Torah Study Blog

The Torah portion for this week starts the Book of Numbers. In the passage, God tells Moses to, “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms.” (Numbers 1:2-4)

This is a pro-census text. You could also say that this is a pro-government text. Knowing exactly who is in the community allows the leaders to tax people to collect funds, and to draft people to raise armies. Being able to count your people gives you power.

Many people may be aware of the Jewish tradition of NOT counting people. In traditional communities, if you asked a parent how many children they have they might choose to be vague – because their tradition prefers not to count people.

In II Samuel 24, King David tells his army commander to go out and count the people. “But afterward David reproached himself for having numbered the people.” God, in his anger at David for having counted the people, sends a plague, which resulted in the death of 70,000 people. The tradition in Samuel is anti-census and, perhaps, it is anti-government.

Thinking about the power of the government and the counting of people, Rabbi Jaech decided to follow up on our conversation last week about fertility and contraception, and take a look at what the Torah and the Talmud say about abortion.

The only reference to an unborn baby in the Torah is in Exodus 21: “When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (Exodus 21:22-25)

From this passage we conclude that a fetus is not considered a full human life. Keeping in mind that the Judaism we practice today was developed by the Rabbis of the Talmud, not the Judaism of the Torah with its animal sacrifice at the Temple, we next looked at some Talmudic passages.

The Mishnah Ohalot, which was preserved in writing by the 2nd century CE, says that, “If a woman suffers hard labor in travail, the child (fetus) must be cut up in her womb and brought out piecemeal, for her life takes precedence over its life. If its greater part has already come forth, it must not be touched, for the [claim of one] life cannot supersede [that of another] life.”

Also in the 2nd century CE, the Sanhedrin, or Jewish court, ruled that if, “A woman was giving birth and her life was being endangered by the fetus, the life of the fetus may be sacrificed in order to save the mother. But once his head has emerged during the birthing process, he may not be harmed in order to save the mother.”

And the great medieval commentator, Rashi said that, “For as long as it has not yet emerged into the world, it is not a [living person] and one may kill it to save its mother.”

The Mishnah goes on to question the rights of a fetus in the womb of a woman who is due to be executed. The Rabbis say that the fetus is part of the woman, like her thigh is. If the woman is to die, so is the fetus. The fetus does not have separate rights. And, in fact, it would be cruel to delay punishment for the woman and she should be executed as quickly as possible. The mother should not have disgrace and mental anguish heaped upon her because of the fetus.

Orthodox rabbis today are not proponents of abortion-on-demand and they do not believe abortion should be used as a form of birth control. Citing the Holocaust, orthodox rabbis value every life and cite the need to increase the Jewish population. However, building upon the teachings in the Talmud, 20th century rabbis have indicated the killing of a fetus is acceptable when there is a need for it and it would save the mother anguish. One example they give is in the case of a fetus diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, which

is a disease where a child might live to the age of 6, but the quality of life is terrible and there is a 100% fatality rate from the disease.

The Reform movement has taken a strong stance that the availability of legal abortion in our country is necessary. Abortion is a deeply personal decision a woman has to make for herself. When the government inserts itself into this debate, the government is basing the idea of abortion on Christian theology. Other religions, including Judaism, vary from the Catholic view. Is this sense, the abortion debate is viewed as an issue of freedom of religion.

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