Chapter 1 - Preparing For Children: Life Questions

A: Background

5. STRENGTHENING THE ARGUMENT: SURVIVAL ISSUES

Over the centuries of Diaspora life, new emphases began to be added to the rationale for child-bearing. In a situation where the Jews were a minority and often an oppressed one, the need for physical survival of the collective became paramount. Under these circumstances, it became increasingly important to ensure this survival by emphasizing the need to bring children into the world.

There were areas and periods where, for example, Jewish existence was constantly threatened and all Jews knew that there was a chance of widespread violence threatening the physical destruction of their families and communities. The communities of the medieval German lands (Ashkenaz to the Jews) were classic examples of this consciousness. A strong wave of violence erupted somewhere in those lands at least once every generation from the late eleventh century onwards, causing the death of countless tens of thousands of Jews. In those situations, the natural human response was perhaps to despair and to see no point in the bringing forth of children who would have a large chance of encountering suffering and bloodshed in their own lives. But we find no signs of such despair in this period. In fact only rarely in Jewish history do our surviving sources show Jews despairing of their lot to the point of questioning the wisdom of bringing forth a new generation. One such rare example of such sentiments comes in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple. In a work that goes by the name of the Apocalypse of Baruch, we find the following lament.

Blessed is the one who has not been born,
Or who having been born, has died,
But as for those of us who are alive,
We ache because we see the afflictions of Zion and Jerusalem's fate…
Women, pray for barrenness,
For barren women will be the happiest, those without sons will be glad,
And those with sons will grieve.
Why should a woman bear children in pain, only to bury them in grief?
Why should we have sons?
Why should we give names to our seed,
When the mother Jerusalem is desolate and her sons are captive.
The Apocalypse of Baruch; from the Pseudepigrapha.

Desperate as it is, such sentiments are rare in the sources that have come down to us, although they must at some times have been entertained by many. Nevertheless, the dominant idea was always to continue to bring forth children, even when objective circumstances were extremely adverse. Such an approach can perhaps be seen as a response to the command to sanctify the name of G-d at all times.

We normally think of the command to sanctify G-d's name in adversity (Kiddush HaShem) as indicating a preparedness to take one's own life rather than convert to another religion under force, but it is clear that this is only one side of the whole picture. Those who brought forth children at desperate times were also performing a sanctification of G-d's name and many, unquestionably, saw it as such.

This is apparent in our own time, when we look at the terrible events surrounding the Shoah. The tenacity of so many survivors in insisting on the need to marry and start families immediately after their liberation is quite incredible. As an act of faith in a world that had totally failed them, such a response is extraordinary. This response, we suggest, is part of an age-old reaction to the threat of destruction that was felt by many generations of Jews in different times and places. It is a response to bring forth children as an act of defiance to a cruel world and a sign of faith in G-d. This response built on the original commandment to provide one of the characteristics of Jews throughout time, a People with families and with children: the Jewish family.