If all the circumlocution of my last post made you dizzy and you are still recovering, I would not blame you. It makes me dizzy to reread it. Luckily, I have not yet thought of anything else to write.
In the meantime, for your pleasure and amusement, here is an excerpt from a footnote on page 64 of The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, by Sadakat Kadri, which is shaping up to be an excellent read:
[T]he medieval world’s preeminent Jewish philosophers, Maimonides and Isaac Ben Yedaiah, . . . each devoted considerable attention to the question of why removal of the foreskin was so delightful to God. Maimonides suggested around 1190 that it encouraged premature ejaculation and thereby freed up time for prayer. Isaac Ben Yedaiah, writing a century later, explained how the process worked. The uncircumcised man had “testicles of iron” and “ejaculated like a horse,” he theorized, which caused women to cling to him and long for his continued attentions. His circumcised counterpart, on the other hand, “emits his seed as soon as he inserts his crown” and was, as a happy result, detained neither by the act of intercourse nor by any interest from his partner.
Kadri cites his sources: “For Maimonides’ discussion of circumcision, see Moses ben Maimun (Maimonides), The Guide of the Perplexed, tr. Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London, 1963), p. 609, and for that of Isaac Ben Yedaiah see Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Harvard, 1980), pp. 97-98.”
My fiancée was in stitches when I read that passage aloud.
This is hilarious. Notice the philosophers never questioned why god put a foreskin on the penis to begin with if removal of it made him so happy. Unless god’s a pervert with S&M tendencies. Hmmm….
Oh yeah…LOVE the Princess Bride reference.