Letters to the Editor
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What a bunch of perfect people
What a bunch of perfect people write letters to Salon! I'm sure none of you trashing Neal have ever done something and regretted it later or made a decision under pressure you disagreed with later. Neal, I read this article and your family sounds a lot like mine. I sympathize with what you dealt with (including the postpartum nurses - I'm an OB/GYN) and I think it's people who rush to judgement on others that are the thoughtless, self important idiots.
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The doctor should have used the shot
My son didn't cry because they used painkiller.
As for the rest, I hope Mr. Pollack draws the line with his parents. I hope he starts telling his parents after he and his wife execute their plans. That's the only way you handle this type of manipulation. And take the phone off the hook.
The rest of the family should have minded their own business as well. I have had mess-making family members try to pull me into their drama. I listen, go ok, and then refuse to call. I am pretty blunt about being able to tell them when something is not their place. This was not the parents' place, and the other relatives should have helped back them off.
I think that's a big part of it. The other relatives elped stir the pot.
He may need to "time out" his family. He needs to tell them why, and be blunt. He also needs to be prepared they will yell. I hope he reads some family systems counseling books. They'll help him understand how he was manipulated, and how he can pull out of the system of manipulation.
Welcome to parenthood! Prepare for people you don't even know to try to guilt you. But the family will always be the most vicious, most self-righteous guilters. This was your baptism by fire.
Parenthood is disorienting and the last month before, as well as the first month after, are the most disorienting of the process. You get stronger and better able to smack down interfering relatives as you get older.
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a small quibble
Pollack says "I was Bar Mitzvahed..."
Bar Mitzvah isn't a verb, it's a descriptor for Jewish men who have been called to the Torah. One isn't Bar Mitzvahed, one becomes a Bar Mitzvah.
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I'm sorry...
The world is going to hell in a handbasket; this kind of mini-micro-issue just isn't worth the ink.
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This is the idjit...
who wrote a column a few years ago about how his son was kicked out of day-care for biting other children - one in particular - and how his wife and he were then forced to "parent" their kid on a more full-time basis than they had "signed on" for.
Pollack was roundly criticized after that article for feeling no compassion for the other children in the day-care who had been bitten by his kid.
This guy (and his "artist" wife) should have had their parenting rights taken away right then. What a couple of whiners. Hopefully, they've been using birth control since then.
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bottom line
uncut ones look gross
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My Caps
I was the one using caps and exclamation points. Both regrettably emotional here, I realize, where emotion is mistrusted. Better a reasoned, rational argument. Okay...
I CAN'T STAND IT THAT 23IMAGINATIVE EMPATHY OR COMPASSION FOR NEWBORN BABIES. They're not little objects for our satisfaction.
"Give them a needle so they won't feel pain..." Hello? NEEDLE?
REFRAINING FROM CUTTING A BABY'S WHOLE PENIS IS CODDLING? CODDLING? MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!
"Make sure they don't need to wash their dicks thoroughly when they're older."
"Don't bother focusing in on the terror and pain the infant actually experiences."
"Assume that if you don't remember it, it doesn't affect you."
"Don't bother teaching them their responsibility for where they put their dicks when they're older so they won't get or spread HIV. Just cut a part of their penis off when they're too tiny and helpless to prevent you. Since you know BEST, and since YOU assume unsafe sex is the only thing you can assume for your child's future."
AAARRGGGHHHH.
I just don't get it. I felt so passionately protective of my child. Why are so many people so damn detached? What happened to protectiveness? It's gone... I am not singling out Jewish fathers. I don't understand why all fathers of sons wouldn't meet anyone at the door with a baseball bat who appeared with a scalpel. Or why parents of daughters aren't fighting to protect them from the cultural crap visited on females. And I'm sorry, but cultural crap is how I see circumsion, and you can keep traditions going in some other way if you choose to, and my daughter's father was Catholic.
What if the first cut, the indifference and pain at the hands of among the first male humans you encounter actually DOES cause deep buried trauma that comes out in blunted, detached, alienated behavior, or a numb inability, or a lessened virility in many men? Isn't that possible? Does anybody think it's worth NOT doing something violent in the hope that it increases peace and healing? Is our culture okay? Would it occur to most parents that our culture isn't okay? Maybe we do need to radically rethink the violence and pain we're awash in?
Isn't your newborn infant WORTHY of a little bit of imaginative empathy and respect in his wholeness?
Why on earth would anyone say that an injury that's not consciously remembered doesn't affect a child? Good grief.
I hope my thoughts are not discounted because they come with emotion. But if I could encourage one expectant parent to reconsider lopping off a part of a perfect being, it's worth it...
("Infants don't feel pain." So recently, people were told that...babies were operated on without anesthesia and they wondered why they died. It's like...SCREAMING isn't enough to tell you how terribly it hurts?)
I use caps instead of crying.
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Some Politically Incorrect Truths
Neal -
1) THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MARRY A NON-JEW. PERIOD.
2) Because your wife, the mother of the child, is NOT Jewish, YOUR SON IS NOT, I REPEAT, NOT JEWISH EITHER.
3) Because of the aforementioned items (wife not Jewish, therefore child not Jewish), YOU DID NOT NEED TO CIRCUMCIZE THE CHILD. YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT AGONY FOR NOTHING. Granted your parents are an issue but you could have just informed them that Elijah is not Jewish because his mother is not Jewish. Surely they have to know that.
4) That operation the doctor did was NOT a bris in any case. It would have to be done by a Mohel and blessings would have to be said. Consult a Rabbi (a REAL Rabbi who knows basic Judaism and does not just tell people what they want to hear) if this surgery would count after the fact. If your son converts to Judaism down the road, he will still need to get a pin prick on his...prick...so as to draw blood and be a symbolic bris (I believe it's called Hatafat Dam).
5) SCIENCE DOES NOT, I REPEAT, DOES *NOT* MATTER HERE. What matters is Jewish Law. Period. PERIOD. It does NOT matter what modern medicine says about the merits of circumcision or lack thereof. What matters is that JEWISH LAW MANDATES THAT ALL JEWISH BOYS BE CIRCUMCISED AT 8 DAYS OLD. This commandment goes back to Abraham himself, PREDATES THE TORAH and is the ABOLUTELY ONLY THING IN JUDAISM MORE IMPORTANT THAN FASTING ON YOM KIPPUR. You can eat pork and go to church every single day of your life including Yom Kippur, but that Jewish baby boy MUST be circumcised at 8 days. Period. END of discussion.
Incidentally, circumcising a male at an older age "when he can decide for himself" makes it more painful and more akin to real surgery. I could be wrong, but I think Muslims circumcize their sons at AGE 13! Yet you see NO ONE criticizing Muslims for observing Islamic Law in this case.
NOW CALL ME A FASCIST AND RELIGIOUS FANATIC!!!