In this bonus episode, Eli sits down with journalist and human rights advocate Jennifer Margulis to explore her journey from accepting circumcision as a given to becoming one of its most thoughtful critics. Jennifer shares how her views were first challenged in her 20s during a human rights fellowship, how Jewish tradition and American medical culture shape parental assumptions, and why informed consent and bodily autonomy must be central to our discussions about infant circumcision.

Jennifer Margulis’s Substack: Vibrant Life

Jennifer’s website: https://www.jennifermargulis.net

What a season it’s been on the Bruchim Podcast! Eli and Max debrief the conversations we’ve had with an incredible variety of guests. We cover: hatafat dam brit, including its ethics, lived experience (for good and bad) and future possibilities; the significance of circumcision as a ritual act vs. a bodily state; the medicalization of circumcision and its social and religious impact; what the future looks like for brit milah and other forms of ritual genital cutting; and some of the ethical concepts we’ve tackled this season, including the caution needed for rituals involving children.

Evolve Podcast, Rethinking the Circumcision Part 2, with Rabbi Kevin Bernstein

Responsa Radio, How to Name a Baby Girl

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, “What Does ‘Brit’ Mean to Liberal Jews in the 21st Century?”

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon and Max DuBoff, Circumcision Texts in the Jewish Tradition

Max DuBoff, Circumcision and Egalitarianism

We talk a lot about Jewish circumcision on this podcast, but what’s the significance of the foreskin? Can we even think about the foreskin apart from circumcision? Eli and Max are joined by Prof. Jonathan Allan (Brandon University), author of Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin, to tackle these questions. We discuss the impact of the foreskin on identity, and the aesthetic power of the foreskin (including the foreskin on Michelangelo’s David!). We also discuss pregnancy manuals’ framing of parental choice about circumcision, sex manuals’ framing of the foreskin as pleasurable, the significance of foreskin restoration, and why genital autonomy activism isn’t just an online movement.

Jonathan Allan, Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin

Jordan Osserman, Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery

Patrick Stewart’s circumcision story on The Graham Norton Show

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision

Marilyn Fayre Milos with Judy Kirkwood, Please Don't Cut the Baby!: A Nurse's Memoir