Is it libelous to falsely report that someone is not circumcised?

That question is at the heart of an unusual lawsuit filed in United States District Court in Brooklyn recently against Centropa, the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, an oral-history project, based in Vienna and Budapest, that focuses on Jewish life and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.



In the lawsuit, John F. Singer, 49, of Queens, claims that Centropa published an online interview in 2005 that quoted his mother saying that neither of her sons had been circumcised as infants. Mr. Singer asserts that he told the center’s director, Edward Serotta, that he was, in fact, circumcised as an infant, and that Mr. Serotta approved the publication of the article containing the incorrect claim anyway.

Mr. Singer said the article was “recklessly and/or intentionally republished” on Centropa’s Web site this year, when the site was redesigned, and that the claim about his not being circumcised remained online until October, when officials at the center finally deleted that part of the interview with Mr. Singer’s mother. The article, which City Room could not find online, was apparently focused on her experiences in Europe, not on her children. Mr. Singer told The Daily News, which reported on the lawsuit on Monday, that his mother denies telling Centropa that her sons were not circumcised.

“As a Jewish male, it is in direct contradiction to Jewish law to be uncircumcised,” the lawsuit noted. Dated Nov. 19, it accuses Centropa of “abhorrent, despicable and wrongful actions” that caused Mr. Singer “severe embarrassment, mental anguish and extreme emotional distress.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for emotional distress, as well as an injunction barring Centropa from publishing the claim again.

In an e-mail message to The Times, Mr. Serotta, who is based in Vienna, said he could not comment until he had first consulted with a lawyer. “Since this has come as a surprise and I only found out about this during the weekend, I am currently looking to hire an attorney in New York,” he wrote.

Mr. Serotta, who was born in Savannah, Ga., is an American author, photographer and filmmaker who has lived in Central Europe since 1988. While producing a documentary for ABC’s “Nightline” in 1999, he lamented the loss of Jewish cultural and culinary heritage in Central and Eastern Europe.

That led to the founding of Centropa, which has 90 full- and part-time staff members, more than a dozen trained interviewers and financing from numerous governmental and philanthropic bodies.

Experts on defamation and libel law said a judge evaluating the case would very likely consider several factors. A basic threshold issue in a defamation case is whether the statement was of a kind that would be damaging to someone’s reputation.

Saying that someone was not circumcised is not inherently damaging — unlike, for example, claiming that someone is a child molester — but Mr. Singer could argue that it was damaging to his reputation as a member of a Jewish community that regards circumcision to be a commandment.

A judge might nonetheless ask Mr. Singer to demonstrate that he was actually harmed by the claim and suffered some kind of material damage. Historically, New York has been more reluctant than other states to allow for protection of individual privacy by civil lawsuits; “public disclosure of personal information” is not something the state has generally recognized as a ground for damages.

Although the topic of circumcision is intensely private, a judge might find that the broad subject of Centropa’s interviews — Jewish life in Europe — is of broad public concern, which might make it harder for Mr. Singer to succeed. In New York, to prevail in a libel suit against a media defendant, a private person typically must demonstrate that the defendant acted with “gross irresponsibility” if the content of the article in dispute was of legitimate public concern.

Complicating the suit are the facts that the defendant is not based in New York and that the suit involved a mother’s claim regarding her son, even if that claim was later retracted.

Mr. Singer said in a statement provided by his lawyer, Michael J. Borrelli of Carle Place, N.Y.:

Centropa.org and its editorial staff have violated my right to privacy of the most private part of my anatomy. They have caused me tremendous emotional pain and suffering. I feel humiliated and betrayed. I was assured by Centropa’s director (Edward Serrota) that this material regarding my genitalia would never be published. Despite that assurance, they published it anyway.

A copy of Mr. Singer’s lawsuit [pdf] may be read in the player below.