By JOE WOLF
A Jewish foreskin is a wonderful thing.
There are those that signify loving parents who eschewed a barbaric and outdated tradition to leave their son whole in the face of vast social pressure. These are those that the brit shalom movement has helped to protect.
And there are those, like mine, that signify a Jewish man who, through happenstance or hard work (or both), has regained as much as he could of what he lost, no doubt overcoming vast social pressure as well. These are those that have come about through a practice known as foreskin restoration.
Foreskin Restoration
Foreskin restoration, for the uninitiated, is a process by which a circumcised man lengthens what remnant of his foreskin still exists. This can be done by hand using techniques that stretch different areas of skin, or with devices that use tape, tension, weights or even air inflation to stretch skin.
The stretching triggers new cell growth which can, to an extent, “regrow” a man’s foreskin. It takes time and persistence; mine took about 3-4 years; others can vary greatly based on how much foreskin remnant they had left over and how and how regularly they restored. (If you’re interested, there are many websites and books on the topic that are just a Google search away, though be warned that it can be intimidating at first, and some sites can be graphic.)
It’s important to note that certain physical structures of the natural penis cannot be restored once taken. These include the ridged band — which marks the elastic barrier between the inner and outer foreskin and keeps an intact foreskin closed around the glans when flaccid — and the frenulum, a bridge of flesh that connects the foreskin to the underside of the glans. Both of these structures are full of nerves and highly sensitive.
A “kosher” brit milah completely destroys the frenulum. Even in those circumcised men who retain some remnant of these structures or even possess an intact frenulum, they rarely function the same way on a restored foreskin; there’s just no going back.
Nonetheless, restoration can offer amazing returns.
Regrown inner foreskin tissue is as highly innervated as the remnant it was grown from, and a fully restored foreskin that can cover the glans allows it to recover from prolonged exposure and become moister and more sensitive.
A restored foreskin also regains the gliding motion of an intact penis, which eases the movement of sexual intercourse and masturbation, allows stimulation without or with less lubrication, and improves sensation for man and his sexual partner due to reduced friction and the changing dynamic of penetration.
Accidentally Restored
I have seen all those benefits and more from restoring my foreskin, but they were not the reasons I did it. In fact, I restored by accident.
Like many American Jews, I was barely aware I was circumcised when I was a child, given how common it was in this country when I was a boy. I had no idea what an intact penis should look like. But my body subconsciously knew something was missing.
During puberty, I instinctively began manipulating what remained of my foreskin because it was what came naturally. The fact that this, shall we say, common adolescent activity brought pleasure only reinforced that it was right.
Knowing what I know now, it makes sense that the nerve-rich areas of the foreskin remnant were where I was focused. I had the head start of a relatively loose circumcision, which was conducted in a non-ritual, hospital setting and retained much of the frenulum.
Within four years of my bar mitzvah, I had restored my foreskin such that it would look intact to most observers. As I grew into adulthood and learned more about anatomy, I began to realize this, having previously thought of myself as having a long remnant.
I learned about foreskin restoration and realized I had done it — entirely inadvertently. (I’ve read of similar accidental experiences; they’re rare, but not unheard of.)
As I’ve researched foreskin restoration methods further, it’s no coincidence that many manual “tugging” techniques are similar to what I had discovered on my own. Because while the driving force may have been raging hormones, I think my body instinctively knew something was amiss and aimed to correct it.
Men undertake restoration for many reasons, from aesthetics to pleasure. Some whose circumcisions are so tight they cause painful erections restore to alleviate the hurt; others find their exposed glans irritating and want to soothe that constant friction.
But many simply want to feel whole again; to correct the injustice of their mutilation.
A Jewish perspective
I think of that aspect often when I consider the Jewish relationship to foreskin restoration.
Like many pro-foreskin communities, the restoring community is not immune to antisemitism. And our Jewish tradition is not friendly to restorers — despite, and in fact because, some of the earliest foreskin restorers were Jews.
Our ancient Jewish brethren, living during the Hellenistic era around the time of the Hanukkah story, were circumcised (less drastically than is done with today’s brit milah) while under the dominion of a Greek culture that considered glans exposure to be taboo. So some Jewish men who wished to fully participate in Hellenistic society, where nude communal bathing took place, stretched what remained of their foreskin, tying it off with a length of cord around the tip or even a weight. The methods are strikingly similar to today’s foreskin restoration techniques.
Our own texts record the practice, as in the Book of Maccabees (translation from sefaria.org): “1.17: They built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according to the heathen custom and made themselves uncircumcised.”
Ostensibly, the reason was assimilation, which explains why the retribution was swift: Restoring was forbidden by rabbis and the brit milah took on its current, even more drastic form in a failed attempt to render restoring impossible.
But that’s not the whole story.
Ancient Jewish restorers would have been able to notice the sensory benefits of restoration, too. And while assimilation is clearly one goal, some may have agreed with the Greek position, as I do,that a foreskin is wonderful and its mutilation abhorrent.
I still struggle with Jewish law’s negative view of restoration, because it seems the most natural response to the wrong of circumcision — and a very Jewish response at that.
To look at the world and see what needs remedying is the essence of tikkun olam, one of our most beautiful spiritual concepts. Restoration was my small, personal act of tikkun olam. A drive, perhaps subconscious, to repair what was wrong and told my body I ought to return my foreskin to, as close as I could, what it was meant to be.
What could be more Jewish than that?
Joe Wolf is an American journalist, posting here under a pen name.