

So it seems that yes, there is a legal precedent for circumcising a baby boy who dies before he can have his brit milah, but it might be helpful to know that there has been a fair amount of back-and-forth about this in Jewish legal literature.

White man reads above article and doubts it is real

Richard H. responds to above article with a facebook comment: Is this a serious post?