Do you have a pheun?Le petit est adorable

Grandmuffti and I have a friend. His name is Pierre and he’s French. I have a theory that since he was pretty much raised in Quebec – French born + Quebec raised= Belgian. Pierre doesn’t like that so much. He also has to endure our constant ribbing about the Maginot line, French foreign and domestic policy since 1789, the fact that he is the only boxer on record to have ever knocked himself out and how much cooler it is not to have a foreskin and have to deal with smegma. For his part, Pierre tries to get back at us by calling us Zionists. Good one Pierre. We’re mortified.

Anyhow, as you can tell, grandmuffti and I totally love Pierre. And now Pierre got a baby! Little Thomas is doing just fine as is his Mom, the lovely Isabel. Grandmuffti and I have volunteered to give the boy a nice kosher circumcision but Pierre, who isn’t Jewish (just an honorary Jew), insists on saddeling him with the aforementioned foreskin and smegma. Oy! Sorry Thomas, we tried. Welcome to the world Thomas Jacques Paul Émile.

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

23 Comments

  • Nobody ever acknowledges the trauma that mothers go through when their sons are circumcized. The fact that Pierre is not obligated to have one is a blessing to his mother. Congrats Mom!

  • You know, you can talk all you want about the trauma of the mother, but the solid fact remains, we’re the ones who had our foreskins snipped off.

    But anyway, mazel tov (or not) to Pierre and new family.

  • dude – i gotta get the balance of the shabbat food like … now. Just post a URL to a good parsha…

  • The Grandmuffti is pleased to hear about a new young Pierre we can tease. Indeed, Master P has tired of our teasing about the Maginot line and it will be terrific to have a new person to make fun of 🙂 We certainly do love Pierre and the Muffti is thinking of making a special trip to Montreal during American Thanksgiving just to see him and the new baby (and Isa, the loving mother who has to put up with Pierre. When she gets him mad, I think her calls her a zionist too…) Mazel Tov Pierre.

  • “Nobody ever acknowledges the trauma that mothers go through when their sons are circumcized.”

    No on ever seems to give a damn about the babies getting their genitalia mutilated.

    Why are we still doing this? Because a book written thousands of years ago commands us to? The same book that allows us to stone our children to death and kill homosexuals? Isn’t this one tradition we can do without?

  • its called a tradition for a reason. if you don’t like it, don’t do it to your kids. not our problem if you turn against a heritage

  • Tell me Rina, do you still keep your hair covered at all times while outdoors, or did you “turn against a heritage?”

    It amazes me how so few Jews actually fully practice this religion they profess to be members of. They don’t eat Kosher, they don’t observe the Sabbath, they wont even put down a ham sandwich for this religion. But their son’s penis? Let’s mutilate it “just to be safe,” just in case there really is a G-d and he gets pissed at us not obeying all of his commands; at least you can say you kept the convent, well your sons did anyway.

    “Nobody ever acknowledges the trauma that mothers go through when their sons are circumcized.”

    Go cry me a river. If the mothers are so traumatised by this disgusting, barbaric, bronze-aged tradition, they shouldn’t be subjecting their helpless baby boys to it.

  • Yo tradition! I like circumcisions! I hate the thought of smegma, I like the fact that I am at lower risk for venereal disease and prostate cancer and I totally groove to the notion of making a deal with the big dude in the sky. Thanks M & D for my bris! Had it not happenned when I was 8 days old I would have had to do it as an adult, which would not have been so much fun.

    As for selectively practicing rituals, just because you only practice some of them does not mean you ought to just stop and practice none of them. I mean do you ever drive faster than the posted speed limit? You do? Then you may as well kill people and practice insider trading!!

    And we keep the covenant, not the convent – convents are for nuns, not so much for Jews.

  • yeah… uncircumsized is really nasty… not that i would know… 0:-)

  • The Grandmuffti would like to remind CK of some other moments of French history that we rib Master Pierre for:
    *The Storming of the Bastille: The French are so proud of this, yet history has not forgotten the embarrasing fact that the Bastille had fallen into virtual disuse by the time the peasants got around to slaughtering the head of the Swiss guards who gave it up (almost) without a fight. (see: http://utut.essortment.com/thestormingof_rksu.htm if you are curious).
    * The Vichy Government.
    * The (lack of any real action on behalf of) resistance.
    * Dreyfuss
    * Getting suckered into war by Bismark on behalf of a memo B chopped up regarding the nomination of a king of Spain. It turns out that the newly constituted Germany would have marched through Paris earlier but for the fact that the government of Paris toppled mid-war and it was too confusing. (see: http://www.historyorb.com/europe/bismarck2.shtml )

    Perhaps we should be glad that France isn’t jewlicious…Sorry Pierre. Try to let young Thomas think of himself as Canadian to avoid the historical shame we bring to bear on you…

  • I once mentioned the Maginot Line (needless to say, as a joke) to a French Quebecois who lives in the US. He was very offended and proceeded to give me a 20 minute lecture about the courage and fighting abilities of the French.

  • They did fight fairly bravely, especially given that they were getting their asses entirely kicked. The oddities of Maginot seemed to have been purely tactical and engineering related.

  • I don’t dispute that some fought bravely, just as I didn’t argue with him about the point. The Maginot Line is shorthand for gargantuan war planning failure and human error, not for poor courage. He took my remark to mean something different and became very defensive about French courage. Mind you, he wasn’t French. He was a Canadian from Quebec.

  • My hoes, err I mean my ladies often comment and complain about uncircumsized smegma covered cheese peckers that they encounter on a regular basis. They much rather prefer that thier clients are circumsized.