Long-time readers of American Samizdat should remember this post from February 2005, which included this quote from the New York Daily News: "New York City health officials are investigating whether a baby boy died after contracting herpes from the rabbi who circumcised him, the Daily News has learned. The probe was launched after city officials realized that three infants in the city who tested positive for herpes last year all were circumcised by Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer. The Rockland County-based Fischer is a prominent mohel - someone who performs religious circumcisions. Under Jewish law, a mohel is supposed to draw blood from the circumcision wound to remove impurities. While many mohels do it by hand, Fischer uses a practice little known outside ultra-Orthodox communities called metzizah bi peh, in which the mohel uses his mouth. On Oct. 16, 2004, Fischer performed a bris, or religious circumcision, on twins. Ten days later, one infant died of herpes, and the other tested positive for the virus, according to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by city lawyers."

What has the above-mentioned investigation revealed? Thank goodness, the most important aspect of this story - the feelings of Jewish adult men who pass along fatal diseases to infants as they suck blood from their penis - has been respected. Some quotes from the New York Times: "A circumcision ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jews has alarmed city health officials, who say it may have led to three cases of herpes - one of them fatal - in infants. But after months of meetings with Orthodox leaders, city officials have been unable to persuade them to abandon the practice. The city's intervention has angered many Orthodox leaders, and the issue has left the city struggling to balance its mandate to protect public health with the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. [...] Since February, the mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, 57, has been under court order not to perform the ritual in New York City while the health department is investigating whether he spread the infection to the infants. Pressure from Orthodox leaders on the issue led Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and health officials to meet with them on Aug. 11. The mayor's comments on his radio program the next day seemed meant to soothe all parties and not upset a group that can be a formidable voting bloc: 'We're going to do a study, and make sure that everybody is safe and at the same time, it is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion.'" [...] The use of suction to stop bleeding dates back centuries and is mentioned in the Talmud. The safety of direct oral contact has been questioned since the 19th century, and many Orthodox and nearly all non-Orthodox Jews have abandoned it. Dr. Frieden said he hoped the rabbis would voluntarily switch to suctioning the blood through a tube, an alternative endorsed by the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest group of Orthodox rabbis. But the most traditionalist groups, including many Hasidic sects in New York, consider oral suction integral to God's covenant with the Jews requiring circumcision, and they have no intention of stopping. 'The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years,' said Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, after the meeting with the mayor. 'We do not change. And we will not change.' David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization of Orthodox Jews, said that metzitzah b'peh is probably performed more than 2,000 times a year in New York City. [...] The inconsistent treatment of Rabbi Fischer himself indicates the confusion metzitzah b'peh has sown among health authorities, who typically regulate circumcisions by doctors but not religious practitioners. In Rockland County, where Rabbi Fischer lives in the Hasidic community of Monsey, he has been barred from performing oral suction. But the state health department retracted a request it had made to Rabbi Fischer to stop the practice. And in New Jersey, where Rabbi Fischer has done some of his 12,000 circumcisions, the health authorities have been silent."

And there you have it. As long as you blame an invisible monster that lives in the sky, it sure seems like you can get away with most anything. The state regulates circumcision, except when you are acting as the agent of an invisible monster that lives in the sky. There is cause for concern in the health of the public, but the feelings of those who are acting as the agent of an invisible monster that lives in the sky are more important. Three infected babies, one dead, all had blood sucked from their penis, but it was done in the name of an invisible monster that lives in the sky so it's okay. Suck blood from a baby's penis as pornography, go to prison for life. Suck blood from a baby's penis and blame an invisible monster that lives in the sky, write it off your taxes.

I advocate the withering away of religion under the twin spotlights of reason and scorn. How about you?