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In Cologne, circumcision was made a criminal offense, but it is not seen as clearly as it seems to some in Germany in other western countries. In the [[USA]], for example, it is almost routine. The health organizations in different countries assess the procedure differently.

If the scientific argument is omitted, it becomes clear that the question of the permissibility of [[circumcision ]] is only about a decision about social [[values]], legally speaking about "legal interests". In fact, it is also about whether Jews in Germany are allowed to live their [[Judaism]] as they understand it and not as others think. Elizabeth Wyner Mark, editor of a volume published in 2003 entitled "The Covenant of Circumcision" writes with a view to the fact that most secular, by no means religious Jews have their boys [[Brit Milah| circumcised]], that circumcision is an expression of the Jewish will to survive after the Shoah<ref>''Shoah'' is a Hebrew word for ''catastrophe''. It is another word for the Holocaust.</ref> and thus for has become a moral obligation for many parents.

In any case, [[circumcision ]] has been a sign of Jewish self-assertion for millennia. The categorically experienced instruction of Jews to circumcise their sons on the eighth day can be historically proven for two and a half thousand years. However, since ancient times there have been repeated attempts to prevent circumcision. The Hellenistic culture, with its worship of the beautiful body, led many Jewish men to lengthen their foreskin again in order not to be ridiculed when doing sports in the nude. The Hellenistic King Antiochus IV even tried - despite all alleged pagan tolerance - to forcibly prohibit the circumcision of Jewish boys in the second century BC. This measure contributed significantly to the development of Jewish martyrdom.<ref>{{REFnews