AAP 'Ritual Nick' Statement Author Wrote Brit Shalom Paper With Bruchim Collaboration
The connections between Bruchim and pro-circumcision figures like Dr. Dena S. Davis, Dr. Douglas Diekema, and Dr. Andrew Freedman.
Disclosure: I filed a defamation lawsuit against Bruchim in 2023; it was dismissed in 2024. The reporting below is based on public records, published scholarship, and direct correspondence.
Dr. Dena S. Davis, the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ retracted 2010 policy recommending physicians offer a “ritual nick” on girls’ genitals, wrote peer-reviewed scholarship on Brit Shalom in collaboration with members of Bruchim, a Jewish nonprofit that advocates for non-circumcising families. Her name does not appear anywhere on the organization’s public platforms, including their website, podcast, or press releases.
The paper, “B’rit shalom: a Jewish ritual alternative to newborn male circumcision,” was published in the International Journal of Impotence Research, a Nature-family journal, in 2023. The byline lists Max DuBoff, Bruchim’s Director of Education and a board member of Bruchim, and Dena S. Davis, the lead author of the AAP ritual nick policy. The paper cites Davis’s ritual nick scholarship in its references.
The acknowledgments thank Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, Lisa Braver Moss, and Rebecca Wald, Bruchim’s founders, and Max Buckler, Bruchim’s “Bioethics Researcher.” Braver Moss and Wald are cited as sources in the paper, which quotes “conversation between authors and Lisa Braver Moss and Rebecca Wald, August 2, 2021.” The reference list also cites Bruchim’s website, Rebecca Wald’s blog Beyond the Bris, Lisa Braver Moss, and Rebecca Wald’s book Celebrating Brit Shalom, and Ungar-Sargon’s documentary Cut. DuBoff’s competing interests disclosure in the paper states he is a board member of Bruchim. Davis declares no competing interests.
On July 4, 2026, I submitted a request to the International Journal of Impotence Research asking the editors to review whether the competing interests disclosures on this paper meet the journal’s published standards.
Bruchim’s website does not disclose their relationship to Davis. A search of her name on their website, team page, podcast, press releases, and Beyond the Bris Substack written by Bruchim’s executive director Rebecca Wald, produced zero results, despite her paper being the primary scholarship done on Brit Shalom, the circumcision-alternative promoted by Bruchim.
When Bruchim leadership appeared at the 2023 Ritualwell panel “Brit Beyond Milah,” the event description called DuBoff “the lead author” and did not mention Davis. The paper’s author contribution statement states that Davis wrote the first draft of the paper: “DSD [Dena S. Davis] wrote the initial version of the article. MD [Max DuBoff] rewrote and reorganized the article.”
Davis also confirmed in emails with me that she wrote the initial version of the paper. She described the differences between her first draft and Max DuBoff’s rewrite as stylistic — “not my style” — rather than ideological and said it “left out a lot of the human interest stuff.” Davis said the final paper “does not misrepresent me but it’s very different than I would have written it.”
When I asked Davis if her 2023 brit shalom paper represented a change or "a continuation of the same perspective" that produced the 2010 ritual nick paper, she replied, "No, I don't think the Brit Shalom paper was a change."
She also said that she “did not think AAP should have retracted the policy statement” in which she advocated that doctors should be allowed to perform a ritual nick of little girls genitals for families who want female genital cutting. “Still don’t.”
In their previous writing, Davis and Wald describe the same regulatory approach to male genital cutting:
Davis, 2001: “Nonphysician ritual practitioners of MGA should be certified. The state regulates the hygienic practices of the people who cut our hair and our fingernails, so why not a baby’s genitals?”
Wald, 2026: “What regulation can do is ensure that when brit milah is performed, it is performed safely: with proper training, sterile conditions, and clear protocols for when medical care is needed.”
Wald has previously argued against a full criminal ban on male genital cutting in multiple articles. Wald did not respond to a request for comment when asked if she also opposes a ban on female circumcision.
The paper appeared in a special collection titled “Genital Cutting and Surgery in Children: Part Two,” guest-edited by bioethicist Brian D. Earp. Earp holds affiliations at Yale, Oxford, and the National University of Singapore. He has co-authored with Bruchim’s Max Buckler, appeared on the Bruchim Podcast, and leads the Brussels Collaboration on Bodily Integrity, which includes Bruchim leadership team member David Balashinsky. Davis told me the collaboration with DuBoff was arranged by the journal after her solo paper was rejected. She said she “didn’t know the Brit Shalom people” before writing the paper.
This paper is not the only connection between Bruchim and Davis. In 2023, Buckler co-authored a paper with Brian Earp and Lori Bruce in Current Sexual Health Reports: “From Intimate Exams to Ritual Nicking: Interpreting Nonconsensual Medicalized Genital Procedures as Sexual Boundary Violations.” The acknowledgments thank Davis for “discussions and/or comments.” Buckler’s competing interests disclosure in that paper states he is “affiliated with Bruchim.”
Bruchim did not issue a press release for the paper Davis drafted. It did issue a press release through EINPresswire for Buckler’s “As controversies mount, circumcision policies need a rethink” in the Journal of Medical Ethics in November 2025.
The Buckler paper that received Bruchim’s press release reported the results of two months of recorded interviews with Dr. Douglas Diekema and Dr. Andrew Freedman, both members of the AAP’s 2012 Task Force on Circumcision, that produced a policy statement declaring that the health benefits of male circumcision outweigh the risks. Diekema chaired the AAP Committee on Bioethics, the same committee that published the 2010 policy on female genital cutting where Davis served as lead author.
In those interviews, Diekema told Buckler he doesn’t believe the data supports saying benefits outweigh the risks. Freedman called the AAP policy a “permission slip” and said the AAP should “get out of the business” of circumcision. He said circumcision is “not really a medical practice” and that “there is nothing wrong with the penis.”
Freedman has stated publicly that he circumcised his own son at the family’s kitchen table. Wald reported this detail across multiple Beyond the Bris articles without criticism. In her article “These Jewish Doctors Tried to Stop America’s Circumcision Train“ she presents him as anti-circumcision, placing him alongside intactivists like Paul Fleiss and Dean Edell, and attributes routine circumcision to Christians. In “On Eric Clopper and Misdirected Anger“ (2018), Ungar-Sargon published a defense of Freedman, calling him “a man with whom I disagree, who is clearly able to distinguish between his medical opinion on the one hand and his religious beliefs on the other.”
On June 25, I sent requests for comment to the following Bruchim figures: Lisa Braver Moss (President), Rebecca Wald (Executive Director), Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon (Founding Executive Board), Max DuBoff (Director of Education), and Max Buckler (Bioethics Researcher). After giving them a week to respond, I sent a follow-up email July 2, letting them know they would need to respond within a day if they wanted any comment included. I also called a publicly listed number for Bruchim and left a message.
None responded. Screenshots of the requests for comment are below
No member of the organization answered the question “Do you consider yourself an intactivist?”
Previous public statements indicate that the answer in most cases is no:
Lisa Braver Moss has said that “Bruchim is not an intactivist organization, because convincing Jewish people not to circumcise isn’t our main objective.”
Max Buckler says he does not identify as an intactivist.
Rebecca Wald has said she prefers to label herself a ‘circumcision critic’ or ‘circumcision questioner.’”
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon said in an interview with James Loewen, “I don’t call myself an intactivist” but that he shares the intactivist position.
While publicly declining the intactivist label, publicly listed members of Bruchim hold overlapping roles across genital-autonomy organizations.
David Balashinsky is listed on Bruchim’s leadership team as Outreach & Advocacy, as a Board Member and Co-founder of GALDEF, and on Doctors Opposing Circumcision’s Board of Directors and Advisors. He has spoken at the Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy in 2020, 2022, and 2023.
Lisa Braver Moss is Bruchim’s President and Co-Founder and appears on Your Whole Baby’s Advisory Board. She has presented at genital-autonomy symposiums and conferences in 1991 and 2014.
Bruchim’s team page lists Elana Johnson as Bruchim’s Social Media Manager and says: “Additionally, Elana serves as one of the Directors of Equity for Your Whole Baby.” Your Whole Baby’s Equity Commitment page directly points readers to Bruchim and to a statement authored by Bruchim leaders.
Bruchim’s Physician Advisor, Leif Thompson, is listed under Doctors Opposing Circumcision’s Board of Directors and Advisors, spoke at WWDOGA 2024, and also appeared at the 2026 Intact Global Conference.
Mark D. Reiss, who died in late 2025, served as DOC’s Executive Vice President for over 25 years and on Intact America’s Board of Health Professionals. His Celebrants of Brit Shalom directory, the network cited in the DuBoff/Davis paper, is now incorporated into Bruchim’s Inclusion Directory.
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon presented at Intact America’s 2022 conference and 2026 Intact Global Conference in Los Angeles.
Multiple intactivist individuals and organizations signed a “Statement Opposing Antisemitism Within The Genital Autonomy Movement” authored by Bruchim leadership, including David Balashinsky, Rebecca Wald, Lisa Braver Moss, and Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon.
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon has described the genital autonomy movement as “a breeding ground for antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and misinformation” and characterized its members as “white, aggrieved men” who “have always been the bull’s eye for fascists.” Ungar-Sargon did not respond to a request for comment. No other Bruchim member responded to a request for comment.
No Bruchim member answered the question: “Does Bruchim have a policy regarding communication, coordination, or funding relationships with organizations that advocate for circumcision or oppose the genital autonomy movement?”
In a previous interview with James Loewen, Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon explicitly cites the ritual nick and double standard between male and female genital cutting as an argument against circumcision.
Davis has said that “the ritual nick is a good way to equalize male and female, but it would be even better, in my opinion, not to do it at all.” No member of Bruchim responded to a request for comment on whether they agree with Davis’s statements or have a position on the ritual nick policy.