Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?

Abstract

From Hellenistic to modern times, in the eyes of Jews and non‐Jews alike, circumcision is a sign that marks the boundary between Jews and non‐Jews. Jews are circumcised, gentiles are not. What, then, of Jewish women? Why are they not marked with a bodily sign attesting to their place within the covenant? Cohen argues that the Jews of antiquity seem not to have been bothered by this question probably because the fundamental Otherness of women was clear to them. Jewish women were Jewish by birth, but their Jewishness was assumed to be inferior to that of Jewish men. Jews and Christians, however, who opposed circumcision, used the non‐circumcision of women as one of their supporting arguments.

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