rationalskepticism.org

In 2005, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg assembled rabbis throughout the city to try to persuade them to move away from metzitzah b’peh. But they said that the practice was safe and that there was no definitive evidence that it caused herpes. “The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years,” Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said at the time. “‘We do not change. And we will not change.”