Jewish Continuity and Jewish Destiny: It’s Not Just About You

Sarah Rindner

A Response to Is Jewish Continuity Sexist? by Mijal Bitton (Sources, Spring 2021)

The widely documented and sad phenomenon of plummeting birth rates among non-Orthodox Jews has given rise to a range of responses. Some seek to reverse this phenomenon. Others see no particular reason for alarm. Mijal Bitton’s article explores the potential tension between prioritizing Jewish continuity and disenfranchising women, who after all bear a disproportionate burden of childbearing and even childrearing, especially in a child’s early years. This is compounded by a secondary concern: the well-known advocates for “pro-natalism” in the liberal Jewish world are usually men, some of whom have been accused of inappropriate conduct towards women. Bitton capably resolves this latter issue. As she points out, every field has its bad actors and this alone is no reason to discredit all of their ideals and values, which in this case are incidentally shared by the majority of Jewish women themselves. 

Bitton suggests that Jewish feminists reconsider the benchmark of equality as applicable to the realm of childbearing. Rather than view equality as the standard by which Jewish continuity should be measured, Bitton proposes agency as a replacement. There are of course relationships in which partners may share duties more evenly. But when dealing with something as primal and physical as pregnancy and birth, the usual egalitarian standards feel insufficient and almost absurd. Citing fellow feminist scholars, Bitton writes: “if we are going to take women’s choices seriously, we will have to allow for the possibility or indeed the reality that women who adopt pro-natalist and other positions are neither deluded nor oppressed, but full human beings making up their own minds about the things that matter most to them.” 

I appreciate Bitton’s argument and the context in which she situates herself. Yet reducing such a core Jewish (and human) value as procreation to a matter of choice and agency is insufficient. While this intellectual move may solve a certain surface level dilemma as far as squaring one’s feminism and motherhood, it fails to account for the crucial place that childbearing and parenting has for millenia occupied in Jewish belief and practice, and the deep human potential that is unlocked when we bring new life into the world. Childbearing is the very first commandment Adam and Eve receive in Genesis. It forms a fundamental part of the blessings and responsibility entrusted to Abraham, whose very name means father, and it is the source of anxiety and promise throughout the Bible as a whole. It is thus surprising to see Bitton’s article arguing for Jewish continuity, in a Jewish journal, without invoking any of these or other such sources. Perhaps they go without saying?

Bitton’s article describes childbearing not as a sacred obligation but as a legitimate choice among many values. In so doing, Bitton surrenders to the very forces of modern malaise the pro-continuity argument ostensibly tries to reverse. None of this is to say that those who cannot have children fail in their sacred obligations in any way, God forbid. Once we embrace the notion that bringing forth a new generation of human beings into the world is not really about us or our choices, we also open up a space in which those who cannot actually have children, or as many as they would like, can still orient themselves around this fundamental framework. When Jewish continuity stops being about “me” the mother and instead about Jewish destiny, there is no end to the incredible creativity and ingenuity that can be marshalled by all members of the community, childless or otherwise, toward better fulfilling this essential collective task. 

Reducing Jewish continuity to a matter of a parent’s choice also marginalizes the outcomes of these choices: children themselves. A recent New York Times op-ed by philosopher Tom Whylan engages both with the now commonplace idea that having children is based on selfish desire and with its modern puritanical corollary, that it is bad for the environment. Whylan cites a beautiful diary entry by the childless writer Franz Kafka, which describes children as signifying infinite hope and potential. Whylan writes, “The world might well be a terrible place, but by having a child, you are introducing something new into it. Of course, this is a sort of gamble with reality: You don’t yet know who your child might be. But if we dare to do it, to bring something new into the world, we might hit upon the right path — and then things really could, conceivably, get better.”

In delineating the various people and parties who could conceivably be offended by a Jewish continuity agenda, Bitton leaves out the most important population of all: the future humans upon whom the entirety of civilization rests. It’s true that having children is physically and emotionally taxing, and undoubtedly the burdens are unequally distributed between genders, at least for discrete periods in a child’s life. Some of these challenges can certainly be remedied; others are on a certain level inherent. Eve is told “in pain you shall bear your children,” and Adam too, is destined to work hard for all the days of life. Yet any account of these difficulties needs to be contextualized with at least a passing mention of the vast potential that accompanies bringing forth new life into the world. 

Far from just one just choice among many equally valid options, Jewish pro-natalism is a cornerstone of our belief system. Without Jewish children we would evaporate into ether, along with the groundbreaking and world-changing ideas we stand for. Rather than let her interlocutors frame the terms of the debate—how Jewish continuity may or may not raise tensions with certain conceptions of feminism—Bitton would do better to open up the discussion to illuminate what is really at stake here. Namely, whether or not we believe in our mission as Jews such that we will do whatever it takes to ensure our future as a people.

Sarah Rindner, a writer and educator living in Israel, is a regular contributor to Mosaic Magazine and the Jewish Review of Books.