The Health Ministry and the Chief Rabbinate were accused on Monday of being “irresponsible” for their poor supervision of ritual circumcisers (mohalim) after an investigation by Kan, Israel’s new public broadcasting corporation. The report found that a veteran mohel was sending inexperienced and unsupervised men to circumcise infants born to immigrants from Ethiopia and Muslim foreign workers from Sudan. […]

Knesset Aliya and Absorption Committee chairman Avraham Neguise headed a noisy and tense session in which a representative of the Chief Rabbinate, Rabbi Moshe Marciano, claimed that “inexperienced doctors also offer treatment during residency.” […]

Rabbi Pinhas Frankel, who is responsible in the Health Ministry for religious matters, said that circumcision is not defined as a “medical act,” thus supervision of mohalim is carried out jointly by the Health Ministry and the Chief Rabbinate, “which have received many complaints against doctors who perform circumcisions rather than religious circumcisers.”