Circumcision was rebellion, says Ido Hevroni in the always worth reading “Azure” magazine:

In time, much of Western thought eventually accepted the Hebraic approach over the Hellenistic submission to the edicts of nature. Indeed, Western democracy owes much of its moral vibrancy to the belief that every individual has the power to repudiate destiny, to fashion his own fate and that of his people, and to flout the edicts of the gods. For the Jews, it was the spirit of rebellion and change, preserved across the span of history, that enabled them later to return to their homeland and rebuild the Jewish state, defying the “gods” that had declared their people a relic, and their fate one of wandering the world in infamy. Judea may have fallen to Rome, but the legacy of R. Akiva continues to leave its mark throughout the world.

Rabbi Akiva was a proponent of the “Bar Kochba Revolt” against the Roman occupation. He argues that circumcision means rather repairing than damaging the human body. “In this instance, the raw material is the body; altering it, according to this explanation, is an act of fulfilling its human potential” says Hevroni and concludes: “Indeed, Western democracy owes much of its moral vibrancy to the belief that every individual has the power to repudiate destiny, to fashion his own fate and that of his people, and to flout the edicts of the gods.”

This reminds me to Thomas Cahills’ great book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels which gives a good background to this story and how the Jewish Civilization set up the cultural foundation of the Western World where the crucial experience was liberty.

שירי ליהוה כי־גאה גאה
סוס ורכבו רמה בים

(Ex 15,21b)