[Selenay]

I was recently party to a brit milah, which translates to "Ritual circumcision."

I'd never been to one, before, and I was Very Very Curious how it was all going to go down; after all, it was happening in the rec-room of an apartment building. Let me tell you for free, my first question was, "Is this even sanitary?" (It was. I had my doubts, but it was quick and very very clean.)

The second thing of which we were all assured by the man performing the circumcision is that, were anything at all even so much as a cough or a sneeze or a decline in pallor was wrong with the child, the circumcision would n-o-t NOT happen.

I won't go into the religious aspects of what all went on, but the boychik was well taken care of. The boy was tended to by a nurse who specifically handled post-circumcision babies, who was very insistent about the way Things Were Going To Be. Furthermore, he did not appear to be in any more distress than a child who's just received a shot.

The grandparents, on the other hand, looked like they suffered far more than their grandson... But they were the ones holding him still and steady while the circumcision was being done.

As for the medical benefits, an article from the New England Journal of medicine comments that none of the 1600 people involved in their study of penile cancer had been circumcised at birth; and the complication rate of a circumcision is as low as .13%, and the most common complication is excessive bleeding (New England Journal of Medicine, 1990).


Edited to add: I would, however, like to point out that not all circumcisions done in the United States are performed with anesthesia... Not all are done in hospitals, either; anesthesia is sometimes declined for fear of the risks it would pose to the child's body or the belief that it is unnecessary.