The Smallest Cut: The Ethics and (Surprising) Implications of Hatafat Dam Brit for the Ongoing Genital Cutting Debate

This essay applies an ethical analysis of the Jewish religious rite of hatafat dam brit to the ongoing debate on child genital cutting. Recent scholarship on the ethical and legal status of "de minimis" or "symbolic" involuntary genital cutting practices features disagreement over what, if anything, grounds their wrongfulness given that they are (relatively) physically superficial. Hatafat dam brit ("the drawing of covenantal blood") is even less physically intrusive than the most minor of the other practices commonly debated (e.g., "ritual nicking" of the vulva) yet still, as I will show, elicits moral concern-including from within the practicing religious community. As a type of genital cutting ritual that does not, in fact, modify the body, hatafat dam brit challenges those on both sides of the debate to clarify the basis for their moral objection or approval. I argue that debates about involuntary genital cutting of minors should focus on the ethics of these practices considered as (sexually) embodied interpersonal interactions, rather than as body modifications.