Torah Study Blog

This week’s Torah portion is from Leviticus and starts out as, “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments...” and then there is a list of the good things that will happen, including, “you will be fruitful and multiply.” (Leviticus 26:3-9)

Alternately, “if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments” among the horrible things that will befall you is, “You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (Leviticus 26:14- 29)

Highlighting the belief that the power of conception rests solely with God is the story of Rachel, a wife of our patriarch, Jacob. Rachel was childless while her sister Leah, Jacob’s other wife, had 4 sons. According to Genesis 30:

When Rachel saw that she had borne Jacob no children, she became envious of her sister; and Rachel said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die.” Jacob was incensed at Rachel, and said, “Can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?”

With the reproductive rights of women being headline-grabbing news recently, Rabbi Jaech wondered what the Bible and the Sages said about reproduction, and if it is permission to decide not to have children at all.

A good starting point for our discussion is to address the question: Who, exactly, is commanded to be “fruitful and multiply?” Genesis 1 says that God created male and female and then, “God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase, fill the earth.’” This passage, which many Sages have said is the first commandment in the Bible, puts the onus on both sexes.

The Sages, meaning the rabbis whose interpretations of the Bible have withstood the test of time, debated this question and their words are

preserved in the Talmud, which we looked at today. The Sages would have looked at the words in the Bible, but then also looked at life around them and tried to bring acceptable interpretations to their followers. (If you make rulings no one will follow, you soon will not have any followers - so they had to be realistic!)

The Sages would have understood that procreation is different for men than it is for women. The fact is that childbirth was (and even today still is) a risky proposition. How can it be right to command women to do something that puts their lives in danger?

Using a passage from Genesis 35 where the patriarch Jacob, recently renamed “Israel,” is told to “be fertile and increase,” the Sages determine that God was only speaking to men. They say that the Genesis 1 passage was a blessing only, and not a commandment.

Using vignettes from life, the Sages acknowledge that sometimes a wife wants children but they do not come. In this instance, the husband is considered to be at fault, much like when Rachel complained to Jacob. Marriage was treated as a business arraignment that included protection, food and shelter for the wife as part of the contract. Instead of childbearing being part of a commandment for women, a childless wife could point to the fact that a lack of children would mean there was no one to take care of her in her old age. Since the husband failed to provide children, he must grant the wife a divorce and provide her with remuneration.

On the other hand, there might be a wife who does NOT want children. Keeping in mind that these Talmudic offerings were written before modern science, the Sages determine that there are three types of women who are allowed to use contraceptives, which in the 1st century CE might have been an absorbent sponge called a mokh: 1) a minor, lest she become pregnant and perhaps die, 2) a pregnant woman, lest the new baby injure the already growing baby, and 3) a nursing woman, lest her milk run dry and her baby die.

The Sages used these debates to try to balance the mitzvah of procreation against the very real hazards of childbirth. But, even if having children is a

commandment only binding upon men, the irony is that it is a commandment they cannot fill without women.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter