רב פסלט א ספידינג טיקעט וועגען מוהל'שאפט

Que. rabbi beats speeding ticket for circumcision emergency

Canwest News Service

MONTREAL - Quebec's Jewish chaplain for prisons got a speeding ticket quashed after convincing a judge he'd been rushing to a medical emergency: a baby boy who was bleeding from a ritual circumcision.

"It wasn't like I was going 120 km/hr - I was going a reasonable speed," Jacob Levy told Judge Alain St-Pierre in a Montreal municipal court Monday, where he contested the ticket.

After listening to the rabbi's story, the judge said Levy had proven the "necessity" of why he'd been speeding, and threw out the charge.

Levy, who used to be grand rabbi of Geneva and also lived in France, leads a Sephardic congregation. Trained in Jerusalem as a mohel, the Hebrew word for circumciser, Levy has been practising the ritual procedure for 30 years.

His first case was his own son, he told St-Pierre, showing his surgical kit as proof of his trade.

Levy testified he'd received an emergency call from a distraught mother whose eight-day-old boy had been recently circumcised. The bandage had come off and the boy was bleeding.

The speed at which Levy was travelling was not mentioned in cou