Q&A: Circumcision in Non-Religious Families
Circumcision in Non-Religious Families
Question
I saw that you were previously asked about the question of the morality of circumcision, and you answered that it is indeed immoral, but that the religious value overrides the moral value (here).
My question is: after all, your view is (in several places, for example here) that a secular person is not in a position to fulfill commandments. Do you think that for a secular person it is morally forbidden to circumcise his son? If his action has no religious value, then there is nothing to override the moral prohibition.
Very high percentages of secular Israelis circumcise their sons. Would you recommend that a secular person not perform the circumcision?
Answer
- Just as a religious value can override a moral value, so too a national or cultural value can override it. The moral problem here is not really very severe. The child undergoes brief pain, and that’s it, and he is not at all consciously aware of it anyway (at the age of a few days). Not a big deal.
- The fact that a person does not believe in the value of circumcision only means that he himself (= the father) did not fulfill a commandment. But the mohel and the son himself did fulfill it. The son is circumcised, and therefore the commandment was fulfilled (in my opinion, according to both the Tur and Maimonides, who disagree whether the commandment is to circumcise or to be circumcised). A better question could be about a person circumcising himself. But here there is no moral problem, because he is doing it to himself.
Discussion on Answer
There is no moral problem at all with causing pain to oneself. There may perhaps be a moral problem for someone who instructs him to cause pain to himself.
?
A. The reasoning itself is unclear to me. Why should exalted morality care whether the sufferer is the addressee of the command or someone else?
B. Why, according to your view, is there no moral demand on a person himself to save his fellow from slight pain even at the cost of much greater pain to himself?
Interesting that such a view of yours (surprising to me) did not appear in the columns on self-regard and Aharoni. Is it really that obvious?
A. What exalted morality cares about is that a person not cause suffering to another. It is not consequentialist.
B. There is no such demand because what overrides the moral command is my right not to suffer (and not some moral value of not suffering. There is no such value). Just as I am not obligated to give myself up in order to save another, even if several people would be saved. I have no obligation to donate money to save another from suffering, even though there is no value in holding on to the money. My right to the money overrides the moral obligation.
C. Indeed, it is obvious.
If my backside still weren’t aching from falling out of the tree I climbed to find birds, I’d be shrieking like a carrion bird.
If you hadn’t fallen, apparently you yourself would have been a carrion bird.
Actually, this is a case of reversed conditional probability: if you had been a carrion bird, you wouldn’t have fallen out of the tree. Examine this carefully.
And the Talmud in Hullin there regarding sending away the mother bird says she was sitting among the layers of the tree, so we see that if she slips she falls onto them—that is, we also estimate for a sign even in a case that is impossible, like that setup in the case of the yavam who got stuck.
Why is there no moral problem with a person causing pain to himself? If he wants the pain, that’s another matter, but if he suffers pain because of value A, then this is just the ordinary conflict between morality (do not cause pain) and that value. And the same force that requires him to make sure, through action or inaction, that others not be in pain, requires him not to cause unwanted pain to himself.