From Jewish Identity Mark To American Mark

In the past thousands of years, Jew's circumcision ritual has determined Jew's identity. On the eighth day after birth, Jewish baby boy must be circumcised according to Jewish laws. For a man who didn't be circumcised, he was not accepted as a Jew by other Jewish people. The identity role of circumcision could be seen in three aspects: ethnical mark, religious mark, and patriarchal mark.With the arrival of modernization, not a few Jews began to reform their tradition; therefore, Jew's circumcision was regarded as a symbol of separatism and barbarism. Reform Jews used to jettison it in the hope of integrating into modern society. However, after World War Two, reform Jews in America began to rediscover circumcision.Besides this attitude change on circumcision, American Jews has another difference when compared with Jews in other countries—it is the higher circumcision rate among American Jews. Reasons for these differences are closely related to the particular situation of America.In the former researches about Jew's circumcision, many scholars were busy with their attitude expression on this ritual—approval or criticism. This paper, having nothing to do with the judgment of the ritual itself, tries to prove that the role of American Jew's circumcision has been changed. Because of the gone of its ethnical, religious and patriarchal marks, Jew's circumcision, one of the traditional Jewish identity marks has been transformed into an American-liked practice among American Jews. Therefore, this paper focuses on how and why the change happens, through which we can see American feature rather than Jewishness comes first for many American Jews. I hope this paper would be helpful for our understanding of the relationship between American mainstream culture and ethnic minorities'traditions.