Transcript of Metzitzah b'Peh Part I

Every day. Throughout the entire world. For millennia.

WG: The defining feature of Judaism is the circumcision of children – male children - on the eight day.

Dr. Wolff Geisler is a general practitioner in Cologne.For decades he has been actively engaged in shedding light on financial and political machinations, including German weapons exports intended to maintain the Apartheid regime in South Africa.He takes a public stand against the powerful and works to expose their instruments of power.

WG: Limiting weapons exports would be a step .....
Willy Brandt: You wants towards disarmament or what?
WG: Yes, of course...
From TV debate with former German chancellor Willy Brandt, 1984

WG: There is a form of circumcision, of the ritual, called Metzitza B`Peh.This circumcision is donewith a stone knife called an Izmel.In this practice, the Jewish circumciser takes,after cutting off the foreskin,the child’s penis in his mouth and sucks on it.Beforehand, he takes a gulp of red wine,after the procedure he spits the wine out.

An age-old practice carried out, unaltered, multi-millions of times. Without anesthesia, without narcosis. Today just as in centuries and millennia gone by.

It is administered to 57% of Jewish boys in New York and at least 20 % of those in Israel ...

Sources: MMWR, 08.06.2012, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, NYCRabbi Dr. Halperin, metzitza b’peh controversy: the view from Israel, www.ou.orgNew York City: ca. 3,600/year Israel: ca. 10,000/year

These are the published figures. Although a large part of those who identify as Jewish distance themselves from the practice of Metzitza b ´Peh, a study conducted by orthodox Rabbi Elli Bohm confirmed that it is the rule for the vast majority of religious circumcisions. Anecdotally: in an online search of brit milah (the general Hebrew term for circumcision), most of the videos do include sucking with the mouth. In many of the recordings the camera turns away, often the act of sucking has been edited out.

WG: To circumcise a child - without anesthetic, intentionally without anesthetic,intentionally inflicting intense painwith a stone-knife, that is permitted in Germany. That was the explicit finding of the Bundestagwith a 70% majority.

December 2012: The German Bundestag finds that circumcision – may be carried out in Germany according “to the accepted standards of medical practice”.However, the law legalized not only circumcision by doctors; the religious official known as the mohel could now legally circumcise infants up to 6 months of age. This stipulation was meant to enable the practice described as, quote: “From a religious viewpoint constitutive corollary activities”– that is, the penis-blood sucking act metzitza b'peh.

WG: This was changed in the 19th century. Reform Jews in Germany abolished this procedure...This controversial matter was debated most heatedlyin Lithuania, which was the center of Jewish learning. There, Metzitza b'Peh had been completely abolished,prohibited by the orthodox Jewish faction.
And the first masses of victims of the National Socialistswere massacred in Lithuania, where, within the first three months,80 percent of the Jewish persons were murdered.

Lithuania, around 1930, Stahlecker’s report to Heydrich, dated 31.1.1942 on “progress” in the extermination of the Jews.

The law stipulates that the circumcisors must be “specially trained” and as non-doctors must be “comparably capable” to doctors. In practice, this means that controlling of the mohels is neither desired, nor is it, in fact, possible. The content of the “training” remains undisclosed, as do the criteria for the selection of the mohels.

WG: The legal ruling states that thosedesignated as mohels by the religious communitiesare not subject to any state inspections.

A case in point: David Goldberg, Rabbi of the Jewish community in Hof, in Bavaria. According to his website he has already circumcised over 3000 boys.

David Goldberg’s website:" The pain of the infant is minimal" "No anesthetics"

In August, 2012, a doctor reported him for mistreatment and grievous bodily harm of those under his protection.

Goldberg: What business is it of his, what I do with Jewish children? It doesn’t apply to German children, not to his children ...

Two months earlier a verdict of the Cologne district court had cast doubt on the legality of circumcision in general. The parliamentary fractions of the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, and the Liberal party reacted with a resolution aimed at legalizing the circumcision of newborn boys.

The verdict

The Green party wanted “To enable all facets of the Jewish and Muslim religions to be practiced.“. As Renate Künast, leader of the Green fraction, expressed her opinion of the blood-penis-sucking practice in no uncertain terms.

Israel’s Chief Orthodox Rabbi Yona Metzger came to Berlin to see that this demand was put through.

Metzger: If it would be forbidden to do circumcision as we are doing it four thousand years, it's a great problem for the life of the Jews here.

Many, including prominent members of the Jewish and Muslim communities, spoke out in favor of an open debate. Doctors associations, child psychologists, the German ethics committee and other institutions campaigned for the rights of the children.

• Freedom of religion not a license to commit violence • Doctors association outraged over circumcision law • Ethics committee in favor of anesthetics regulation • The psyche suffers as well • Children’s charity warns of “Carte blanche for child abuse.”

This was met with: a massive media offensive:

• The Good Old Anti-Semitism • Ban on circumcision says: “Jews, get out“ • Germany’s Reputation Under Threat • Most Serious Attack Since Holocaust

Schnarrenberger: The practice of circumcision has always been allowed in Germany. With this legislation we are clarifyingand ensuringthat in future this will also be the case...
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, FDP Federal Minister of Justice

Merkel – We’re Making a Laughing Stock of Ourselves

I feel decidedly uncomfortable with the idea that we Germans, of all people, should instruct our Jewish fellow citizens in the meaning of the protection of life and child welfare.
Frank Walter Steinmeier, SPD parliamentary party leader

Despite the obvious cruelity of the Jewish circumcision – the pain, the mental, emotional and physical short and long-term consequences of this genital mutilation - 70% of the Bundestag members voted for the legalization of this procedure.

WG: To accept and sign something like this in full possession of their mental facultiescan only mean that they are slaves.

In the draft of their party program from February 2016 the new political party AfD rejected the resolved legalization as unconstitutional and thus illegal.

• Be free citizens, not subjects • For grievous violation of a fundamental right • Unconstitutional and thus illegal

In April 2016 it adopted the assessment of the CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and the greens and removed their rejection without substitution.

WG: Three months after the law was passed, the Chief Rabbi of Berlin, Teichtal, had his son circumcised.According to the Metzitza b'Peh method.

Four hundred invited guests joined in the circumcision festivities, among them Stephan Kramer, the current president of the domestic intelligence service in Thuringia, then General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and selected journalists.

WG: It was a conscious statement: We’re doing that here.

Graumann: Politicians here acted quickly, responsibly and sensitively. In this case, our politicians, in our view anyway, have earned very much praise and respect.
Dieter Graumann, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany 2010-2014

WG: A year later, Mrs. Merkel was also awardedthe Lord Jakobovits Prize of European Jewry. Jakobovits was the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain who explicitly campaigned for Metzitza b'Peh. He said that a mohel who didn’t practice Metzitza b'Peh should not be a mohel...

It’s only possible to perpetuate this act through coercion.The fact that women continue to be forcedinto allowing it, continue to hand their child overto the mohel who cuts off the foreskinwithout anesthetic, knowingly tormenting the child, can only be the result of an elaborate exertionof pressure, promises and traditional measures.

• The duty to circumcise • Parents Must Meet the Demands of Forward-thinking Action

Medically disproved arguments, such as improved hygiene and prevention of penile cancer and HIV, are used to motivate parents into allowing their 8-day old child to be subjected to this brutal intervention.

The extreme health risks involved – including infections with fatal consequences or long-term brain damage – are hushed up, played down or denied.

• Baby Dies of Herpes in Ritual Circumcision By Orthodox Jews • Fourth New York Jewish baby this year treated for herpes

Mizrachi: In 50, 60 Years that we do Brit Milah - millions all over the world, only two or three babies, supposedly, it's still not proven, got infected with something with Brit Milah. From millions!
Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi

Few pious parents are able to withstand the pressure mix of tradition and religious authority.

Mizrachi: It's a part of Brit Milah, it's not Minhag. It's Halacha to do it. Halacha to do Metzitza b'Peh. It's Halacha, it's not Minhag. They have to do it. It's incomplete Brit Milah. It's a part of Brit Milah, it's not optional. It's obligatory to do it. Obligatory to do Metzitza b'Peh. It's obligatory, it's not optional.

They are defenseless. They won’t remember it; they may not be able to blame their parents for it. It will remain only a dark trauma. Stemming from intense pain and the feeling of abandonment and betrayal. And they will have their own sons circumcised. In the name of a religious imperative.

Why is this procedure so important for Jewish institutions? Is Metzitza b'Peh not of purely symbolic significance?

These activities are so pathologically cruel, that in order to prevent the incitement of sadists and pedophiles they are not called by their right names.In the title of the film is used instead the meaningless "Metzitza b'Peh".

“The blood-sucking and sucking of the penis are so repugnant, that they must have some fundamental significance."
1909, Lithuania, Moshe Mordechai Epstein, leading Talmud scholar

In Part II of Metzitza b'Peh,„Mechanisms, Immediate and Long-Term Consequences, the Purpose” the validity of this assumption is substantiated.

Authors: Milos L and Wolff Geisler

The content of this film is based on the chapter "Jewish circumcision for conquests with epidemics" from the book "The Jubilee Murders: Originators and Methods of Mass Murders" written by Wolff Geisler