Doc. Files Criminal Complaint Against German Rabbi for Performing Circumcisions; Rabbi and German Officials Seek Accord
For the first time, criminal charges have been pressed
against a German rabbi for performing circumcisions, a Jewish weekly reported
on Tuesday.
A doctor from Hesse filed a criminal complaint against
Rabbi David Goldberg, who serves in the community of Hof, in Upper Franconia
(northern Bavaria), according to the Juedische Allgemeine weekly newspaper. The
chief prosecutor of Hof confirmed that charges had been filed against the
rabbi. The charges are based on the controversial decision of a Cologne
district court, which ruled in June that circumcisions for religious reasons
constitute illegal bodily harm to newborn babies.
“I am shocked,” said Cologne Rabbi Yaron Engelmayer,
co-chairman of the national umbrella group of Orthodox rabbis in Germany, in a
first reaction to the report. This marks the first time that a court in the
Federal Republic of Germany is investigating a rabbi for performing a religious
ritual, Engelmayer told the paper.
Goldberg, a qualified mohel (ritual circumciser) who says
he has performed more than 3,000 circumcisions, was informed about the criminal
charges against him by journalists, the paper said.
Born in Jerusalem, the 64-year-old has been the rabbi of
Hof since 1997. Before World War II, about 3,000 Jews lived in Hof. Today, the
community counts about 400 members.
Meanwhile German officials have been meeting with Israel’s
chief Ashkenazi rabbi over the past two days as they seek a way to enshrine
some sort of legal protection for Jews and Muslims who circumcise infant boys
as a religious rite, officials said Tuesday.
The June 26 ruling by a Cologne court brought a wave of international criticism as an infringement on
religious freedom, and it created legal confusion. Although the court’s ruling
was not enforceable outside its jurisdiction, it was disruptive enough that
many hospitals in the country, and even in neighboring Austria and Switzerland,
recommended that doctors refrain from carrying out circumcisions until legal
clarity could be created.
German lawmakers passed a resolution weeks after the
court ruling, asking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to draft legislation
by the fall to ensure the practice could be carried out safely. “Jewish and
Muslim religious life must continue to be possible in Germany,” read the
resolution, supported by the leading opposition and governing parties.
The visiting rabbi, Yona Metzger, told reporters on
Tuesday he was confident that a compromise could be found on the issue, but he
insisted that mohels, or those who carry out ritual circumcisions according to
the Jewish rite, must be allowed to continue with the practice. He said that
proposed compromises that would allow doctors to perform the rite in the
presence of mohel, or the use of anesthesia during the practice, were seen as
unacceptable because of the sacred significance of the rite, passed down as a
decree from God, for Jews.
“This is our belief, and this is the root of the Jewish
soul,” Mr. Metzger said. “It is a stamp, a seal on the body of a Jew.”
Anders Mertzlufft, a spokesman for the justice ministry,
confirmed that Mr. Metzger had met with members of the group working on the
draft legislation, but declined to give further details regarding when they
might be finished.
Opponents argue that circumcision is a violation of a
child’s bodily integrity and should not be carried out on boys until they are
14 and able to have a say in their religious beliefs and whether they want the
practice to be carried out.
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