FLORIDA: Time running out for Chase

Beyond the Bris
November 18, 2014

Upheld: Healthy Florida Boy to be Circumcised Against Mom's Wishes

by Rebecca Wald
The fight to save her four-year-old son from non-medically necessary circumcision recently got a lot tougher for a South Florida mom. On November 6 an appeals court upheld a ruling allowing the boy’s father to have him circumcised despite his mother’s deeply held belief that the procedure will be painful, damaging and emotionally harmful to him.

The mother, Heather Hironimus of Boynton Beach, and the father, Dennis Nebus of Boca Raton, had a brief relationship but never married. In January of 2012 the parents agreed to a court-ordered parenting plan which provided that the father would be responsible for scheduling and paying for the child’s circumcision. Although not initially opposed to the surgery, Hironimus says she later changed her mind after researching the procedure.

There are a number of very strange aspects to this case. The lower court judge Hon. Jeffrey Dana Gillian never appointed a Guardian ad Litem to advocate for the best interests of the child, and testimony by a child mental health professional was not allowed during trial. The lower court also placed a gag order on Hironimus preventing her from speaking about the case to the media or publicly raising funds for an appeal. She was also ordered not to tell her son that she opposes the procedure in any way, and to be separated from him for a period of weeks following the surgery.

Perhaps most disturbing is the age of the child. Circumcision beyond infancy is a more complicated procedure with an arguably greater risk of surgical complications. The boy will need need to be put under general anesthesia and intubated to facilitate ventilation of his lungs. At this age he will also be aware that his foreskin has been removed and will probably remember the event—including the court-mandated prolonged separation from his mother during this traumatic time.

No doubt in part due to the gag order on the mother, this case is not garnering much publicity, although Facebook and Twitter are buzzing and several celebrities have tweeted their support. Given that the case has already reached an appeals court, the chances of the mother prevailing at this point remain slim. Beyond the Bris will continue to follow this story and issue news updates as they happen.

In an interesting side note, an Orthodox Jewish website has condemned the ruling ordering the boy to be circumcised.

Earlier story

OAKLAND: Lawyers: gag order on Chase's mother "probably unconsitutional"

Gag-order "probably unconstitutional"

Attorneys for the Rights of the Child
November 17, 2014

Florida Mother Loses Appeal to Rescind Court-Ordered Circumcision of Four-Year-Old Boy

by Steven Svoboda
On November 6, 2014, an appeals court in Florida upheld a ruling ordering the circumcision of Chase, a healthy four-year-old boy. The boy's mother, Heather Hironimus, has been working to protect Chase from circumcision. The judge's original decision includes a remarkable, and probably unconstitutional, provision that his mother is not even allowed to inform Chase of her position on circumcision.

At four years old, Chase is a child who is fully aware of his body. He will experience and remember the pain of a circumcision, and he will be very aware that his body has been drastically changed.
Public figures such as Richard Dawkins, Russel Crowe, Alicia Silverstone and John Leguizamo have tweeted in favor of Chase.

Check our Facebook (www.facebook.com/ARCLAW) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/arclaw) accounts for the latest updates.

Earlier story: Chase, Crowe

HOLLYWOOD: More celebs tweet support for leaving Chase intact

November 14, 2014

More celebs weigh in over forced genital cutting

by Hugh Young
Two more celebrities have joined Russell Crowe's condemnation of a Florida judge's ruling that a four-year old boy should be circumcised against his mother's wishes.

Russell Crowe, who tweeted against genital cutting in 2011, re-tweeted Caprica is Burning's tweet:
- with the URL of a crowd-sourcing fund. Alicia Silverstone and John Leguizamo also retweeted:
Leguizamo also re-tweeted Caprica's:
The crowdfunding site referred to has closed Caprica's account, but another is still accepting donations.

Earlier story

HOLLYWOOD: Russell Crowe tweets support for leaving Chase intact

Mobile News (Australia)
November 12, 2014

Russell Crowe tweets in support of mother trying to stop circumcision of son

RUSSELL Crowe looks to have weighed in on the circumcision debate yet again, tweeting in support of a mother trying to stop her son from being circumcised.

The actor re-tweeted a tweet which is trying to raise support and money for the mother who has been given a gag order by the courts.

Heather Hironimus is trying to stop her four-year-old son, Chase, from having a circumcision, an operation she feels is unnecessary and a risk to his health.

A Florida court decided to rule against her and allow the procedure to go ahead[. H]owever she has since been granted an emergency motion to stay by a West Palm Beach court.

YouCaring, a free online fundraising site has taken up Hironimus’s cause, aiming to draw attention to her plight and to provide a place for people to contribute financially for the appeal.

As Hironimus has been prohibited from fundraising for her appeal, the site is doing it for her without her participation they claim.

According to court records, in December 2011, Heather Hironimus signed a parenting agreement which gave Chase’s father, Dennis Nebus, permission to have their (then) baby boy circumcised.

The procedure wasn’t carried out while he was still an infant and Hironimus decided that “as he (Chase) became older the surgery, and anaesthesia, were fraught with additional risks”.

She argues that the surgery is purely cosmetic and the parenting plan no longer pertains to a now older, and more aware, boy.

Paediatric urologist Charles Flack told the judge that circumcision is not medically necessary.

It’s no surprise that Crowe has sided with Hironimus’s case having previously criticised the practice of circumcision.

The gladiator actor got into an angry exchange on Twitter in 2011 telling Jewish people to “stop cutting your babies”.

The debate started when one of his fans called @picknic11 asked him, “My son is due soon. Do you think I should get him circumstanced? [sic]”

Crowe tweeted back “Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect.”

“Many Jewish friends, I love my Jewish friends, I love the apples and the honey and the funny little hats but stop cutting yr babies.

“I will always stand for the perfection of babies, I will always believe in God, not man’s interpretation of what God requires.

“Last of it, if u feel it is yr right 2 cut things off yr babies please unfollow and f--- off, I’ll take attentive parenting over barbarism.”

His outburst provoked numerous responses from his followers with one saying, “There’s actually a scientific reason for [circumcision], u should google it.”

In response Crowe tweeted, “My friend, “human” science has caused too much damage, don’t be a moron.”

Another follower told him, “I disagree on Circumcision, It’s more hygienic and nobody remembers it”, to which Crowe responded “Hygienic? Why don’t you sew up your a-- then?”

Crowe also apparently likened circumcision to human sacrifice, when another follower asked, “You are comparing sexual mutilation w/ a jewish ceremonial act?!”

He replied, “Can you actually read the words you just typed “ a ceremonial act” F--- that. The Mayans had ceremonial acts too.”

He later apologised for his comments saying, “I realize that some will interpret this debate as me mocking the rituals and traditions of others”.

“I am very sorry.” And in another post, he declared, “I have a deep and abiding love for all people of all nationalities ...”

Earlier story

ISRAEL: Tweeting mohel digs himself in deeper; botch outcome doubtful

Ynet
April , 2012

Celebrity mohel mocks baby's manhood

By
Rabbi Avi Zarki's tweet about carrying out circumcision on 'smallest penis' he had ever seen may land him in hot water, but he says he just wanted to share medical perspective
...
Rabbi Zarki is a rabbi-mohel who lives in Tel Aviv. Over the last few years he has established himself as the go-to mohel in the secular community and especially among celebrities and public figures. He has both a Facebook account and a twitter account which attest to his open and unusual style.

"I'm a famous mohel [modest, too] thanks in part to my sense of humor, and I don't lose that," the rabbi told Ynet and added "The beauty of the thing is to take a subject that is sensitive and delicate and talk about it with a smile."
[The beauty of the thing is to take a subject that is sensitive and delicate and leave it alone.]

And what about the right to privacy? Rabbi Zarki doesn't see how the tweet clashes with the parents' rights. "Every day I carry out several circumcisions and each one has hundreds of guests," he noted.

"There is no identifying mark in anything I wrote - not the parents, not a location and not the name, so whoever read the tweet won't be able to discover who it was about. And because of the swift process of the circumcision, even the people present at that circumcision - including the godfather and the photographer - won't be able to know there was a problem."

Rabbi Zarki added that two mohels examined the baby before he did and refused to conduct the circumcision for fear they would damage the penis when they removed the foreskin.
According to Zarki, the baby's parents asked him to look into the matter, and since he had already carried out three similar circumcisions, he agreed, even though he hadn't previously seen a penis as small in all his 24 years as a mohel.

"My goal (in tweeting the) tweet was to bring the matter to the public's attention, that you can carry out a halachic circumcision even when there is such a problem, which is complicated from a medical perspective, that was my message."
...
The rabbi's "humorous" tweet came on the same day that a different Brit ceremony carried out by a different mohel, ended in tragedy. An eight day old baby was rushed to hospital after a mohel cut off a third of his penis during a circumcision ceremony.

Three urologists at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa operated on the baby and said that they successfully reattached the penis, but added that they were as yet unsure whether the penis would function properly in the future. The Health Ministry was informed of the incident.

Earlier stories: tweets; botch

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL: Mohel tweets about small penis, brit b'li periah

Life in Israel
April 18, 2012

Mohel Tweets Himself Into Trouble With Controversial Tweets

By Rafi G.

In a very strange incident, Rav Avi Zarki, a popular mohel in Tel Aviv, tweeted two tweets on his twitter account that have him in hot water.

1. According to my professional opinion, today we can do the circumcision according to halacha without doing the traditional "preeya". [Then why not without the traditional milah?] tweet
2. Today I did a circumcision on a child with the smallest penis I have ever seen - a micro penis. You should undertand, it was slightly thicker than a matchstick. [One hates to think what damage will come to light when its owner grows up.] At 1st I thought it was a girl. Zeh HaKotton Gadol Yiheyeh (play on words saying this small one should become big). tweet

Kikar [in Hebrew] spoke to Rav Zarki to get a response, after his tweets caused a stir. Zarki defended his tweets basically by saying he is in an unusual position and has silent rabbinic support for his style. His position is unusual because he works a lot with the non-religious community and needs to do brash things in order to keep circumcision a topic of conversation. He says he has rabbinic support for his approach, but the rabbonim dont always want their names mentioned publicly, though he reminds us that he was one of the leading students of Rav Wolbe zt"l..

Regarding his comment that preeya is no longer necessary, he did not offer much of an explanation. He did say that it is the Solonika method that performs the circumcision together with the preeya, while he has letters from many rabbonim (including Rav Ovadiah Yosef he says) supporting his alternate method.

The comment about the baby, while he had a cute line with his "zeh hakotton gadol yiheyeh", was tasteless and inappropriate for him to make. if the parents had seen what he tweeted, I am sure they would not have been happy. The comment about preeya demands more of an explanation than trust me that anonymous rabbis support me.