On June 26, a court ruling in Cologne Germany has made ritual circumcision illegal, declaring that it is an assault on the rights of the child since it is performed without its consent. It immediately affects the future of the children of four million Muslims and about 120,000 Jews. It came as the result of a possible malpractice on a 4-year old Muslim boy. It currently appears irreversible, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to come up with a legal solution to allow both Jews and Muslims the practice of the ritual according to their respective religions.
Jews have practiced the brit milah (circumcision of boys on the eighth day as a sign of the Abrahamic covenant as first found in Genesis 17:9-14).
For Muslims, male circumcision is also required as a sign of purity (it is actually believed by Muslims that Muhammad was born without a foreskin), but Muslims have more time to perform the ritual as it is only required of a Muslim boy to be circumcised before puberty.
Muslim and Jewish European leaders have been very vocal in their attempt at getting Angela Merkel to revert the decision. While not impossible, this might prove to be an uphill battle for the German Chancellor.
While affecting both Muslims and Jews, the pressure to revert the new law is obviously greater on the Jewish community and the danger of having circumcisions performed illegally by less than competent practitioners will undoubtedly increase. Looking at the implications for the Jewish community, is the new ban on circumcision simply a matter of protecting one’s rights or rather the opposite, and that is: removing rights from people in an effort to cripple them and ostracize them from society?
The decision might be reverted but the question remains: Will it be seen as simply the “nipping in the bud”of one of the many new ills against the Jewish people or simply a symptom of something bigger? In both cases, it foreshadows the growing of an unwelcoming atmosphere that is reminiscent of mid 30s Germany and the enacting of the Nuremberg Laws. This is a parallel that ought to make any 21st century German citizen cringe, any decent global citizen for that matter! Of all places in the world, Germany IS NOT where we need to see some neo-Nuremberg laws appear. And again, even though it might be reverted, the very fact that it crossed the mind of German lawmakers and actually was passed as a law, is a sign of a much greater problem.
In his definitive work The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg established that there were three stages in the process of riding Europe of its Jews:
The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live. 1
While I reserve the right to properly define what makes a “true Christian”(a Bible believing and practicing disciple of Yeshua/Jesus) and while I certainly cannot agree with the generalizing of Hilberg regarding Christianity, for the most part, European Christendom failed to make my Jewish people jealous of their Messiah.
Additionally, Hilberg makes an undeniable and sobering parallel between the Nuremberg Laws of the 1930s and the “Canonical Laws” of a “Christianized” Europe established and codified in bodies of work such as the Theodisian Code (started in 429 AD) and/or the Justinian Code (529-534 AD).2
The Nuremberg Laws were very carefully crafted and gradually implemented to make Jewish life in Germany impossible (later it extended to greater Europe as the Nazi war machine continued to spread its tentacles).
Recent attempts (while unsuccessful) have also been made a banning ritual meat slaughter in the Netherlands, and these are also “signs of the times”. Attempts (also unsuccessful) at banning circumcision have also been made in California.
I believe that no matter the final outcome of the circumcision law, the first two stages of no right to live among us as Jews and no right to live among us might very well have been reached, at least in Germany. Compounded with the desire by radical Islam and an re-emerging neo-Nazi movement to annihilate all Jews, we could actually posit that all three stages are in place for the final attack against the Jews.
According to the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, all we needed for the Holocaust to happen was six things to be in place 3:
1. Hatred (i.e., bigotry, prejudice, racism or anti-Semitism)
2. A dictatorship (one, a few, or many)
3. A bureaucracy
4. Technology
5. A crisis (war, disaster, economic crisis, an opportune moment to act on the hatred)
6. A minority or “scapegoat”
So it looks to me like the world is again ready to turn against the Jews “en masse“, as all six pre-requisites appear to have been met, at least in Europe. It is only a matter of time before other regulations and restrictions are added to the infamous roaster of the New anti-Semitism. The soil is fertile, seeded and being watered as we speak.
We cannot ignore the evidence, we cannot be bystanders and we cannot remain silent.
It is time for real believers, followers of Yeshua the Messiah to declare His love to all and especially to Israel and the Jewish people as they will very soon only have Him to turn to.
When that days comes (not if), may we be found as genuine ambassadors of Messiah to the lost, but particularly to those who brought Him to us 2000 years ago, and that is of course The Jewish people!
1 Hilberg, Raul: The Destruction of the European Jews (Holmes & Meyer, New York, NY, 1985) p. 8
2 ibid. Pages 10-11
3 Wiesenthal, Simon: Every Day Remembrance Day: A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom (Henry Holt and Co., New York, NY, 1986). Pages 1-30
I heartily concur Olivier!!!
Let’s pray that the German Court has a circumcision of the heart!