Weirder than placenta encapsulation...

October 8, 2015 9:14 AM

I just had my newborn son circumcised at a nice modern hospital in a country that doesn't really "do" circumcision (India). After the procedure was over, the doctor asked me if I wanted the foreskin, since (according to him) some people want it to keep it for "religious purposes." Does anyone know what groups keep the removed foreskin and what they do with it? Googling isn't turning up anything, but I might be using the wrong key words.
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

YES! My friend's mother kept his!! Tiny little thing stretched on a bit of plastic. Looked like a little rawhide scrap. No religious reason though, just sentimental- it's in his baby box (he was born in the 70s). I was shocked when he told me. So it's now pretty good for making jokes about, I guess?

I do know some people (incidentally of Afro-Caribbean descent) who feel weird about leaving "bits of themselves" in public spaces. So for instance if they cut their nails at your house, they'd bring the parings home or flush them down the toilet, rather than leaving them in your space. So maybe it's something like that.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 9:54 AM on October 8, 2015

There are Jewish traditions that involve burying the foreskin.
posted by Candleman at 10:52 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Some people do preserve them I guess, but not for religious reasons as far as I know. Mostly if people are taking them I would think it would be in order to dispose of them properly (Jewish tradition is to bury them, though not everyone does that anymore).

Some cultures traditionally preserve the umbilical cord (see info. on image five here as an example), but I've not heard of religious preservation of foreskins.
posted by gudrun at 11:06 AM on October 8, 2015