Chapter 1 - Preparing For Children: Life Questions

A: Background

3. BE FRUITFUL - THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

Indeed, a great deal is made in Judaism out of the fact that the first commandment that the Rabbis discern in the Torah is G-d's command to the first human (a bi-sexual Adam) to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Bereishit Ch.1 v.28). The moment that this is seen as a precept (mitzvah), it clearly marks out Judaism as a culture that sees birth of children as part of the Divine plan for the world and therefore a fundamental value in the Jewish view of the world. (It is interesting that Christianity, inheritor of the same texts, developed a very different view of sexuality - viz.: only sanctified for one purpose - the imperative of childbearing.) In Judaism, this is a Divine imperative that the individual must follow. Anyone who does not follow this idea can be considered to be sabotaging G-d's world-plan.

This can be seen in the following set of opinions that we find in the Babylonian Talmud, the great storehouse that reflects the variety of opinion in the rabbinic world in the early centuries of the common era.

Rabbi Eliezer stated: He who does not engage in [the commandment to] "go forth and multiply" is as someone who sheds blood… Rabbi Jacob said, he is as someone who diminishes the Divine image… Ben Azzai said, he is as someone who sheds blood and diminishes the Divine image.
Talmud, Tractate Yebamot, 63b.

Another complementary idea that we find in rabbinic thought is that bearing children is something that does not lie exclusively within the realm of the personal autonomy of the parents. G-d is seen as a partner to the two parents in the creation of a child. In a sense, one can say that according to this perspective every Jewish child has three parents, one Divine and two mortal. All these ideas come to reinforce the view that it is an imperative within Judaism to have children.