Franz Kafka war bei der Zirkumzision seines Neffens anwesend und machte sich anschließend Gedanken über "Beschneidung". Er sah sie als "obsolet" an und war der Meinung, dass das keine Zukunft hätte.
Leider hat er sich da geirrt!Kafka schrieb:
It is so indisputable that these religious forms which have reached their
final end have merely a historical character, even as they are practiced
today, that only a short time was needed this very morning to interest
the people present in the obsolete custom of circumcision and its half-sung
prayers by describing it to them as something out of history.
Philp Weiss schrieb:
Anyone who's been to a circumcision can tell you that the exact same thing happens today, 100 years later. Only a couple of people in the room know exactly what is going on. Not everyone knows the prayers, people are riveted and then bored, and have little patience for the historical explanations. Someone in the corner argues about whether it is healthful or not. At bottom–sorry–it is really a ritual about difference. And my wife–and I imagine countless other gentiles married to Jews, and many of them with a son at stake–believe that it's barbaric, and about "style" not health; and my marriage is the reason that Dershowitz wrote a whole book called The Vanishing American Jew.
So circumcision/Jewish ritual seems as obsolete today as it did to Kafka. He was wrong. Are we?
Vorhaut hat Vorteile. Sonst gäbe es sie nicht.