Participants of a working group on Brit Milah, who met in Brussels, decided to launch a pro-active campaign to educate parliamentarians and the general public in Europe about the religious circumcision, to push for standardization of the practice among all European communities and to initiate European-wide training of mohelim, those who perform ritual Jewish circumcisions, to meet the highest medical and hygiene standards.
The meeting of the working group in Brussels, hosted by the European Jewish Congress (EJC), discussed the political, legal, medical and ethical aspects of the current attacks on religious circumcision in Europe.
Earlier this month, the Parliamentary Association of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed a resolution attacking religious circumcision and in September leading officials in Sweden and Norway called for an end to Brit Milah on infants.
Last year, a local German court caused an uproar after ruling that religious circumcision was illegal, only to be overruled by the Bundestag, the German Parliament who voted to ensure its continuance.
Brit Milah is a right enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EJC recalls.
“For too long, European Jewry have been reactive to sporadic attacks on religious practices,” EJC President Moshe Kantor said. “However, the enemies of Jewish tradition are becoming more united and coordinated and so we must create a unified, coordinated and long-term strategic response to these attacks,” he added.
Additional decisions made by the working group include the training of Jewish communities to combat campaigns against Jewish religious rights, the engagement of experts in all the relevant medical and legal fields to defend Brit Milah and the placing of the issue at the forefront of the demands of Jewish voters and communities in the run-up to the elections for the European Parliament in May 2014.
"We are today facing a concerted and clearly coordinated campaign across Europe against Jewish religious rights. This campaign brings together strange coalitions linking the far-right, animal rights groups and some so-called progressive lobbyists. We cannot allow ourselves to be unprepared for this and we need to mobilise all of our communities to be pro-active and united to defend our Jewish identity and practice in Europe," said Philip Carmel, EJC Advisor on European Policy.