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Reviewed by:
  • Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism
  • Joshua Kulp
Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism, by Shaye J.D. Cohen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 317 pp. $39.95.

No, Jewish women were never circumcised, despite a few misleading claims and reports, and no, Shaye Cohen does not suggest that Jews adopt this practice. The provocative question which is the title of this book is in its essence a Christian polemic meant to undermine Judaism. The fact that Jewish women were not circumcised proved that Christianity was superior to Judaism and that baptism was superior to circumcision. Circumcision "saved" only half of the members of the religion, while baptism saved all. The non-circumcision of women proved that circumcision was unnecessary to achieve salvation. Indeed, Jewish women were not, according to some Christian polemicists, even Jewish because they could not undergo circumcision. All of these arguments were put forth already in antiquity, perhaps as early as Paul (although the evidence for this is sparse) and continued to be sounded from time to time among Christians in their disputations with Jews. In contrast, the fact that women were not circumcised was obvious to rabbinic Jews from the second to eleventh centuries and doesn't seem to have bothered them in the least.

The essence, then, of this book is its discussion of four different medieval responses to these Christian polemics, and its use of these responses as a window into larger conceptions of Judaism and gender. Since there really weren't all that many responses to this question, and many of the responses tend to repeat themselves, the heart of the book is mostly a discussion of the implication of these responses upon larger issues such as the meaning of male circumcision, the role of women in Judaism gender, Judaism's approach to male and female sexuality, and the nature of the covenant between God and Israel. These discussions are valuable in their own right, although they occasionally cause the book to stray from its main focus.

The first medieval response to the Christian polemic was simply to downplay women's role in Judaism—women aren't circumcised because their covenant with God is achieved through their husbands or, while young, their fathers. Cohen correctly portrays this as fairly representative of rabbinic culture at large, and therefore doesn't see anything surprising in this claim.

The second response was that circumcision is performed on men in order to decrease their lust and that since women have less lusty natures they do not require circumcision. This argument was put forth by Philo in antiquity and was partially repeated by Maimonides, although the latter never discussed the fact that women were not circumcised. The chapter also contains an extended and interesting excursus into Christian and Jewish views of the effeminizing [End Page 149] effect that circumcision has on the Jewish man. According to some views circumcision even turns a Jewish man into a woman. The chapter includes a discussion of Samson Raphael Hirsch's refinement of the Maimonidean article, namely that women are created at a higher level than men and hence do not require circumcision. This apologetic is still heard in Orthodox circles and hence it is revealing to see one of its original proponents.

The third response is based mostly on a passage from Sefer HaNizzahon, a medieval anti-Christian polemical work by R. Yom-Tov Lippman Mulhaussen. Mulhaussen deemphasized the importance of circumcision in making boys into Jews and turned a Pauline argument on its head—Jews are Jews by virtue of their birth, while Christians require baptism, proving that Christianity is a works based-religion! Concerning the non-circumcision of women Mulhaussen responds that no Jew is liable to perform all of the commandments: men have circumcision and women have their own commandments, namely the sacrifice after childbirth.

The fourth response is provided by R. Joseph Bekhor Shor, a medieval French biblical commentator, who says that "the blood of menstruation that women observe by telling their husbands of the onset of their periods—this for them is covenantal blood." Cohen perceives this statement as radical and unique...

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