Eating foreskins & the Israeli government

Rabbi Jacob Moses Toledano (1880 - 1960), from 1942 until his death; the Chief Sephardic Rabbi

of Tel Aviv, and Israeli Minister of Religions for two periods between 1958 and 1960. Pictured above holding

a Torah scroll, and with the Ninth Israeli Government, with Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir & David Ben Gurion

I've previously posted here on the little known practice of Jewish women

fighting over freshly severed babies' foreskins, which they would eat in the

belief it would help them conceive a male child. But I've recently obtained

a Jewish book which gives many details on this form of cannibalism.

Rabbi Toledano published a book in Egypt in 1931 entitled Yam ha-Gadol (which is
apparently a name for the Mediterranean Sea), he wrote of Jewish cannibalism:

"I saw fit to examine whether the law [prohibiting the consumption] of human flesh is from the Torah, whether this falls under the category of [the Noahide prohibition of the consumption of] a limb from a living creature and [the parallel prohibition of consuming] meat from a living creature, and the halakhic distinction regarding the consumption by women of the foreskin of an infant as a charm for pregnancy, and the like."

"A similar belief and practice was recorded among the women of the Salonikan community:

Another means that was considered to be extremely effective against infertility was to have a barren women (sic) swallow the foreskin of an infant close to his circumcision"

"The eating of the foreskin for the sake of [entering] pregnancy is common among the Eastern Jewish communities. In Safed and in Jerusalem, barren Sephardic Jewish women ate the foreskin as a charm for pregnancy. In most instances, the circumcisers were ordered, in advance, by husbands of infertile women to save the foreskins for the latter, for which they [the circumcisers] also were paid. Among the simple masses of Egyptian Jewry, the barren woman would swallow the foreskin so that she would be capable of becoming pregnant. This same practice was also prevalent among the Jewish and Muslim women in Tripoli, in Northern Africa. Among Turkish Jewry, if a woman bore a child once and then ceased to give birth, she would eat a foreskin in order to become pregnant once again.

Traces of this popular practice are to be found in several books of charms: "So that a barren woman will become pregnant, she should swallow the foreskin of an infant who was circumcised" ... or "Take the circumcision of a youth, smear it with honey, and swallow it" ... The swallowing of the foreskin is also efficacious for the birth of a son, specifically: "When the foreskin is excised, women swallow [it], as a charm in order to give birth to males""

The Jewish Life Cycle: Custom, Lore and Iconography:

Jewish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave (2008)

By Daniel Sperber

For author's sources see scanned pages

Pages 14-15 and Pages 16-17