My painful journey

Most men who are circumcised in infancy live their lives with no conscious memory or regret of their own trauma. As a result, they are frequently inaccessible for dialogue. Denying any injury, they tend to inflict their sons in similar fashion, aided and abetted in the United States by the mythologies of medicine. In Judaism, this is especially problematical, because of longstanding custom and tradition based on the biblical covenant. The personal history of a Jewish physician's recognition, at the age of sixty-five, of his own infant circumcision trauma, is recounted. The considerable psychic pain endured by this discovery leads to further conflicts within his family, the medical community, and his own Jewish congregation, when he begins to speak out against circumcision. After a few short years, he has now joined the ranks of human rights advocates.