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74

MUNgaDaBall
A vertise in our Ente rt ain Se
ment ti I

ILIZTROTT
JEWISH KIM

J N

The power of

advertising in

JN

248-354-6060 ext. 209

BREAKING from page 72

While the debate continues, some
still search for answers that sit well
with them. Ettinger is one of them.
In the days following the birth of her
second boy, she and her husband dis-
cussed at great length the decision to
circumcise. She didn't want the big,
catered party, the mohel telling jokes
to ease the tension. Most of all, she
didn't want to cause her little boy
any pain.
Ettinger sought out the mohel and
asked if a ceremonial cut could be
done instead of the entire amputa-
tion of the foreskin. She was told
that it wasn't possible. She sought
out Norm Cohen, who in turn
offered her and the baby a safe house
where they could hide on the day of
the bris. That was unacceptable to
her.
Then Ettinger considered how dif-
ferent her son would look when he
attended the Jewish nursery school
and had to urinate in front of other,
circumcised boys. She thought of the
questions he would have to answer
about his "Jewish penis." She also
considered that her son might be
viewed by others as less of a Jew or
not a Jew at all.
"I thought of him being ridiculed
at that age for something that per-
sonal," she said. "As a child, I knew
he wouldn't understand this."
So, on the eighth day after the
birth of her second son, Ettinger
opened her home to a handful of rel-
atives. She made the mohel promise
not to tell jokes or use any topical
anesthetic which she considered dan-
gerous. She even asked him not to
use the restraining board. Then she
closed herself in a room and rocked
her son for an hour, crying and apol-
ogizing and trying to explain to him
her decision to have him circum-
cised.
Finally, as the moment of the bris
approached, she handed over her son
to be circumcised. As her mother
forced her from the room, Ettinger
called out to her son, "I am sorry.
This was not my idea," Ettinger, who
recalls the bris as "the most excruci-
ating decision of my life," wants to
have more children. She secretly
hopes that she has a girl, in part so
she can avoid the whole circumcision
issue.
"It is going to have to take some
strong, strong person to say 'no,'
and I wasn't that person at the time,"
she said. "I would like to be able to
feel Jewish and not have to feel this
way." ❑

