Jacob Snowman

Jacob Snowman (1871 - 28 February 1959) was a British medical doctor and mohel,[1] notable for having circumcised Charles, Prince of Wales in December 1948,[2] and possibly other members of the British nobility and Royal Family.[3]

Snowman was the son of Abraham Snowman (1849–1918), a picture dealer, and his wife Rachel, both of whom were born in Poland. He was the older brother to both painter Isaac Snowman (1873-1947) and jeweler Emanuel Snowman (1886-1970), who married into the prominent Wartski family of jewelers and became the company chairman.[3] Wartski has enjoyed generations of Royal patronage, supplying the Welsh gold wedding bands for Charles and the former Camilla Parker-Bowles, as well as the bands worn by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and the former Kate Middleton.[3]

John Cozijn and Robert Darby, who is an historian of the British circumcision movement,[4] have suggested that the British Royal Family invited Rabbi Snowman ("rabbi" is an honorific commonly afforded to mohels) to circumcise the infant Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace most likely because of his extensive experience with circumcision, and perhaps because non-Jewish family physicians were deemed less familiar or adept with the procedure (which was widely performed on British middle- and upper-class male infants from the 1890s through the 1940s).[2] Darby and Cozijn have cast doubt on claims, arising in the 1990s and widely reported after the birth of Prince George of Cambridge in 2013, that a Royal Family "circumcision tradition" extends back to Queen Victoria's era, or even to George I in the early 18th century,[1][5] grounded in secretive Davidic or British Israelist religious tradition.[2] It is unknown whether this putative "circumcision tradition" was continued with the birth of William in 1982, as Diana, Princess of Wales is believed to have disapproved of it.[1][5]

Snowman wrote specialist articles and at least four books, including Jewish Law and Sanitary Science (1896), Clinical Surgical Diagnosis (Second English Edition, 1917), Lenzmann's Manual of Emergencies, Medical, Surgical and Obstetric: their Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment (1919, based upon Emergencies in Medical Practice by Richard Lenzmann), a revised Manual of Emergencies, Medical, Surgical, and Obstetric (1926), A Short History of Talmudic Medicine (with thirteen editions between 1935 and 1974), and The Surgery of Ritual Circumcision (1904). The latter book was published in at least three distinct editions, the last appearing posthumously in 1962 under the co-authorship of his son Leonard Snowman (1900-1976).

References

  1. 1 2 3 Rashty, Sandy (July 25, 2013). "Bring me the royal baby and I'll give him the snip, says top mohel". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Darby, Robert; Cozijn, John (October 13, 2013). "The British royal family's circumcision tradition: Genesis and evolution of a contemporary legend". Sage Open. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 Isaaman, Gerald (August 28, 2015). "Geoffrey Munn - a world authority on Faberge jewellery and the Wartski dynasty". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
  4. ↑ Darby, Robert. A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 368.
  5. 1 2 Wallop, Harry (March 31, 2015). "'Circumcision is one of the oddities of the Royal Family'". The Telegraph. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
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