(:=)

I will say, if you do want to snip, Mohels have great technique. After about 5 minutes or so of preparation, the procedure takes literally less than a second.

Plus, you can always hit them up for a donation to your favorite charity, because they do make out in tips...

ps the foreskins are buried in sand, except for those that go to Novartis to "seed" artificial skin.

Couldn't an enterprising hog farm make oodles of money by converting the hog poop into valuable natural gas? Plus, they'd have fantastic fertilizer also.

Maybe there's something missing here, but it apparently makes no sense.

Most people don't realize that Chanukah was about circumcision. The Greek oppressors banned the practice in an attempt to snuff out Judaism, along with announcing the new month and Shabbos. It led to a savage guerrilla insurrection (much like the ice world scenes in Star Wars II)

All we want is the freedom to snip our boys in peace.

Torah bubbeleh, Torah.

">Torah, Bubbleh, Torah

Heheheheh... nice one...

I still think it's a fucked up practice, though..."

As is your right. I've got no problem with people calling me a barbarian, whatsoever. Just don't hassle me or my chaverim when we make a big party!

There are many who want to make circumcision illegal, just like the Syrian-Greeks wanted to. If you ban circumcision, then you ban Judaism, which is why we make such a balagan...

"Stone anyone to death lately?"

No. Betcha didn't know that if the Halakhic Death Penalty was applied once in a century, the generation would be derisively remembered. It was certainly administered orders of magnitude less often than in the US.

Learn Tractate Sanhedrin in the Talmud if you want further details.

"You were so adamant you would break the law if circumcision were banned, what do you do with prohibitions on the sentences of death,"

see above

"slavery,"

What we in the US call slavery is explicitly prohibited by the Eighth Commandment. In fact "slavery" in Torah is one of two things: for Jews, a punishment for theft and for non-Jews, preparation for Conversion.

"animal sacrifice"

If only. May the Temple be rebuilt soon, in my lifetime.

"and various other practices prescribed or at least allowed by the Torah, but banned by modern civil law?"

What else. Please be specific.

"Like a true Pharisee you are hypocrite under all your zealotry."

Of course you realize at this point that by deriding Pharisees, you are being explicitly anti-Semitic, since the only Jews left today are spiritual descendants of the Pharisees.

"But your second point - 'If you ban circumcision, then you ban Judaism' - really? That strikes me as weird. The Torah, Talmud, later prophets, the entire rabbinical tradition - all banned because of a ban on circumcision? That seems a bit much."

No. The reason why the Syrian-Greeks banned Bris Milah, aside from a penis fetish, was that non-circumcised Jews are not allowed to perform many other Commandments. We're all about performing the Commandments.

"So... I suppose you are in favor of polygamy for Mormons? (For the record, I am, provided the age of marital consent it 18+.)"

I have no opinion on how non-Jews choose to organize their love lives. I have no wish to impose my lifestyle on anyone.

"Just curious - is it part of Judaic Law that kids be circumcised as infants? Or is that just a custom that comes with practicality? I'm tying to find a loophole here to square my belief in conformed consent with respecting other folks' faiths... throw me a bone (no pun intended)..."

Yes, it is. You are required to do it on Day #8 (clock starts at 1, not 0), unless there is a medical reason not to. If, for example, hemophilia runs in the family, the boys are exempt.

For Converts, it is part and parcel of the Conversion ceremony (along with dunking, which became baptism in Christianity). Some who chooses to Convert is considered to have been born again.

"Gee, how come I've never heard the old school Hebrews 'derisively remembered' for using said death penalty?"

Because bubbeleh, you've probably never heard of the Oral Tradition (which explains and elucidates the Written Torah), let alone learned Talmud.

"Approximate 1100 people have been executed in the US in the last thirty years with a population of say 400 million Americans (counting people who died of course and are not in the current population) who lived during that period...."

It was a figure of speech.

"What we in the US call slavery is explicitly prohibited by the Eighth Commandment. In fact 'slavery' in Torah is one of two things: for Jews, a punishment for theft and for non-Jews, preparation for Conversion."

Wow, how many rabbis did it take to come up with that little rationalization."

None. It is part of the Oral Tradition.

"Are you actually arguing that U.S. civil law does not prohibit your special 'Jewish slavery'?"

First of all, what I was trying to say is that "slavery" is not a good translation. Servitude is a better translation.

Does the civil law prohibit working off a debt? Does the civil law prohibit a non-Jew from living with a Jewish family in order to learn how to be a Jew?

If it was so terrible, why at the end of the 4th chapter of Tractate Bava Metzia does a non-Jew trick a wealthy Jew into buying him as a "slave".

"'Of course you realize at this point that by deriding Pharisees, you are being explicitly anti-Semitic, since the only Jews left today are spiritual descendants of the Pharisees.'

Wow. You really almost defy a response with that degree of fanaticism. I'll let you get back to making your daughter marry her rapist."

I'll take this as that you don't have a response, you're OK with your anti-Semitism.

Just a tip: if you want to criticize Torah, you should actually learn what's in there first.