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By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ<\/p>\n
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — They warn you that parenting means doing a bunch of stuff you never imagined yourself doing.<\/p>\n
I had always assumed this applied to saying to children things like, \u201cYou watch your tone of voice, young lady\u201d or, “Let’s not eat things we find in our underwear.”<\/p>\n
But in my case, the moment came before my son was even born, when I found myself begging a Belgian kosher slaughterer, or shochet, to come to the Netherlands and circumcise him.<\/p>\n
In my native Israel or the United States, securing the services of a ritual circumciser, or mohel, is as easy as picking up the phone. But in the Netherlands, where Jews have lived since the 12th century, it can be an ordeal involving international travel, community politics, Holocaust-era trauma and unexpected objections by close family members.<\/p>\n
Negotiating these hurdles helped me to\u00a0fully understand the fears, long expressed by community leaders, that the dearth of religious services pose a long-term threat to communal survival.\u00a0Indeed, the Conference of European Rabbis last month set up a think tank charged with bettering circumcision and kosher food services to small communities, calling the lack thereof \u201ca major concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
On paper, I shouldn’t have had any problems. Circumcision, which was last outlawed here by the Nazis, is perfectly legal in the Netherlands, which has about 40,000 Jews. The country\u2019s Orthodox Jewish communities keep a list of about five mohels, plus a number of Reform physicians who perform circumcisions for their congregants.<\/p>\n
But in a country where 50 percent of Jews don\u2019t circumcise their sons, the Reform physicians\u00a0have much less\u00a0practical experience with the body part in question. Unimpressed by fancy titles, my wife and I preferred a humble mohel with thousands of foreskins under his belt to a celebrated professor with many diplomas but far\u00a0fewer\u00a0penile notches on his.<\/p>\n
That proved difficult to find. The Dutch one recommended to us had about 1,500 on his meter but had to be flown in at our expense from Israel, where he moved some years ago. So we widened the search to Belgium, where about half the country\u2019s 40,000 Jews are Orthodox.<\/p>\n
There we finally found our guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really knows his meat,\u201d said one of the many people who recommended the shochet to us.<\/p>\n
Widely considered one of the best mohels in the region, the shochet accepted in principle. But he needed special permission from the Dutch Jewish community for poaching on their turf — the result of recent \u201cadministrative problems\u201d that arose just a few months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need it because I don\u2019t want to get in trouble with your people,\u201d the shochet said.<\/p>\n
Which is when I started begging.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the shochet agreed to circumcise our son if we cut through the red tape for him. I got on the phone, hoping train traffic would not be interrupted because of the current terrorist threat in Belgium.<\/p>\n
The shochet, a hulking and patient rabbi from Antwerp, arrived on\u00a0our doorstep on Sunday, a few days after the baby’s eighth day, when the ritual is traditionally performed. The bris went off without a hitch, but for a brief moment when the shochet held up the boy briskly to test his strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s handling him like a chicken!\u201d an aunt from Brussels exclaimed.<\/p>\n
The search left me with many unanswered questions. How could Judaism\u2019s initiation rite be such an ordeal in a country with a Jewish community that dates back more than 800 years? Are these difficulties the cause or the effect of the fact that only half of Dutch Jews circumcise their children, according to a 2009 survey?<\/p>\n
Part of the complication, according to Bart Wallet, a historian from the University of Amsterdam who specializes in Dutch Jewry, is the system in which Jews pay annual membership fees (it can reach more than $1,000 per year) in exchange for religious services. Only 20 percent of Dutch Jews are paying members of a Dutch Jewish community, according to Wallet. With\u00a0Dutch congregations straining\u00a0to finance\u00a0Jewish communal life here, there’s little reason to make it easy for people like me, who eschew membership and consume religious services a la carte.<\/p>\n
But as with many things in Dutch Jewish life, ultimately it all goes back to the Holocaust. Prior to the war, the Netherlands had 140,000 Jews spread across the country and several traveling mohels servicing far-flung congregations, according to Wallet. After the war, in which 75 percent of Dutch Jews were murdered, the practice fell off.<\/p>\n
\u201cJewish life, including circumcision, never fully restored here,\u201d Wallet said. \u201cMany Dutch Jews skipped the circumcision as a lesson from the past, when their relatives could be identified by taking off their underwear.\u201d<\/p>\n
For my Amsterdam-born wife, the Holocaust consideration\u00a0is a distant second to her main issue with circumcision, namely that it involves causing pain for symbolic reasons. She regards it as a \u201cnecessary evil\u201d — necessary only because of my insistence on it.<\/p>\n
Some of our relatives here are less resigned. One called me to appeal our decision, citing the main argument used by the European liberals — that it supposedly violates children’s rights. This was the grounds on which a German court enacted a temporary ban on circumcision in 2012, which inspired similar moves in nearby countries.\u00a0Since circumcision has no real medical benefits, my relative argued, it was not my decision to make.<\/p>\n
At our son’s bris,\u00a0Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs made a short speech in which he raised this argument in acknowledging what he called the \u201cattack on circumcision\u201d in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t ask the baby whether they want to be born, either, but we have them to continue our legacy,\u201d Jacobs countered.<\/p>\n
As for me, I told the relative (who himself was circumcised) that circumcision \u201ccomes down to tribalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI respect that,\u201d he replied, \u201cbut can\u2019t you just give him a T-shirt or something instead?\u201d<\/p>\n