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AposthiaAposthia is a rare congenital condition in humans, in which the foreskin is missing. Additional recommended knowledgeToward the end of the 19th Century, E. S. Talbot claimed in Medicine that aposthia among Jews was evidence for the now-discredited Lamarckian theory of evolution. It is likely that the cases he described were actually hypospadias, a condition in which the urinary meatus is on the underside of the penis. Neither condition has a particularly high incidence among Jews. Aposthia in IslamAccording to legend, the prophet Mohammed was born without a foreskin[1]. However, Arabs had been practising circumcision long before this, and this legend is not the reason that Muslims circumcise. Aposthia in JudaismThe Midrash of Ki-Tetze [כי תצא] notes that Moses was born aposthic. Other sources tell us that Jacob and David were also born aposthic. Jewish law requires males born without a foreskin or who lost their foreskin through means other than a formal circumcision ceremony (brit milah ברית מילה) to have a drop of blood (hatafat-dam, הטפת דם) let from the penis at the point where the foreskin would have been (or was) attached. The Talmud (Shabbat 135A) records a discussion of whether the importance of this letting of blood supersedes Shabbat, on which only a child who was born the previous Shabbat can be circumcised. If a regular circumcision is delayed, there is no disagreement that this may not be performed on Shabbat. However, in the case of aposthia, there are two schools of thought.
David Levy, former Israeli Foreign Minister and member of Knesset, was born aposthic. Arye Avneri's authorized 1983 biography of Levy notes this:
The rabbis in Rabat proclaimed that this foretold that Levy would grow up to be a "leader of Israel", even though the State was not founded until Levy was 11, in 1948. It should be noted, however, that this proclamation was not necessarily prophetic of the founding of the country Israel, for "Israel" is a term occasionally used to mean "the Jewish people." Sources
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Aposthia". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |