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Rare circumcision ritual generates controversy
AP
Updated: 4:22 p.m. ET Feb. 2, 2006
NEW YORK - For thousands of years, rabbis performed a simple procedure to cleanse the wound during a ritual circumcision: Like outdoorsmen treating a snake bite, they sucked blood from the cut and spit it out.
That age-old procedure is now the subject of a clash between religion and science in modern-day New York.
Prompted by a child’s death from an infection, the state Health Department is drawing up its first set of safety guidelines governing the practice, which was abandoned by most Jews long ago but has survived among the ultra-Orthodox in a few Hasidic communities. Read more
I had no idea. I think they need to get with the times we are living in.
AP
Updated: 4:22 p.m. ET Feb. 2, 2006
NEW YORK - For thousands of years, rabbis performed a simple procedure to cleanse the wound during a ritual circumcision: Like outdoorsmen treating a snake bite, they sucked blood from the cut and spit it out.
That age-old procedure is now the subject of a clash between religion and science in modern-day New York.
Prompted by a child’s death from an infection, the state Health Department is drawing up its first set of safety guidelines governing the practice, which was abandoned by most Jews long ago but has survived among the ultra-Orthodox in a few Hasidic communities. Read more
This seems like the most gentle way to describe what happens.Like outdoorsmen treating a snake bite, they sucked blood from the cut and spit it out.
