The memes of war

by Brian on December 3, 2023

in In the News,War in Gaza

Since the war to eradicate Hamas in the Gaza Strip began, I’ve been collecting social media memes – those pithy, sometimes insightful, often bleakly humorous images or text messages shared by supporters of the war effort. 

Here are some of the most memorable memes I’ve saved. 

  • A meme from Ziggy Marley, son of Bob Marley, subverted the cynical pro-Palestinian narrative quite effectively. He posted, “Free Gaza.” That doesn’t sound so favorable until you read the second line: “From Hamas.”
From Ziggy Marley’s Facebook page
  • Superimposed on an image of the Twin Towers in flames, the caption reads: “Nobody said on 9/11, ‘I support both sides.’”

Credit: yuvyuv_10
  • Another Al-Qaeda theme: “Imagine being an American post-9/11 but instead of mourning your people, you are busy convincing the world that the twin towers actually existed, the airplanes literally crashed into them, that actual people were jumping down. This is how I feel wandering around these days,” writes Michael Sutton.
  • Hollywood has been a mixed bag when it comes to supporting Israel at this precarious moment, but kol hakavod to Jewish comedian Amy Schumer Her post, with text overlaid on a Star of David, reads: “First they came for LGBTQ. And I stood up, because love is love. Then they came for immigrants, and I stood up because families belong together. Then they came for the Black community, and I stood up because Black Lives Matter. Then they came for me, but I stood alone, because I am a Jew.”

Posted on Amy Schumer’s FB page
  • Israeli copywriter Matan Unger created a series of dark “Where’s Waldo?” parodies replete with “cute” Waldo-like images – except here they’re of heavily-armed Hamas terrorists and their bombs, missiles and rifles. Can you spot the hostages? I didn’t think so.
Source: Matan Unger
  • One of the most shared images is from a “Queers for Palestine” rally. It’s juxtaposed with a picture of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The latter reads “Chickens for KFC.” In both cases, no one’s getting out alive.

  • If you haven’t seen the Eretz Nehederet (Israel’s version of Saturday Night Live) parody of pro-Hamas students in the U.S. at fictional “Columbia Untisemity,” it’s in English and well worth its three-minute length for this brilliant rationalization: Midway, one of the genocide-loving students proudly declares, “I’m not antisemitic. I’m racist fluid.”

Screen grab from YouTube
  • Columbia Untisemity competes with Harvard for moral depravity. A parody of a university admissions application lists as its last essay question, “Describe one life-challenge you have encountered and explain why it’s Israel’s fault.”
  • When Gaza lost telecommunications, an image of an IT call center operator prompted a wry chuckle. “Gaza: My Internet is not working.” “Service provider: Did you try releasing the hostages?”
  • Harry Potter fans might enjoy this meme: Harry is pointing his wand at Voldemort while his faculty nemesis, Prof. Umbridge, interrupts his efforts, holding a large clipboard. “Now, Mr. Potter, exactly how much humanitarian aid are you currently offering to the non-terrorist organization known as the ‘Death Eaters?’”
  • Ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, known for his antisemitic comments, gets the pro-Israel meme treatment in “alternative” cover to the band’s classic album Dark Side of the Moon featuring a Star of David at its center.

Credit: Daniel Bnaya and Guy Alkabets
  • Sometimes simplicity is the best. One meme I found is just a plain white page with text reading: “Verify that you’re human” with a captcha checkbox: “I support Israel.” An alternate version making its way around social media: “You don’t have to be Jewish. You just have to be human.” 
  • Some of the memes went really dark. “I can’t explain how it feels to hear people worldwide cheering for your extermination” was shared by my daughter who lived in Sderot for four years. Her PTSD is triggered with every new siren. The same sentiment was expressed in a separate meme: “I refuse to coexist with people who want to behead me.”
  • Martin Luther King Jr. quipped, “I agree with Dante that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.”
  • Albert Einstein had a similar quote: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
  • From the Center for Jewish Impact: “If we sat shiva for every Israeli killed on October 7, we would sit for 27 years.”
  • A simple green “population” sign for Kibbutz Nir Oz hits home. “Population October 7: 450. Population October 8: 190.”

Design by: Eyal Ofer

  • The conflict explained in a nutshell. Hamas: “We want a ceasefire.” Israel: “I thought you wanted to kill us all and take over all the land?” Hamas: “We do want to kill you and take all your land.” Israel: “But I thought you wanted a ceasefire.” Hamas: “Correct. We want to kill all of you and take all of your land, but we also want you to stop fighting back.”
  • Finally, for those with the bandwidth to still worry about one’s choice of pronouns in a time of war, Sarah Tuttle-Singer has hers. “I identify as Jewish, and my pronoun is Jew.”

Memes may seem trivial, but we know from anti-Zionist chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” how they can rile people up. Here’s one more: “Together we will win.”

Please feel free to share your own memorable memes.

I first wrote about the Memes of War for The Jerusalem Post.

Images from social media. Credits shown in captions.

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Betrayal

by Brian on November 19, 2023

in In the News,Politics,The Old Country,War in Gaza

“Betrayal.” That’s how Shimrit Meir, who served as a senior advisor to prime minister Naftali Bennett, described her feelings following the surge of antisemitic speeches, letters, marches and violence that has erupted around the world in the aftermath of the October 7 “Black Sabbath” attack in Israel.

Shimrit Meir

Meir, who was interviewed on the Unholy: Two Jews on the News podcast, was under no illusions that the empathy towards Israel displayed by the world immediately following Hamas’s atrocities would last once the IDF began pounding the Gaza Strip.

Still, she didn’t expect the embrace to be so brief.

Hamas’s attack was, after all, an attack unlike any other, with the terrorists documenting their pogrom on cell phones and GoPros and uploading it to the Internet in real time. If the Nazis had modern technology, I’m not sure they would have the audacity to live stream their atrocities; they worked hard to conceal their genocide. 

But there’s no denying what Hamas perpetrated on Simchat Torah – it’s all out there for anyone with a strong stomach to see.

But deny it is exactly what has been happening.

From Queen Rania of Jordan, who told CNN there’s “no evidence” that Hamas murdered babies and children, to pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S. and Europe who place the blame entirely on the Israeli side. 

A poll conducted by CAPS/Harris found that 32% of young adults 18-to-24-years-old do not believe Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis. Nearly half of the same age group remain convinced that it was an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Ahli Hospital, despite evidence from multiple sources pointing to a misfired rocket from Gaza itself.

The result has been quick and heartbreaking: On campuses across the U.S., Jews are feeling unsafe.

Israeli poet Maya Tenet Dayan was in San Diego for a teaching residency. 

“I don’t like being an Israeli in California right now,” she wrote in Haaretz. “I feel an existential threat. I’m frightened to say where I come from. I’m frightened that someone will hear my children speaking Hebrew in the street. Most of the time, I’m helpless, because how do you even begin to explain? I talk with people who have no idea where Israel is on the map yet their opinion on it is unshakable.”

“What shocked me,” political commentator Andrew Sullivan added, “was the vivid and genuine expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers — even as their atrocities were in front of our eyes. That requires real ideological commitment, to repress every human impulse of empathy.”

What has happened to humanity’s moral compass? Why is it so hard for people to condemn outright evil when it comes to the Jews, to say clearly, as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris did, “There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.”

The explanation lies in “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” Shany Mor, a lecturer at Reichman University in Herzliya, wrote in The Wall Street Journal

Cognitive dissonance occurs when what one experiences in the real-world conflicts with a long-held internal belief. It’s unpleasant, so people try to minimize it, Mor explained.

Cognitive dissonance reduction, then, is “the process by which people reconcile new information that contradicts their firmly held priors. The result is an ostensibly coherent system of thought.”

By applying cognitive dissonance reduction, politicians, journalists and everyday antisemites are able to ignore the fact “that Hamas’s belligerence is the cause [not the consequence] of Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” Mor wrote.

So, if missiles are being fired and innocent civilians are abducted, if Israel is, according to anti-Zionist activists, the epitome of evil, then the attacks must be Israel’s fault, not the Palestinians’, who are denied even a modicum of agency.

“Hamas’s gruesome attack poses a threat to this worldview, and the only way to resolve it is by heightening Israel’s imagined malevolence. The terrorist atrocities don’t trigger a recoiling from the cause in whose name they were carried out; they lead to an even greater revulsion at the victim,” Mor explained.

Moreover, Mor continued, “If the only thing that can explain a Palestinian action is Israeli ‘evil,’ then Israel’s opponents have to imagine a level of Jewish evil commensurate with what Hamas did—shooting children in front of their parents, setting houses on fire with residents inside, raping women.

When it is forbidden to criticize murderers or the society that created them, Mor concluded, “all that is left is to defame the victims.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid wants to ask the terrorist-supporting global far-left, “Do your feelings exempt you from knowing the facts? Do you know, for example, that Hamas doesn’t support a two-state solution? They don’t even want to free Palestine. And what about LGBT people? Do you really not care that the people you’re supporting hang gays?”

Logic, it seems, is unable to counter the intense urgency to reduce cognitive dissonance. 

Shalom Hartman Institute fellow Dr. Micah Goodman says that Israelis’ burning desire for acceptance helps fuel the problem. 

“We want love and we want fear,” Goodman explained. “We want love from the West. We want fear from the Middle East” to restore deterrence against our enemies. 

The problem is that it’s a zero-sum game. “Everything that we are going to do to restore the fear is going to erode the love,” Goodman noted.

What will happen next? Will Israel prevail? Who will govern Gaza once Hamas is gone? Will this lead to a massive shake-up of the governments on both sides – and beyond? 

One thing that is, sadly, all too known is that the theme of Dara Horn’s latest bookThe World Loves Dead Jews, is no longer just a catchy title. It’s a reality we tried to ignore, one which we cannot – and should not – have to endure, and yet which the Jewish people, betrayed once again, will continue to bear for eternity.

I first wrote about my feelings of betrayal for The Jerusalem Post.

Image from Shimrit Meir’s profile on X.

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I don’t want to in any way trivialize the horrors of Hamas’s appalling pogrom on Simchat Torah. But as the initial shock recedes and the war proceeds apace, rockets remain a constant, whether from Gaza, Lebanon or further afield.

And, frankly, missiles are messing with my love life. 

True, the human sex drive is strong, but the fear of getting hot and heavy and then hearing the dreaded siren outside your window and having to hustle to get to the safe room – hopefully fully dressed if your shelter is a communal one rather than a private protected room inside your home – well, let’s just say it’s not exactly an aphrodisiac. And how do get in the mood when your mind is filled with thoughts of our soldiers on the front lines, our dead and kidnapped?

This is part of the “hidden” side of war that no one wants to talk about but that’s on everyone’s minds – the way actions that would have seemed mundane on October 6 are now triggers for anxiety. 

Here are ten ordinary activities that are now anything but.

  1. Taking a shower. Anything that involves taking your clothes off is a risk these days. If a siren sounds while you’re under the water, do you rush out as fast as you can and head to the safe room in a towel? Or do you stay in the shower and hope that the statistics are with you. (“It couldn’t possibly hit my specific house.”) Are your showers shorter now than they used to? Who would have imagined we’d have to check the headlines before deciding if this is a safe window for bathing?
  2. Walking the dog. Our pets need us to care of their needs. But a stroll around the block could be interrupted by missiles. A leisurely walk is now punctuated with thoughts of “Where’s the closest shelter?” and “Could I duck into that building’s stairwell?” Our poor puppy has not been getting his usual exercise.
  3. Driving anywhere. Sometimes you have to go beyond your immediate neighborhood. In response, there are numerous “guides” (like this one) offering helpful instructions on what to do if you’re in your car and a siren sounds: Get as far away from your car as you can, crouch low near a building, embankment, or drainage ditch, and cover your head and face with your hands for 10 minutes. I think I’d rather just stay close to home and walk the dog.
  4. Going to sleep. What used to be a respite is now a source of fear. I get into bed and imagine sirens waking me in the middle of the night. Is it prudent to sleep in your clothes? What about socks? Shoes? I’ve had to double my cocktail of sleeping meds to get through this period, which makes me even more anxious: If I’m so drugged out, will I be able to make it to the shelter without stumbling?
  5. Sitting on the toilet. If, in the before-times, my biggest concern was “How long will I need to sit here for something to happen?” Now, it’s “How fast can I get this out?” This is how the mundane becomes ripe with the stench of fear. 
  6. Synagogue and simchas. Prior to October 7, the biggest question about attending synagogue was, “Should I wear a mask or not?” Now it’s, “Can all the people in shul fit into its tiny safe room if a missile is launched?” Similarly, when we were invited to a brit milah in friends’ backyard, the hosts cautioned there’s no shelter, so if any guests don’t feel comfortable, they shouldn’t come. 
  7. Eating. Do you accept a Shabbat invitation if the hosts have no protected space nearby? Is it safe to go out to eat (at the few restaurants that are still open), or should you order take-out? How do you time breakfast so, if there’s a siren, the granola won’t go soggy?
  8. Dental work. I have a dentist appointment in a few weeks. If the war’s not over by then, do I keep it? It’s just for a cleaning, but the photo my dentist posted to social media of a man in the midst of getting a cavity filled ensconced in the building’s shelter, suggests I may want to postpone.
  9. Reading the news. As an admitted news junkie, I read three to four publications regularly. That used to be a joy. No more. Reading the news before bed is a guarantee for nightmares. My wife, Jody, has eschewed reading the news at all; I decided not to look at pictures and video, but even text descriptions set my imagination on fire. Social media is no better – is that a picture of a loved one who was murdered? Is that an announcement of a funeral or shiva? Do I recognize the name?
  10. Locking down. This is not about missiles per se but it’s another casualty of war. We’ve long locked the front door when we turn in for the night. Now we’ve added the windows, the exit to the terrace, anything that faces the outside. Are terrorists going to rappel up our building and break into our apartment? Unlikely. But nothing these days runs according to logic. We used the peep hole on our front door even before the war; now it’s a matter of life or death. 

We all need to poop, eat, sleep, walk the dog, have sex and get our teeth cleaned – now all sources of stress. But we should be grateful for our good fortune: mundane annoyances are far better than the horrific alternative. 

I first lamented the loss of the mundane at The Jerusalem Post.

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

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Palestinian terrorists detonate a radioactive dirty bomb at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station. 

Israel responds by destroying the Al Aqsa Mosque. 

Iranian missiles whistle towards Israel and – miraculously – vanish midair. 

Leading Iranian clerics and politicians mysteriously die on the spot. 

And then there’s the Ark – the Holy Ark that tradition says carried the 10 commandments – which has been discovered under the Temple Mount and is…inexplicably floating.

Those are the broad plot strokes of the sci-fi novel Alpha and Omega, which I finished reading just hours before Hamas launched its shock pogrom on Israel this past Simchat Torah. 

Alpha and Omega was written by Harry Turtledove, dubbed “the master of alternative history” (he has another book set during World War II where Nazis, Jews, Americans and Russians all team up to fight a bigger enemy: aliens). 

While the narrative Turtledove presents is very different from our current reality, I nevertheless found myself at times mixing up what happened two weeks ago in southern Israel with Turtledove’s audacious fictional attacks.

As the events unfolded on that dreadful morning two weeks ago, I found myself hoping against hope that a supernatural presence would intercede, as in Turtledove’s magical realism.

Alas, there were no superheroes with capes to be found anywhere along the Gaza border in the excruciating first hours of the attack. Neither Iron Man nor Captain America have yet to swoop down from the skies to stop the bad guys with their super strength and superior technology. 

I’ve had superhero envy since I was a child when I was relentlessly bullied at school. After one particularly nasty incident, I ran to my father’s home office, which had a window looking out on our cul-de-sac, stretched my arms wide, and concentrated as hard as I could in order to change the relationship between me and my tormentors.

But it’s all just fantasy. There’s no way to turn back time, as Superman did to save Lois Lane by flying around the earth at super speed, or to “unsnap” Thanos’s decree from Avengers: Infinity War.

But there are heroes in southern Israel. They just aren’t supernatural.

Israeli civilians have stepped up in remarkable ways, volunteering to make, pack and deliver food and supplies to soldiers on the front; standing in line for hours to donate blood; traveling for days on multiple flights to get back to Israel to help. The anti-judicial coup protest groups transformed overnight into aid organizations, applying their proven logistics infrastructure to aid a country in its hour of need.

Among the stories of heroism (I’m writing early in the week, so more tales of bravery will undoubtedly come to light) is that of Rachel Adari from Ofakim who, along with her husband David, was held hostage for 15 hours and stalled the terrorists by serving Coke Zero and cookies and offering to teach them Hebrew in exchange for Arabic lessons.

The Adaris were eventually rescued; the terrorists in their home were killed.

Amir Tibon lives with his wife and daughters on Kibbutz Nahal Oz. When they heard machine gun fire, they barricaded themselves in their safe room. Terrorists were literally on the other side of the door. 

When power was cut, the Tibons had only their cellphones to light the space. After spending hours in the pitch black, a text message arrived: Amir’s father, Noam, a retired IDF general, wrote that he and Amir’s mother were on their way from Tel Aviv. 

While racing towards uncertainty, the elder Tibons encountered young people who had escaped the massacre at the outdoor rave. The Tibons picked them up and dropped them off at a location further north before turning around to head to Nahal Oz again. 

When Noam arrived at Nahal Oz, he quickly joined a firefight. Six terrorists were killed; dozens of kibbutzniks – including Amir and his family – were freed. 

Never have the words “Saba is here” sounded so sweet.

Meanwhile, at Kibbutz Nir Am, 25-year-old Inbal Lieberman, the community’s security coordinator, discerned that the sounds she was hearing from outside were not the usual missiles or incendiary balloons. She quickly unlocked the kibbutz armory, distributed guns, positioned her makeshift “staff” strategically around the kibbutz, and successfully repelled the incursion. 

A key decision: disconnecting the electricity from the kibbutz fence, which prevented the terrorists from getting in. 

Finally, there’s Nuseir Yassin, better known as “Nas Daily,” with some 21 million social media followers.

“Sometimes it takes a shock like this to see so clearly,” he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). 

What does he see clearly now?

“For the longest time, I struggled with my identity,” Yassin, 31, who grew up in the Lower Galilee town of Arraba, wrote. “Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word ‘Israel’ and call themselves ‘Palestinian’ only.”

That bifurcation didn’t make sense to Yassin. “So, I decided to mix the two and become a ‘Palestinian-Israeli.’

“But after recent events, I started to think. And think. And think. And then my thoughts turned to anger. I realized that if Israel were to be ‘invaded’ like that again, we would not be safe. To a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets.

“I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish: Israel.

“From today forward, I view myself as an ‘Israeli-Palestinian.’ Israeli first. Palestinian second.”

That took courage. Thank you, Nas.

And thank you to all the superheroes in our midst. You may not wear a cape or be able to stop missiles enroute, as Harry Turtledove envisioned, but you’re the real deal. 

I first wrote about superheroes in the Middle East for The Jerusalem Post.

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I’m circumcised. So are all the men in my family. We’re Jews. That’s what we do.

At Ilai’s brit milah in 2016

But have we made a terrible mistake?

There is a growing movement around the world for “foreskin regeneration.” An online survey conducted by foreskin “intactavist” Brendon Marotta asked 10,000 circumcised men if they’d be willing to have their circumcision reversed and how much they’d be ready to pay.

Some 40% of circumcised respondents said they wanted their foreskins back. Of these, 22.6% said they would be willing to pay over $20,000 for the procedure. 

Why would men be clamoring for a procedure in such a sensitive area? 

In a word: pleasure. 

The foreskin comprises a third of the skin of the penis – that’s an awful lot of satisfaction being lopped off.

But how would we know? Since most men are circumcised as infants, we don’t have any way to compare before and after. 

Unless you’re a Russian immigrant to Israel.

Circumcision was not as de rigueur in the Former Soviet Union as it is in Israel, where brit milah is a clear Torah commandment. But Russian immigrants who want to convert to Judaism will sometimes get circumcised later in life. 

An article in Haaretz quoted an immigrant named Yuri who was already sexually active before deciding to get circumcised.

“The feeling in the sexual contact was affected, it was wrecked,” Yuri laments. “There was a great deal less sensitivity and I needed a higher level of stimulation. I was 16 and I was an idiot.”

Haaretz’s Hilo Glazer interviewed 50 immigrants who were circumcised only as adults. 

“Seventy percent of them reported that their enjoyment of sexual relations had been adversely affected,” Glazer writes. “Twenty-two percent said there had been a significant decline, 10% said it was medium, and 38% characterized it as a minor drop.”

A survey published in Israel Hayom and conducted by Rosh Yehudi, the NGO that was at the center of controversy on Yom Kippur when it tried to hold gender-segregated prayer in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square, found that, while 47.8% of respondents said it was “imperative” to them that their children be circumcised, and an additional 25% said they considered it “important,” 8.4% said it was only “somewhat important” for their children to be circumcised, 11.5% said it “wasn’t important” to them, and 7.3% said they were “opposed” to circumcision.

For Jews considering non-circumcision, an organization called Bruchim promotes an alternative – the brit shalom – which focuses on the ceremony but without the cut. There’s also the website, Beyond the Bristhe 2005 book A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision by Richard Darby; Brendon Marotta’s documentary, American Circumcision; and Rabbi Haviva Ner-David’s novel, To Die in Secret, which highlights as a pivotal plot point a woman debating whether to circumcise her son.

Brit milah has not remained static over the years.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, the version of brit milah practiced today is quite different than what was originally delineated in the Bible. Rather, it is a response to the Greeks, who loathed circumcision.

To participate in Hellenistic sporting tournaments, one had to compete naked. Jews wanted to be a part of the games, too. Some Jewish athletes would systematically weigh their foreskins down with stones so they would appear still intact.

The rabbis, who were against assimilation of any kind, responded by mandating the removal of much more of the foreskin than the Torah originally intended. 

If brit milah was originally the ultimate impossible-to-fake “signal” of belonging to the Jewish tribe, circumcision later became more of a moral imperative. Maimonides wrote, for example, that the purpose of brit milah was to “reduce the pleasure of the sex act.”

The 19th century Victorian- and Edwardian-era English-speaking world concurred, believing circumcision would lessen sexual desire and, as Darby points out, lead to a reduction in masturbation. 

John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of Corn Flakes, sadistically claimed that circumcision would make a “good punishment” for boys who play with themselves, and advocated operating without anesthesia.

Circumcision is far from pain-free, regardless of the recipient’s age or state of stupor.

Dr. Daniel Shinhar runs a clinic in Tel Aviv that performs circumcision on infants under sedation. He notes that “the pain of circumcision is equal to that of having a tooth pulled without an anesthetic.” 

On the plus side, circumcision appears to reduce the risk of urinary tract infections, prostate cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases such as genital herpes, syphilis and HIV.

While the idea of more pleasure is enticing, I’m not considering reversing my own circumcision. Interested men, however, can turn to a startup called Foregen, which is running clinical trials to re-establish a fully-functioning foreskin.

Foregen creates an extra-cellular matrix – a kind of “scaffolding” made of proteins, carbohydrates, collagen, hyaluronic acid and other biological material formed from donated foreskin tissue.

Foregen then applies different growth factors “to get the tissue revascularized,” Ryan Jones, Foregen’s chief operating officer, told me. 

“If the Israel Hayom-reported data is accurate – that more than 18% of secular Israelis feel circumcision isn’t important or are outright opposed – it shows a surprising lack of support for circumcision among secular Israelis,” Rebecca Wald, executive director of Bruchim, told me. “There’s still widespread endorsement of circumcision, but this definitely indicates the tide is turning.”

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call circumcision a “terrible mistake,” perhaps there’s a middle ground for the Jewish baby boys yet to be born.

Could we return to the Biblical, more minimally-invasive method of brit milah that existed before the rabbis and Greeks messed things up? Would that enable greater stimulation without turning non-circumcised males into Israeli locker room oddities? 

Or should we just not touch the whole sensitive topic?

I first wrote about foreskins for The Jerusalem Post.

“Foreskin’s Lament” is the title of a wonderful memoir by Shalom Auslander.

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