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I am a single rabbi without children. I shouldn’t be made to feel I am not ‘doing my part.’
(JTA) — I recently attended a bris in my community where the mohel announced to the new parents and the whole room, “Raising this child is the most important and impactful thing you will ever do.”
These words were offered to anchor the already exhausted and overwhelmed couple in the sanctity of the job they are embarking upon; the holiness of shaping a person into adulthood; the pride in doing something meaningful and lasting.
At the same time, these are the sentiments that form the foundation of parents’ guilt when they have to work or when they choose to be with friends and not their children. They create the basis of self-recrimination when a child struggles and the parent is made to feel they are to blame. They foment anxiety over not enjoying aspects of parenthood or feeling lonely or isolated in the endless exhaustion of rearing children.
These are also the words that shame those of us who have no children.
The year I turned 30, I was not on any identifiable path to parenthood. I was, however, in rabbinical school and deeply committed to the ways I could and would serve the Jewish people as a rabbi. Until rabbinical school, I experienced my own private grief about not having a partner or kids, but no one had ever imposed those feelings on me or pressured me on my timeline.
As part of a counseling course in rabbinical school, I was assigned a reading where I learned that 13.9% of married women ages 30-34 experience infertility (a percentage that only increases after 35). Thirty years later, the author who shared this data did so again at an all-school gathering, reminding us that women pursuing education were largely responsible for the decline in Jewish population, since the ideal age for a woman to get pregnant is 22. He added, in essence, “Don’t come crying to me when you finish your education and realize you missed your window.”
I was shocked by his callousness and also by the overt implication that delaying parenthood for the sake of education was damaging to the Jewish people — an assertion, overt and implied, reached by many Jewish social scientists, as others have pointed out. Apparently, nothing I could do as a rabbi would ever have the same impact on Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish future as producing babies above “replacement level.”
While the presentation surprised me, the idea that the ideal role of anyone with a uterus is to bear children is embedded in our scripture and liturgy. Even the way many of us have chosen to add women into the daily amidah prayer to make it more egalitarian attests to this role: Three times a day we chant, “magen Avraham u’foked Sarah,” that God is the one who shields Abraham and remembers Sarah. This line about remembering Sarah refers to the moment when God undid Sarah’s barrenness, giving her a child (Genesis 21:1). Every time we recite these prayers we are reifying the idea that a woman’s relationship with God is directly linked to her fertility.
According to the medieval sage Maimonides, “Whoever adds even one Jewish soul it is considered as creating an entire world.” How many times do I have to sit on a beit din, or rabbinical court, before the number of conversions I witness adds up to a child? How many weddings and b’nei mitzvah and tot Shabbats and hospital visits and adult education classes? This is math I should not have to do as a rabbi or as a woman. It is not math we should ask of anyone.
I know I am not alone among my peers in expressing frustration around such rhetoric. If we truly believe that a person’s value is derived from being created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of the Divine, then we need to demonstrate this in the ways we speak and teach about parenthood and fertility, celebrating the role and value of an individual within a community with no correlation to the number of children they raise, how they parent, or how those children connect to Judaism.
While there are plenty of sources in Jewish literature and a range of sociological data that offer all kinds of reasons that Jews should “be fruitful and multiply” — often expressed with urgency after the devastation of the Holocaust — the Torah, our most ancient and sacred text, also presents a model for what it means to be a person without a child who makes a tremendous impact on the Jewish future.
According to the most straightforward reading of the Torah, Miriam, the daughter of Yocheved, sister of Aaron and Moses, does not marry and does not bear children. And yet, Miriam played a crucial role in ensuring the possibility of a Jewish future. She was the sister who watched over Moses as he floated in a basket, the girl who connected Moses’ adoptive mother with his birth mother, and the prophet who led the women in joyous dancing when the Israelites finally attained freedom.
In a recent conversation, Rabbi Rachel Zerin of Beth El Temple in West Hartford, Connecticut, pointed out that what is powerful about Miriam is that she appears content with her life. Unlike most of the women we encounter in the Hebrew Bible who do not have children, we never see Miriam praying for a child; she is never described as barren or unfulfilled and yet she is instrumental in securing the Israelites’ — our — freedom.
Through this lens, we can understand that the Torah offers us many models of a relationship to parenthood: Some of us may yearn for it and ultimately find joy in it, some of us may experience ambivalence around bringing children into the world, some of us may encounter endless obstacles to conceive or adopt, some of us may struggle with parenting the children we have, some of us many not want to be parents at all, and some of us may experience all of these at different times.
Like Miriam who fearlessly added her voice to the public conversation, we, too, can add more voices to the conversation about Jewish continuity that counteract the relentless messaging that raising children into Jewish adulthood is the most consequential thing we might do.
Yes, parenting can be miraculous and beautiful, something we should continue to celebrate. But we each have so many gifts to offer the Jewish people — our communities just need to create space for all of us to contribute in a broad variety of ways, by making fewer assumptions and speaking about parenthood with more nuance, expansiveness and compassion.
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US Officials Tell i24NEWS Israeli Concerns About Gaza Board of Peace Are ‘Unfounded’
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
i24 News – Amid the criticism in Israel over the composition of the “Board of Peace” and the bodies set to govern the Gaza Strip, as well as concerns that Hamas could continue to threaten Israel under the new plan, officials in Washington suggest these concerns are unfounded, i24NEWS understands.
A Senior US official tells i24NEWS: “Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt were instrumental in achieving the ceasefire, securing the return of the living hostages, and bringing back the deceased. They have co-signed commitments that Hamas will follow through on its part of the plan, and the Board of Peace will work with them to ensure compliance.”
The underlying message is clear: President Trump will make the calls, and the US will ensure full implementation of all objectives of the plan, first and foremost the demilitarization of Gaza, regardless of the positions or hostile statements towards Israel coming from Turkey and Qatar.
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One Person Killed, 14 Hurt in Blast in Iranian Port of Bandar Abbas, Iranian Media Reports
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Iranian shores and Port of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz, December 10, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
At least one person was killed and 14 injured in an explosion in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a local official told Iranian news agencies, but the cause of the blast was not known.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander had been targeted in the explosion were “completely false.”
Iranian media said the blast was under investigation but provided no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Separately, four people were killed after a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to state-run Tehran Times. No further information was immediately available.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in Saturday’s blasts, which come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests and over the country’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump said on January 22 an “armada” was heading toward Iran. Multiple sources said on Friday that Trump was weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused US, Israeli and European leaders of exploiting Iran’s economic problems, inciting unrest and providing people with the means to “tear the nation apart.”
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
The port suffered a major explosion last April that killed dozens and injured over 1,000 people. An investigative committee at the time blamed the blast on shortcomings in adherence to principles of civil defense and security.
Iran has been rocked by nationwide protests that erupted in December over economic hardship and have posed one of the toughest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers.
At least 5,000 people were killed in the protests, including 500 members of the security forces, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
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