While circumcision has been recently re-legalized for Jews in Germany, Goldschmidt told the Post, challenges still remain in that country.
A recent circumcision ceremony conducted by a hassidic rabbi in Berlin – during which he performed a controversial custom in which blood is orally suctioned from the wound – threatened to reopen the debate regarding circumcision, he said.
The issue of circumcision is an existential one for German Jews, Goldschmidt said he told German officials.
“If brit mila is going to be prohibited in Germany, this is the end of the Jewish community here,” he explained.
“It means that even if a German citizen is going to take his child to Israel or Belgium to do brit mila, according to the law these parents are going to be considered criminals.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel “accepted” the Jewish community’s arguments and pushed for decriminalization of the practice, Goldschmidt said. She will be receiving the 2013 Lord Jakobovits Prize of European Jewry on May 22 in the Great Synagogue of Europe, in Brussels.
Jerusalem Post
