BERLIN – Prosecutors dismissed a criminal complaint lodged against popular
Berlin Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg for causing bodily harm while performing
circumcision, according to a prosecution document obtained by The Jerusalem Post
on Thursday.
A complaint was filed against the Jerusalem-born Ehrenberg
on July 12 – for performing circumcision and for his statement on a German talk
show supporting the continuation of brit mila – and dismissed as unfounded in an
August 15 letter.
The prosecution’s dismissal document concluded that
there is no proof to establish that the rabbi’s conduct met the “condition of a
criminal” violation.
The Post learned on Wednesday that the city of
Berlin, which is one of 16 Federal German States, is considering not
implementing the June Cologne court decision outlawing Jewish and Muslim
circumcisions.
The Berlin prosecutor office’s document suggests that the
Berlin government rejects the Cologne decision.
According to the
prosecutor’s letter, “even if a non-medical circumcision were to take place it
would not meet the elements of severe bodily harm.”
A German doctor filed
a criminal charge in August against Rabbi David Goldberg for performing
circumcision.
Dr. Sebastian Guevara Kamm from Giessen, in the German
state of Hesse, lodged the complaint on the basis of the June Cologne ruling, in
the North Rhine-Westphalia state, that non-medical circumcision is a “serious and
irreversible interference in the integrity of the human body.”
The local
prosecutor’s office is still investigating the complaint against Goldberg. The
rabbi and mohel, or person trained in the practice of Jewish circumcision, sees
the complaint as part of an anti-Semitic campaign spreading throughout the
Federal Republic.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, told the Post via email on Thursday that “the SWC hopes this
important decision will lead all local German governments to commit not to
respond to frivolous, hateful criminal complaints against German rabbis and
mohels.”