Review of Shaye J.D. Cohen, Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), Xvii + 317 Pp

At the site of the human body, conflicting religious, cultural and theological values can clash. This is all the more true when questions of belonging and communal identity are permanently incised into the body, as in the case of circumcision. Performed on a Jewish boy on the eighth day after birth, circumcision is a sign for the covenant between the people of Israel and God and has become almost synonymous with Jewish identity. To be a Jewish man--or so it seems--means to be circumcised. But what about Jewish women? Does their non-circumcision imply that they are not part of the covenant? Or, if they are part of the covenantal relationship, is circumcision theologically overrated as a bodily signifier? Does circumcision signify a privileged position of men or, to the contrary, does it indicate that men are lacking a quality that women already possess?