The Epigenetic Covenant

Jewishness is not genetic, but it’s genital

In my previous post, I presented the “Kenite hypothesis”, the theory that Moses fashioned the Israelites’ religion after the cult of a semi-nomadic tribe of which his father-in-law Jethro was a priest.

I mentioned in passing Exodus 4:24-26, in which Yahweh wants to kill Moses but spares him when his wife Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter, circumcises their newborn son with a flint. Since Yahweh’s wish to kill Moses comes totally unexplained, and since the previous verse is about Yahweh’s threat to Pharaoh to “kill your son, your first-born,” I assumed that this incoherent narrative is a distorted version of a more straightforward one, in which Yahweh would have killed Moses’s son if he hadn’t been circumcised.

Why would a scribe make this clumsy edit? To obscure the obvious implication that the Jewish rite of brit milah (the “covenant of cutting”) was established as a substitute for the sacrifice of the first-born male. This would be speculation if there was no other scriptural clue that this is precisely what happened during the Babylonian exile, when human sacrifices were banned and eighth-day circumcision inaugurated. Here is the evidence.

Exodus 13:12-13 commands: “you shall dedicate to Yahweh every son that opens the womb; and all the male firstlings of your animals shall belong to Yahweh.” It adds that the first-born of a donkey can be “redeemed by a sheep,” and that the same must be done for the first-born of a human: “Every first-born son you must redeem.” This is repeated in Exodus 34:19-20.[1]

If these verses are open to interpretation, Exodus 22:28-29 removes the ambiguity: “You shall give me the first-born of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep; for seven days the firstling may stay with its mother, but on the eighth day you must give it to me.” This clarifies that the commandment is the same for animals and for humans. It also specifies that the first-born is to be sacrificed on the eighth day after his birth.

How can a sheep — and therefore a human — be “given to Yahweh” except by sacrificing it, presumably as a holocaust (burnt offering), since this is the only sacrifice pleasing to Yahweh? It is true that the notion is not fully explicit in the verses I just quoted. We should not expect it to be, because at the time of the final redaction of the Bible, that commandment was obsolete; human sacrifices were no longer required, nor even allowed. But Ezekiel 20:25-26 confirms unambiguously that, in a not so distant past, Yahweh demanded that the Israelites “sacrifice every first-born son.”

Human sacrifices are forbidden in Leviticus 18:21 and 22:2-5, as well as in Jeremiah 7:30-31, and for the historian, the prohibition proves the practice, for there is no need to forbid something that is never done (the same holds true for the commandment not to have sex with animals in Exodus 22:18-19, by the way). Therefore children were still sacrificed at the time when Leviticus and the Book of Jeremiah were written, although it was officially outlawed.

What is puzzling is that, in Leviticus and Jeremiah, child sacrifices are said to be offered to Molek (or Molech) but in the name of Yahweh and in his temple. For example: “Anyone … who gives any of his children to Molek, will be put to death, [for] he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name” (Leviticus 20:2-3). This apparent paradox has been resolved by Swiss biblical scholar Thomas Römer: the word MLK, vocalized as Molek in the Hebrew Masoretic version and Melek in the Greek Septuagint, is identical to the Hebrew word for “king” (malik in Arabic), and it is applied more than fifty times to Yahweh himself. This means that Molek was originally none other than Yahweh himself. The expression Yahweh Melek is found in Psalms 10 and still in use in Jewish religious songs. What happened is that during the exilic period, a process of dissociation was operated, between the evil god MLK who asked the sacrifice of every first-born son eight days after birth, and the good god YHWH who forbade this practice.[2] The result is a biblical text containing two layers, as in a palimpsest: in the ancient version, the first-born son was to be sacrificed to Yahweh on the eighth day, while in the new version written over it, human sacrifices are done to Melek (but in Yahweh’s name and in Yahweh’s sanctuary) and condemned. Kings of Israel and Judea who offered their sons as burnt offerings are criticized in 1Kings 16:34, 2Kings 16:3, and 2Kings 21:6.

The systematic sacrifice of the first-born son on the eighth day of his life was not just abandoned during the exile. It was replaced by the systematic circumcision of every son on the eighth day of his life:

“As soon as he is eight days old, every one of your males, generation after generation, must be circumcised … My covenant must be marked in your flesh as a covenant in perpetuity. The uncircumcised male, whose foreskin has not been circumcised — that person must be cut off from his people: he has broken my covenant.” (Genesis 17:9-14)

This is the only commandment given to Abraham. This Abrahamic covenant comes before the Mosaic covenant in the biblical narrative, but it was instituted later in reality. Abraham is never mentioned by pre-exilic prophets.[3] His journey from Mesopotamia to Palestine, promised to him in Genesis 15:7, was invented as a blueprint for the (re)conquest of Palestine by the exiles in Babylon.

The story of Abraham demonstrating perfect obedience to Yahweh when being asked to sacrifice Isaac but then prevented from it, is traditionally held as a major civilizational breakthrough credited to Israel. René Girard adapted this interpretation in numerous books, starting with The Scapegoat (1986): the story of God sparing Isaac is about ending the polytheistic practice of sacrificing one’s own children to the likes of Moloch. Girard suggests that the stance of biblical monotheism against idolatry stems largely from an understanding that polytheistic “religions” are, in the final analysis, cults of human sacrifice.

But the historical record does not support that interpretation. Human sacrifices were indeed practiced in many other societies. The Phoenicians certainly did it. Even the Achaeans (Greeks) did it exceptionally, if we are to believe their ancient legends: King Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. In the story of Oedipus, the motive for the abandonment (a method of bloodless sacrifice) of the first-born male was to neutralize the potential threat to the king’s life — for every king’s eldest son tends to be impatient of becoming king. But the Israelites were certainly not the first to give up human sacrifices. Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, wrote around 250 BC that, “the Syrians, or whom the Jews [Ioudaioi, or Judaeans] constitute a part, still now sacrifice live victims.” He adds that, “they were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves.”[4] This may not be true, but it shows that the Jews were not regarded as pioneers in the abolition of human sacrifices.

According to 2Kings 23:10, it was King Josiah (640-609 BC) who abolished the sacrifices of children, “so that no one could pass his son or daughter through the fire of sacrifice to Molek.” But biblical scholars like Thomas Römer believe that human sacrifices were only banned after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, because it was outlawed in Babylon. Eighth-day sacrifice of the first-born male was then replaced by eighth-day circumcision of every newborn male instead.

Circumcision itself was not new. In the first millennium AD, it was widely practiced in Arabia and Egypt, and probably by some peoples in Syria. But it was done on pubescent boys, as part of an initiation rite. Since it was unknown in Mesopotamia, the Levites who legislated over the Jewish community there gave circumcision the value of a marker of ethnic identity. But circumcising newborns rather than pubescent boys had also the advantage of curtailing Jewish assimilation into Babylonian society. Forcing parents to have their male children circumcised on the eighth day was a way to mark Jewishness in the flesh as early as possible. In the flesh, but also in the most inaccessible layer of the subconscious, through a symbolic castration accompanied by unbearable pain. Circumcision on the eighth day is, in fact, a ritual trauma whose psychological impact is intense and irreparable. A week after he enters life — a trauma in itself, but one that is soon healed by the mother’s love — the male infant is painfully initiated into the cruelty of his family and their god.

Because infants cannot speak, rabbis who defend the tradition of brit milah speak in their place to minimize their physical pain. But according to Professor Ronald Goldman, author of Circumcision, the Hidden Trauma (1997), studies prove the neurological impact of infant circumcision. Behavioral changes observed after the operation, including sleep disorders and inhibition in mother-child bonding, are signs of a post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The trauma is also on the mother, whose guilt is a determining factor in the well-known ambivalence of the “Jewish mother”. During the ceremony of brit milah, the mother is normally kept away from the scene. But testimonies by “Mothers Who Observed Circumcision,” published on the Circumcision Resource Center web page, are eloquent. “The screams of my baby remain embedded in my bones and haunt my mind,” says Miriam Pollack. “His cry sounded like he was being butchered. I lost my milk.” Nancy Wainer Cohen: “I will go to my grave hearing that horrible wail, and feeling somewhat responsible.” Elizabeth Pickard-Ginsburg:

Jesse was shrieking and I had tears streaming down my face. . . . He was screaming and there was no doubt in his scream that he wanted mother, or a mothering figure to come and protect him from this pain!! . . . Jesse screamed so loud that all of a sudden there was no sound! I’ve never heard anything like it!! He was screaming and it went up and then there was no sound and his mouth was just open and his face was full of pain!! I remember something happened inside me . . . the intensity of it was like blowing a fuse! It was too much. We knew something was over. I don’t feel that it ever really healed. . . . I don’t think I can recover from it. It’s a scar. I’ve put a lot of energy into trying to recover. I did some crying and we did some therapy. There’s still a lot of feeling that’s blocked off. It was too intense. . . . We had this beautiful baby boy and seven beautiful days and this beautiful rhythm starting, and it was like something had been shattered!! . . . When he was first born there was a tie with my young one, my newborn. And when the circumcision happened, in order to allow it I had cut off the bond. I had to cut off my natural instincts, and in doing so I cut off a lot of feelings towards Jesse. I cut it off to repress the pain and to repress the natural instinct to stop the circumcision.

Jewish advocates deny the traumatic impact of eighth-day circumcision. If it had been traumatic, they say, it would have been abandoned long ago. Marc-André Cotton argues for the opposite, because victims of childhood trauma have a proven tendency to repeat the abuse they suffered on their children.

If it did not have the traumatic impact that its promoters deny, the operation would have long since disappeared. On the contrary, it is this impact which explains its persistence, the virulence of the reactions that its questioning arouses and the silence which surrounds the child's suffering … In a male circumcision ritual, group pressure reactivates a terror in the parents which distracts them from their natural sensitivity and therefore from the child’s experience.[5]

Children abused by their parents, or with their parents’ consent, develop a strong neurotic bond to their abusers. The abused child thinks he, not his parents, is bad and being punished, and he is desperately focused on pleasing the abuser by being submissive, a psychological process akin to the Stockholm syndrome. The terror, the pain and the rage can also trigger in very young children’s mind a mechanism known as dissociation. The idea of the wickedness of parental figures is so devastating that the repressed anger will be deviated away from them—in this case, away from the Jewish community as a collective parent. Is it farfetched to suppose a causal link between the trauma of eighth-day circumcision and the fact that Jews tend to be incapable of seeing the abuse perpetrated on them by their own community, and instead see the rest of the world as a constant threat? Could it be that the trauma of eighth-day circumcision has created a special predisposition, a pre-programmed paranoia that impairs the Jews’ capacity to relate and react rationally to certain situations? Was brit milah invented some twenty-three centuries ago as a kind of ritual trauma designed to enslave mentally millions of people, an unbreakable “covenant” carved into their heart in the form of an incurable subconscious terror that can at any time be triggered by code-words such as “Holocaust” or “anti-Semitism”?

In 2015, a research team led by Dr. Rachel Yehuda at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, concluded that the trauma of the Holocaust is passed from generation to generation via “epigenetic inheritance.”[6] The epigenetic impact, or “genomic imprinting”, of the traumatic ritual mutilation of the penis of every eight-day male is certainly much greater. It is, according to Jewish reporter Jean Daniel, one of the walls of the “Jewish prison.”[7] Today, more than nine male Israelis out of ten is circumcised: this cannot be irrelevant to the collective madness of Israel.

In Gentile countries, every attempt to ban it has failed. In 2018, an Icelandic bill was success­fully fought by European Jewish organizations as “anti-Semitic”.[8] Yet, sooner or later, it will have to be banned, because it goes against the most basic, natural and universal child protection legislation. Banning this satanic ritual will go a long way toward solving the Jewish Problem. The next step will be to treat the Tanakh as Mein Kampf has been treated in the last seven decades.

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[1] Numbers 18:15-17 declares redeemable the “first-born of an unclean animal” (unfit for consumption), but forbids to redeem “the first-born of cow, sheep and goat,” which are destined for the consumption of the Levites.

[2] Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, Harvard UP, 2015, pp. 137-138.

[3] Mario Liverani, La Bible et l’invention de l’histoire, Gallimard, 2012, pp. 354–355. English edition: Israel’s History and the History of Israel, Equinox Publishing, 2007.

[4] Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (vol. 1), Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974, p. 10.

[5] Marc-André Cotton, www.regardconscient.net/archi04/0405circoncision.html

[6] “Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children’s genes,” The Guardian, August 21, 2015, on www.theguardian.com.

[7] Jean Daniel, La Prison juive. Humeurs et méditations d’un témoin, Odile Jacob, 2003, p.107.

[8] David Rosenberg, “Iceland drops proposed circumcision ban,” April 30, 2018, on www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/245193