Ritual purity and impurity dominate this week’s Torah portion of Tazria, but after the destruction of the Second Temple these religious institutions have been discontinued in Jewish life. Nor do many ...

The cutting off of the foreskin as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. Every male, God ordered, was to be circumcised when he was eight days old (Genesis 17:12). This did not continue as ...

A German court has ruled that circumcising young boys on religious grounds amounts to grievous bodily harm, in a landmark decision that the Jewish community said trampled on parents' religious rights.