QWANZ

Over the last decade, Rabbi Moshe Trager has performed more than 3,000 circumcisions on Bay Area Jews, he estimates. Mr. Trager, 45, said he sometimes performs as many as five in one day — driving as far as Lake Tahoe to snip a foreskin, helping modern Jews fulfill a commandment they believe was first issued by God to Abraham thousands of years ago....   >>>

Over the last decade, Rabbi Moshe Trager has performed more than 3,000 circumcisions on Bay Area Jews, he estimates. Mr. Trager, 45, said he sometimes performs as many as five in one day — driving as far as Lake Tahoe to snip a foreskin, helping modern Jews fulfill a commandment they believe was first issued by God to Abraham thousands of years ago.



Mr. Trager said he is not worried about an initiative to ban circumcision of boys in San Francisco, which may land on the November 2011 ballot. “I don’t think some naughty Jewish guy with a chip on his shoulder is going to bring ritual circumcision down,” Mr. Trager said, listing dictators like Hitler and Stalin who tried to forbid the practice.



The initiative is being circulated by a retired hotel credit manager, Lloyd Schofield, and needs 7,100 signatures to qualify for the ballot, a relatively easy task in a city with more than 800,000 residents. Mr. Schofield says the initiative is needed to protect children from what he calls “forced genital cutting.”



The initiative would amend San Francisco’s police code “to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18.” Violations would result in a $1,000 fine.



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