Illustrations from the Wellcome Institute Library. A Polish rabbi's circumcision manual.

Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin, is one of the oldest and most widely performed operations known to man. As the operation has been found to have been carried out from ancient times in such disparate places as Africa, America, and Australia, there has beenmuch debate over its origins, but the hot climate ofall locations in which it is found practised in antiquity is a common feature. From this general characteristic it would seem to follow that practical considerations led primitive peoples subject to illnesses associated with the decay of the foreskin to remove it.1 Another general feature ofcircumcision is its connection with puberty and initiation into the adult or married state significant of a fertility rite.2 The practice ofadministering circumcision on the eighth day after birth among Jews raises it above the sphere of such initiation ceremonies and gives it the religious and symbolic nature3 claimed for it in the Hebrew scriptures and later apocryphal and rabbinical writings.4 It is the sign of the special covenant relationship enacted between God and Abraham, in which God set his seal on Abraham and his descendants as his chosen people for all time. (Gen. 17:10-14). Without this token of national dedication and purification, the Passover meal, commemorating Israel's deliverance from bondage in Egypt, could not be taken (Exod. 12:48), nor alliance with a Jewish family entered into (Gen. 34:14-16). During the period of Israel's exile in Babylon in the fourth century BC, Sabbath observance and circumcision took on an even greater significance as a means of retaining Jewish identity,5 and these observances continued in importance as Israel found herself ruled by foreigners both in the land of Israel itself and elsewhere.6