NEW YORK: Metzitzah: City won't tell Jewish paper if mohelim are getting consent

The Jewish Daily Forward
April 24, 2014

New York City Stonewalls Forward on Metzitzah B'peh Circumcision Regulations

Babies Are Sickened - But City Won't Give Info
by Paul Berger
It’s been more than one year since New York City announced a new regulation to protect infants from contracting herpes during metzitzah b’peh, a controversial circumcision rite that many ultra-Orthodox mohels employ.

Since then, two babies in the city that were subjected to MBP, as the rite is known, have been infected with the herpes virus, and as the Forward reported in March, one of the city’s leading mohels continues to flout the law.

But the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has refused to respond to multiple requests from the Forward for basic information about how, or if, it is implementing its regulation.

The department’s regulation requires mohels to seek written parental consent before performing MBP, in which the mohel’s lips are placed on the infant’s penis to suction blood from the circumcision wound.

The city has not responded to questions that the Forward sent via email eight times between March 27 and April 22. Nor has the city responded to four phone messages left between April 9 and April 22.

In its queries, the Forward sought to learn what, if anything, the health department is doing to enforce its own rule after Rabbi Avrohom Cohn, a leading mohel, told the Forward that he refuses to comply with it.
...

Cohn, who is chairman of the American Board of Ritual Circumcision, told the Forward in March that he performs MBP in the city on a regular basis.

But he said that he would never seek parental consent, because he believes it is an infringement of his religious liberties.

He called the claim that MBP poses a risk to infants a blood libel.

After publishing Cohn’s statement, the Forward asked the health department, “In light of Rabbi Cohn’s statements and actions, will the [health department] be taking action to try to prevent more cases of MBP-related herpes and/or to enforce its consent form rule?”

But the department will not respond.

Under the new regulation, mohels must keep signed copies of the forms for one year.

The health department has previously said that it has never sanctioned or fined a mohel for failing to comply with the consent form rule.

But the department will not say whether it has ever checked if mohels are complying with the rule. To do so, it would simply ask mohels who practice MBP for copies of signed forms they have collected.

The Forward filed a request in February, under New York State’s Freedom of Information Law, asking whether the health department had ever requested such forms and, if so, how many forms it had asked for. The Forward also wanted to see redacted copies of such forms.

The city responded by refusing to confirm or deny whether it had ever asked for such forms. The city added that if such forms did exist, because of privacy concerns they could not be released.

Before he became mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio blasted city agencies for failing to respond to Freedom of Information requests.

“We have to start holding government accountable when it refuses to turn over public records to citizens and taxpayers,” de Blasio said when he was public advocate, in April 2013.

The Forward appealed the city’s decision March 26.

Under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, the city was required to respond within 10 business days of receiving the appeal. It failed to do so, and more than 20 business days later has yet to respond.

Earlier story

NEW YORK: Metzitzah: Scofflaw mohel will do it regardless

The Jewish Daily Forward
March 27, 2014

Rabbi Performs Controversial Metzitzah B'Peh Circumcision Rite - Law or No

by Paul Berger
After cutting off the infant’s foreskin, Rabbi Avrohom Cohn leaned down toward the baby boy who was cradled on a white pillow atop his grandfather’s knee.

Standing fully over the child, with his back to the dozens of immaculately dressed guests at the Syrian Jewish gathering in Brooklyn, it was impossible to see what Cohn did next.

Asked after the ceremony whether he performed the controversial rite metzitzah b’peh, also known as MBP, in which a ritual circumciser places his mouth on the baby’s genitals to suction blood from the circumcision wound, Cohn smiled and said, “I did what I had to do.”

If Cohn performed MBP without getting written consent from the infant’s parents, he broke the law.

It’s something he has done many times before.

For more than a year, ritual circumcisers, known as mohels, have been required to obtain written consent from parents before performing MBP.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene instituted the regulation in the fall of 2012 after a number of babies contracted herpes following MBP.

The department says that 14 infants have been infected in New York City since 2000. Two of those babies died, and at least two others suffered brain damage.

But Cohn, who performs MBP regularly, says he has never obtained consent from a parent, and he never will. “I don’t believe in it,” Cohn said of the consent form.

Cohn, 85, is no ordinary mohel — he is chairman of the American Board of Ritual Circumcision, and widely considered one of the top mohels in a very Jewish city.

In an earlier telephone conversation, Cohn told the Forward that MBP must be performed to fulfill the commandment of circumcision. He said that the only exception is if the rite puts an infant’s health at risk.

By this, Cohn did not mean the health of the infant in front of him at a bris. Cohn said the risk he feared was that the infant of a couple who are “not strictly observant” might transmit a disease to him via MBP — and that he could then transmit that disease to another infant.

“They could be drug users, they could be going to prostitutes and who knows what, and are infected with all kinds of diseases,” Cohn said, referring to nonobservant parents.
...

When a reporter from the Forward called the infant’s father after the circumcision, the father said that he was aware of the risks of MBP and that he had instructed Cohn not to perform it. “I didn’t allow him to do that,” the father said.

So what did Cohn actually do when he “did what I had to do”? Confronted with the father’s testimony, Cohn said that he had not, after all, performed MBP. But the reason, he said, had nothing to do with the father’s request; it was because the father did not seem observant enough. “That young man is out to have a good time,” Cohn said. “I don’t think he’s so careful who he has a good time with.”

This was not the only time that Cohn followed his own rules regarding MBP, at times even contradicting the expressed wishes of the parents.

Shortly before the Syrian circumcision ceremony began in Brooklyn, one guest remarked to another that he was at a circumcision recently where Cohn was asked not to perform MBP, but the rabbi refused to comply.
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Meanwhile, the health department has issued two warnings since January 2013, related to two infants being infected with herpes following MBP.

Despite the two recent cases, the city has never sanctioned or warned a mohel for failing to comply with the consent form regulation.

Mohels are required to keep a copy of the signed forms for one year. But the city will not say whether it has ever enforced the law by asking a mohel to provide a signed copy of such forms.

The Forward recently filed a freedom of information request asking the health department whether it had ever requested signed forms from a mohel. The request also asked for copies of any such forms submitted with the names of family members redacted.

The health department denied both parts of the request. ...

But Cohn said that the city’s claims that MBP causes herpes are a “blood libel” and that he will never obtain written consent before performing MBP.
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“Now I am here in America all these years, and I am terribly disappointed religion is being interfered with,” he said. “If they want me to go to jail, I will go to jail.”

Earlier story

PITTSBURGH: Penis cut off, reattached, rabbi sued

CBS
December 27, 2013

Rabbi Sued After Baby Injured During Circumcision

[Every baby is injured during circumcision....]
by Marty Griffin
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – The incident detailed in the lawsuit happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill within the last year.

The Jewish circumcision ceremony was performed by Pittsburgh Rabbi Mordechai Rosenberg – who is also a mohel.

Sometime during the bris, according to the lawsuit, Rosenberg severed the baby boy’s penis.

The baby was rushed to Children’s Hospital, where doctors performed emergency microsurgery.

“If your finger, your thumb was cut off and was put back on, that is pretty exciting,” said renowned UPMC plastic surgeon Dr. Joe Losee.

Dr. Losee was not involved in the boy’s treatment and he can’t talk specifics.

But our sources say it took eight hours. The baby needed six blood transfusions and was hospitalized for nearly two months. Sources describe the reattachment procedure as successful.

Dr. Losee says microsurgery advances every day, but it’s risky.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t always work,” he says. “When you’re reattaching a portion where you include nerves, sometimes the nerves don’t heal well beyond where you reattached it. So there are limitations for sure.” [The foreskin included nerves....]

On his website, Rabbi Rosenberg says he is recognized as a “certified mohel by the American Board of Ritual Circumcision.” His site also says “a doctor’s medical circumcision, usually performed in the hospital, is not considered valid according to Jewish law.”

“That is extraordinarily serious and is extraordinarily rare,” said attorney David Llewellyn.

Llewellyn handles cases involving injury during circumcision – injury brought on by both doctors in the hospital and mohels in religious ceremonies.

“Your average pediatric urologist probably spends about 20 percent of his or her time repairing children who have been circumcised,” Llewellyn says.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one in every 500 newborn boys experience significant acute complications as a result of circumcision.

“This is pretty much unregulated,” Llewellyn said.

He says there is no regulated standard for training or certification of mohels, or any place for reporting injuries from circumcision.

“There’s virtually no regulation of this any place in the United States that I know of,” Llewellyn said. “I think the government probably should require some sort of training if this is going to be done.”

Rabbi Rosenberg told KDKA “I am trained in this.” He also called the case a “tragic accident” and a “horrible situation.” But also said he continues to perform circumcisions.

Sources close to the case say, while the baby is recovering, there’s no way to know if he’ll make a complete recovery. [Not until he's a man and using it.] The incident happened about eight months ago.