Talk:Brit milah

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Broad City[edit]

User:bus stop removed my edit, I don't understand what is wrong with "drew attention to". Causing Bustle to write an article about the show's description of it sounds like drawing attention to me. How would you describe it? Ash Carol (talk) 20:12, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The source does not support the assertion. Your assertion was that "Season 3 of Broad City drew attention to the practice in 2016." But nowhere in the source is support for that assertion. Please feel free to cut and paste to this Talk page material from that source which you feel supports the assertion that "Season 3 of Broad City drew attention to the practice in 2016." Bus stop (talk) 20:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For anyone interested in the Brit Milah article as of 6 August 2022, both of these editors, Ash Carol and Bus stop, have been suspended indefinitely by Wikipedia. So, please do not waste your time like I did in seeing what they were talking about in this section. Howardlhoffman (talk) 21:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Antisemitism?[edit]

I'm on the phone and also am inexperienced in Wikipedia editing. However the first part of the article seems to be biased against orthodox Judaism. Carenymre (talk) 15:59, 31 March 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Dear all,
Agreed, this page has extreme bias or in wikipedia jargon NPOV issues. For interested editors, here is a source which may be beneficial in correcting this https://www.academia.edu/21731836/Circumspection_an_Inquiry_into_Brit_Milah
Blessings,
Yaakov W. Yaakov Wa. (talk) 22:51, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
certainly the first paragraph is bizarre. If the article is about a religious rite, then what does "controlling male sexuality" have to do with it? That has nothing to do with this Jewish religious rite. If such an idea needs to be in the article, it would be in a separate section on "conspiracy theories" or "non-Jewish interpretations". Actually, most of the lede should be elsewhere. and some of it seems like original research (epispasm, eg). 142.163.194.161 (talk) 14:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Compared to other articles and the main circumcision article on Wikipedia, this page does seem to have NPOV issues with language and focus, selective quotations and emphasis, etc... It seems to have gotten worse with edits over the past year and a half or so. 216.161.81.210 (talk) 20:12, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that this article is biased, but not just against orthodox Judaism. That is why I am planning to start doing significant edits on this article. I will add a new section to this Talk page in advance of each edit that I do. I welcome others interested in seeing this article end up with a WP:NPOV to join me. I also invite anyone questioning my edits to respond in this Talk Page. As for the Section heading "Antisemitism?", I would not ascribe the motive of whoever has made a mess of this article (at least as it exists at the time of my comment here) as Antisemitism. So thank you to Carenymre for at least just posing this as a question. In Wikipedia editing, we are supposed to [WP:Assume Good Faith]]. Anyone familiar with the role that circumcision has played in Jewish history, knows that the battle over European attitudes vs. Middle Eastern (not just Jewish) attitudes on the subject has been going on for at least 2500 years. If you are not an experienced Wikipedia editor and want to become one, then I strongly recommend Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by John Broughton. Howardlhoffman (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

covenant of circumcision[edit]

Is this actually the most technically accurate translation of what the Hebrew term means?

"circumcision" means "cut around", compare for example to "incision" which does not, since it lacks the prefix "circum"

Does the term milah have anything in it specifying "around" ?

If it doesn't then wouldn't "covenant of incision" or "covenant of cut" be more accurate?

Actually wondering what the earliest usage was of this term. Doing a google books search I've been able to find results back to the 1510s or so before the Old English makes it unintelligible. WakandaQT (talk) 03:20, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I reckon the best bet for finding an answer to this question is in Glick (2005).[1]

References

  1. ^ Glick, Leonard (2005). Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America. United States: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–3, 15–35. ISBN 978-0195176742.
— Guarapiranga ☎ 02:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For your initial question, if you go to Google and translate "covenant circumcision", the result is Brit Milah written in Hebrew. If you are not familiar with reading Hebrew, you can click on a link to hear it pronounced. As an ancient (and rather concise) language, Hebrew phrases often omit prepositions like "of". So strictly speaking, Brit Milah translates to Covenant Circumcision, but most translators would insert the "of". So, to answer your initial question: Yes. Brit Milah means Covenant of Circumcision.
Not having a copy of Glick available, I cannot speak to your final sentence. Howardlhoffman (talk) 19:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously False Paragraph - Intending to Delete[edit]

This article on Brit Milah is really quite a mess and does not reflect anything like a Neutral Point of View. It has been edited many times and I am not going to attempt to fix it by undoing edits. Rather, I am going to try to edit from what it is now into a more logical and neutral article, and to do so bit by bit. Furthermore, I invite experienced WP editors to help me in this effort. I maintain that this article suffers from WP:Cherrypicking and other violations of Wikipedia's fundamental principle of Neutral Point of View.

Starting with the Lead Section. The Lead Section of an article according to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section is supposed to serve " . . .as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents". This means that completely new material should not appear in the Lead Section.

So, let's look at Paragraph 2 of the Lead Section:

"The original version in Judaic history was either a ritual nick or cut done by a father to the acroposthion, the part of the foreskin that overhangs the glans penis. This form of genital nicking or cutting, known as simply milah, became adopted among Jews by the Second Temple period and was the predominant form until the second century CE. The notion of milahbeing linked to a biblical covenant is generally believed to have originated in the 6th century BCE as a product of the Babylonian captivity; the practice likely lacked this significance among Jews before the period."

If you go through the article, you will see that this material (contained in paragraph 2) is not presented elsewhere in the article. If it were, then I would be planning to delete it in both places, in the Lead Section and in any following section for the simple reason that it is obviously false. If it were true, then why would the Greeks and the Romans (c. 500 BCE to 400 CE) even care about the look of circumcised Jewish male penises? A mere nick would not be noticeable. Why would even one Hellenistic Jew (as described later in the article) be trying to reverse their circumcision if it were only a nick? Furthermore, who could attest to "the original version [of circumcision] in Judaic history"? As indicated in the Wikipedia article on Circumcision, the actual procedure, and not just a nick, was practiced in the Middle East many centuries before the advent of an Israelite people. In fact, a nick is done, even today, when an already circumcised male is converting to Judaism. There may have been some other times and situations where a "nick" was used in place of a complete removal of the foreskin, but those have not been dominant in Jewish history and should not be in the Lead Section of the article on Brit Milah.

If anyone wants to put this misplaced and false paragraph back into the article in any place, then please explain why on this Talk page. Howardlhoffman (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I did, and here's why. We, as WP editors, are not here to determine what's true or obviously false; that's WP:OR. As we discussed it my talk page, we're here to convey to the reader the information contained in [ reliable sources ] fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias (WP:NPOV). The paragraph you deleted seems well sourced. If you believe it doesn't belong in the lede, that's a different story. I'm happy for you to move it, but deleting it on the basis of saying the WP:RS are wrong is not what WP is about. — Guarapiranga ☎ 23:04, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reduction of sexual pleasure[edit]

The reason “the purpose is reducing sexual pleasure” is uncited is because it is intentionally antiSemitic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.4.239.40 (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please see MOS:LEADCITE. The lead is usually a summary of the article, & citations there are not required if documented elsewhere. If you took the time to actually read the article, you might have found quotes from Philo Judaeus & Maimonides that part of the purpose of circumcision was to reduce sexual pleasure. Please see the section Brit milah#Controlling male sexuality, where you will find a number of citations about this. Your charge of intentionally antiSemetic therefore seems misguided. Peaceray (talk) 23:57, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The entire section appears to have been added by an antisemitic editor around 2020 in order to give the most sinster interpretation of the rite possible. The citations are cherrypicked in order to get a conclusion that is entirely at odds with the Jewish tradition.
Philo had far more influence among Christianity than Judaism. He's not authoritative on anything. ShirtNShoesPls (talk) 16:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of מציצה בפה[edit]

Traditional Hebrew grammar allows for two readings (except that ב may lose the דָּגֵשׁ as well): indefinite בְּפֶה bə-fé and definite בַּפֶּה bap-pé, of which the second seems more plausible, but the first one appears in the article. The common Anglicization b’peh perhaps represents a contemporary Israeli pronunciation of one or the other form. 109.184.98.226 (talk) 01:18, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both are correct. In the first example that you brought down, the English translation would be, "by mouth." The second example that you bring down is literally, "by the mouth." The definite article "the" is expressed by the Hebrew vowel patach, but the meaning and sense is still clear without having to use "the" in the sentence.Davidbena (talk) 02:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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