Jewish circumcision no longer threatened in Australian state

SYDNEY, Australia, June 29 (JTA) — Concern that health authorities in Australia’s most populous state had adopted an anti-circumcision policy have been laid to rest after a meeting between Jewish leaders and the New South Wales health minister. The New South Wales Department of Health recently issued a position paper cautioning circumcising children younger than 6 months old. The paper appeared to represent a shift in government policy against the brit milah, the ritual circumcision that normally takes place when the male child is 8 days old. The paper was greeted enthusiastically by a small group of anti-circumcision activists, some of whom have adopted anti-Semitic rhetoric in their public pronouncements against the practice. Peter Wertheim, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, and Dr. Ian Kern, a consultant to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry on medical ethics, voiced the Jewish community’s concerns in a meeting last week with Dr. Andrew Refhuage, deputy premier and health minister of New South Wales. “The widespread use by mohelim in Australia of the topical anaesthetic cream, Emla, which was positively reviewed in the April 1997 New England Journal of Medicine, has helped lessen concern that undue pain may be inflicted on a child, which had been an issue of contention with the health minister,” Wertheim said in an interview after the meeting. Wertheim explained the health minister said the government, despite the position paper’s assertions, did not recommend against circumcision.