Circumcision: A Jewish Feminist Perspective

Circumcision is at the heart of gender imbalance in Judaism. For a male Jew, it is a critical mark of identity, an assumed rite of passage, secular or sacred, into the peoplehood and/or faith of Judaism. For a Jewish woman, it may have the same meaning until she is pregnant, with the possibility of bearing a son. It is then that a woman's deepest instincts may arise trembling out of her culturally anesthetized stupor to whisper or plead, "Please, let it be a girl."