A Hispanic American converts to Judaism

Growing up in Southern California into a first-generation Hispanic and religious family did not equip me with a proper understanding of the pubescent body and human sexuality. At around eleven years old, my friends and I started to compare each other's penises for curiosity's sake. There was nothing sexual about it. All this to say that up to that point the only penises that I knew had foreskins.

At around thirteen, I was walking home from school when on the sidewalk near a movie rental shop I came across an empty VHS sleeve. I picked it up and was astonished to see naked men and women in sexual positions. That was the first time in my life I ever saw anything pornographic. Apart from the women's breasts (I was very excited to see those!), my eyes went down to the men's penises and noticed that their penises looked different to mine. Now, I had already learned that if I flicked my erect penis with my fingers long enough I would release a white, sticky, gooey liquid out of me; so I never knew that one could pull back one's foreskin to reveal the glans. I put the VHS sleeve in my backpack and couldn't wait to tell my neighborhood friend about it. I went to his house and showed it to him. He asked me, "Where's the movie?" I told him that the sleeve was empty. He told me to follow him, leading me to a closet where his dad kept his tools. After rummaging through box tools and other stuff, he got out a VHS, led me to his parents room (his parents weren't home, obviously), placed the VHS into the player and turned on the TV. What I saw was wild! My friend told me that he's been watching naked people have sex for a couple weeks since he discovered it. That's when I asked: "Why do all those guys' dicks look like that?" He said: "I don't know. Maybe white dicks don't have the hood that we have." So, like any horny teenager would've done, we whipped out our erect penises and started to play with ourselves. That's when my friend looked at me and said, "What are you doing?" as I began to flick my erect penis, "Why are you slapping your dick?" I told him that after a while it feels good and white stuff comes out of it. He told me to keep on watching the scene and I soon realized that I was masturbating the wrong way (I laugh now at how innocent I was in my early teens). I didn't have the nerve to do it myself, so my friend grabbed my penis and began pulling up and down. That was the first time I saw my own glans! I was so filled with curiosity that the following day I went to the local library and checked out a book about puberty and sexual development. I then found out about circumcision. Now, I knew the term because it was mentioned in the Bible, but I didn't know what it entailed. To say the least, I was fascinated by the idea.

Years later, in high school, I began going to a local community center that had a gym. I couldn't help but notice the penises that were on display in the locker room, sauna, whirlpool and showers. I remember feeling envy at the guys who were circumcised. I realize now that my feelings came from biblical references to circumcision and how cool I thought the porn actors, who were circumcised, were because they were having sex with beautiful women. Despite the dichotomous and conflicting reasons, I wanted to be circumcised.

At around sixteen, my foreskin was pretty loose by then because of sexual intercourse and masturbation. I met a guy, who was probably in his thirties, at a church retreat for teenage boys who was teaching about the importance of being chaste until marriage. It was a weekend event, so the establishment had communal showers. It so happened that he and I were taking a shower together and I commented that that was the first time that I saw a circumcised Latin man . He said that he got it done for religious reasons: although circumcision doesn't save a Christian, it was still a good practice. It was his opinion that Christians should emulate Jesus in any way possible. At that time, I was struggling with religion and sexuality. I was in conflict between Christianity and Judaism (the Abrahamic religion that introduced circumcision to Western consciousness), and also living a life devoted to religious living or a secular one. I decided to convert to Conservative Judaism and so had to have a circumcision at nineteen. The experience was both spiritual and exhilarating! The Conservative rabbinate recommended that I go to a mohel who was also a urologist. I had a temple friend drive me because the mohel/urologist said that I wouldn't be able to drive back home after the local anesthesia wore off. I have always been a curious guy, so when the mohel began the procedure, my eyes could not keep away from watching the surgery that was happening on my genitals. I saw how he cut through the ventral side of the foreskin from the opening and all around the marked area. He had a female nurse (to my embarrassment) assisting him. She said that I must be some sort of masochist or something because I was the first man she ever saw who actually watched the whole procedure without any negative reactions. I replied that I've never seen surgery done live before, a rare opportunity not to be missed, if you ask me. After the procedure was over and the mohel and nurse dressed my wounds, I started to feel the pain little by little. It began as an uncomfortable pressure. After twenty minutes on the freeway, I was in agony. The way I describe it is a million tiny pins continually pricking you along the circumference of the penis. Yeah! Imagine that! When I got home my mother said that if she knew that I was going to get circumcised, she would've had it done at the hospital. To my surprise, I asked her how she knew about that. She told me that when she was pregnant with me, she read that circumcision was a standard procedure in the United States, but when she asked the doctor who delivered me when would it be done, he told her that that wasn't necessary any more. I gathered, then, that by the late 80's in California it was becoming uncommon to circumcise infant boys as soon as they were born.

In my early twenties, I failed to commit to a life of sexual self-restraint; the conflict between religion and hedonism was strong. I was enjoying the pleasure of my newly exposed glans, feeling every sensation when something would rub or caress against it. Over time, by my late twenties, the glans reached complete keratinization and it wasn't as sensitive as before. That's when I decided to get a Prince Albert. And yes, I did see that procedure as well (maybe I am a masochist). Sexually, the sensation was amazing! Outside of sex, dealing with a piece of metal going through an extra hole was a bit of a nuisance.

At twenty-nine, tired of my hedonistic lifestyle, I began to completely delve in the teachings of Judaism and decided to become Orthodox. I had a lot of knowledge about what is required of an Orthodox Jewish man, but very little practice. After a year of learning with rabbis, I was ready to convert to Orthodox Judaism (Note to reader: Orthodox rabbinates do not recongnize non-Orthodox rabbinates as authoritative). Since I was already circumcised, I had to go through a ceremony where a little prick on the original circumcision scar had to be done for a drop of blood to be drawn, which symbolizes a new covenant, or relationship, between God and me.

After a couple of years had passed, one day I came out of a shower on a warm day when I noticed that my glans was covered half way. I began to examine myself and realized that the penile skin was extending downward partially covering the glans. I began to wonder if that would pose a religious problem. Technically, my status as a Jew was kosher. Esthetically, however, in a context (like in a ritual bath, community center locker rooms, etc.) where I would be naked around other Jewish men (not that it would happen frequently), the appearance of a semi-circumcised or uncircumcised penis would beg the question: Are you a true convert? Also, I didn't like how it looked and it did look like I wasn't circumcised but had a short foreskin. So, I called a friend who happens to be a mohel and explained the situation to him. In his professional opinion, he recommended I get a circumcision correction to shorten the excessive skin.

After a few months, I flew to the East Coast to get it done. Since my friend the mohel is only able to perform on infants and children, he assisted a urologist, who did the actual correction. I had very little inner preputial skin left, so I couldn't get a high and tight circumcision. Additionally, the urologist was concerned that if he took too much, it would shorten the length of my erect penis. Therefore, he removed one centimeter of excess foreskin with an electric scalpel. I had local anesthesia, so after it wore off, I didn't feel any pain or discomfort. The healing process was a piece of cake, too, unlike the first time around.

In conclusion, my circumcision story has been a journey laced with bewilderment, curiosity, indulgence and spirituality. I am all for personal choice, but I do believe that there is something transcendental in having oneself circumcised. It goes beyond religions, ethnicities and other man-made ideas and concepts. Circumcision, I believe, unites us men with a powerful spiritual force. It's like the artist giving the last stroke of the brush, or the sculptor chiselling out the last piece of marble, revealing a wonderful masterpiece. The Ancient Greeks were horrified at the idea of "mutilating" the most beautiful creation in the world. To them, the human body was perfect as it is; intact. To the Jews, circumcision was, and is, through God's imperative, the perfecting of man. The most powerful organ in a man's body, besides the brain, has been given the privilege to be modified by man to serve as a reminder of its generative power and the responsibility that it entails. Now that I have had such a rollercoaster of a journey, I am finally ready to commit to the one woman who will, in some future, become my wife.

ARM