Thursday, November 03, 2005

More reform Jews are performing circumcision...

Here is an interesting article about brisim: ritual circumcision. Evidently there is an organization called NOAM AKA the National Organization of American Mohalim (cute).

More recently, Reform Jews have been feeling a need to get back to their religion's roots. Even as more and more parents have wanted a bris for their sons, the Reform community grew until it outdistanced the numbers of Orthodox Jews. That resulted in increasing friction between Reform Jews and Orthodox mohalim -- not over technique but theology.

The article gets into the various issues between orthodox and reform view points on conversion:

In recent decades, intermarriage has been escalating: In some Reform congregations upwards of half the families have a non-Jewish member. Even when they later embraced Judaism, there could be problems when seeking the service of a mohel (the singular of mohalim).

"An Orthodox mohel might not accept a mother who converted to Judaism, if the conversion wasn't done by an Orthodox rabbi," said Rabbi Lewis Barth, co-founder of NOAM and dean of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.

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