Karl Marx, son of a rabbi
Karl Marx, the son of a rabbi, demanded Judaism to become international or cosmopolitan by shedding its religious particularities. To be sure, he was not responsible in any way for anti-Semitism in the 20th century. But even Kant could not share the utopian vision of an international mankind at peace. Thus, looking at the German doctrinal discussion on circumcision, the logics of German doctrine are not the logics of a relaxed post-modernism, granting tolerance to each corner of the vast garden, or to take an old metaphor, to each room of the large hotel of mankind. And be aware of the variety of meaning of the later metaphor with regard to the logics of a doctrinal system.
The image of the hotel may be understood differently, from the Eagles’ perspective on “Hotel California” (“such a lovely place, such a lovely face, plenty of room at the Hotel California any time of year you can find it here”), stressing a strange kind of union between pleasure and pain (“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”).
Doctrines and legislators
Certainly doctrine sometimes finds a way out of the prison. But, please, do not defend what, in true Jewish humor, the Polish farmer did when they saw that the small road through the forest was blocked by a fallen tree. He just took the cattle of his vehicle to use it for putting the tree aside. Remember the comment of the Jews watching him after meditating the problem for a long while: “It is so easy to use brute force”. In doctrine, this way is called consequentialist interpretation.
This reminds me of Chancellor Merkel’s solution: We do not want that tree to cause problems, so let’s make a new law! In late August, right after the Chief Rabbi from Jerusalem consented the need of a state certification for any circumciser, the national “German Ethics Council“ suggested details for the legislative solution permitting circumcision as long as the operation is professionally (lege artis) performed with local anesthetics.
High speed legislation from the Department of Justice
In late September, the Department of Justice issued a draft for a new section in Germany’s Civil Law Code (on family law), specifying personal custody (care for the person of the child, „Personensorge“) with respect to circumcision and asked related experts and institutions including the German Federal Court of Justice for comment until October, 1st. This is high speed legislation.
The good news is that the draft is solid professional work. It does not simply say, that circumcision (of course, coping with the mentioned procedural standards) is “not punishable”, leaving doctrinally open whether it is lawful. In this case, opponents of circumcision could have continued with blaming it as being against the law. Instead, now circumcision is considered to be an offense against bodily integrity but “justified” (as it is the case with any kind of medical treatment according to German jurisdiction) – and therefore lawful.
This essential feature cannot easily be translated from doctrine into common sense, especially to an audience in the United States where legally there is no sharp distinction between justification (making an offense lawful) and excuse (retreating from a statement of guilt and from punishment). Then, what about the criteria of justification? Of course, no legislator can simply settle the doctrinal matter in fundamental issues and decree an “end of debate”, as in the case of a speed limit, taking 55 miles per hour or 75 m/ph. However, the legislator may increase certainty as much as possible.