Dear Editor,
I read the article by Barbara Trainin Blank on “Women as Circumcisers” in the JOFA Journal Vol. XII, no. 2.
I should like to point out that I discussed this issue in my Minhagei Yisrael, Vol. 4, Jerusalem, 1995, pp. 3–9, with additional evidence in ibid., Vol. 7, Jerusalem, 2003, p. 401, and, in English, in my book The Jewish Life Cycle, Bar-Ilan University Press/Oxford, 2008, pp. 84–88, to which I can now add the following sources:
E. Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe, Oxford, 2004, p. 65.
A. Grossman, Ve-Hu Yimshol Bo: HaIshah be-Mishnatam shel Hochmei Yisrael bi-Yemei ha-Benayim, Jerusalem 2011, pp. 171, 350–51.
In the Ethiopian Jewish communities of “Beta Yisrael,” circumcision was almost exclusively done by women.
Incidentally, I also discussed the issue of women shochtot, ibid.