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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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How phase one of the Gaza peace plan is beginning to fray
President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan – which was reinforced in principle during a “peace summit” on Monday with the presidents of Egypt and Turkey, and the Emir of Qatar – is long on intention and short on details. Aaron David Miller, who advised six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations under both Republican and Democratic presidents, says the road map may offer limited help in navigating peace in a place fraught with challenges.
Phase One
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the terms of the deal during a White House meeting in September, while Hamas has agreed to only the plan’s first phase, which mandates an immediate ceasefire, an Israeli troop withdrawal to an agreed upon line, a return of the hostages held by Hamas, and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The ceasefire’s fragility is already apparent. Today, Israeli forces killed several Palestinians in Gaza City who they say were “crossing a yellow line” that is under IDF control as part of the ceasefire agreement.
Only four of about two dozen deceased hostages were turned over to Israeli authorities on Monday, with four more turned over on Tuesday. Egyptian teams are working to locate the remains, as the Red Cross warned that some may never be found.
Israeli officials reduced the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to 300 trucks daily, from the 600 originally intended, because of the delays in returning the dead hostages.
What’s missing
Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that what the plan leaves out may be just as significant as what it includes.
“This is not the Oslo agreement. It doesn’t call for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. It’s not a peace agreement between Israel and key Arab states,” Miller said. “It is a road map that could potentially end the war in Gaza. That’s what it is. It’s nothing more than that.”
One of the reasons Netanyahu was able to accept the plan, Miller said, is because there are enough provisions to satisfy the majority of the Israeli public, such as Hamas disarmament.
“It’s inherently a pro-Israeli plan, both in terms of structure and substance,” Miller said. “You could have created this plan in an Israeli laboratory.”
What the plan says will happen to Hamas, Gaza, and Palestinians
According to the plan, “Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.”
Specifics include that Gaza “will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee.” The committee will “be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts,” with oversight from a “Board of Peace” headed by Trump, until it is determined that the Palestinian Authority has sufficiently reformed and can effectively govern.
Hamas will “agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form,” the plan says. “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.”
But Hamas has said it will not lay down its arms. According to Miller, Hamas’ main objective — political survival and the need to retain influence in Gaza’s government — has not changed.
“What are the terms and circumstances [of disarmament]? What do you do about the tunnel infrastructure? Does Hamas get to keep its personal weapons, for example?” Miller said. “Every point in this plan is filled with a universe of complexity and detail that’s yet to be negotiated.”
The plan also says that “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
The provision marks a departure from Trump’s previous plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” which called on Arab states to absorb Gaza’s displaced population. Trump had said those relocations would be permanent, with no right of return.
Still, some aspects of the plan nod to his idea for real estate development, including the establishment of a special economic zone with preferred tariff rates and “a Trump economic development plan.”
The agreement also establishes “an interfaith dialogue process” with the goal to “change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.”
The plan concludes that when these processes are complete, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”
But Miller remains dubious that the language is meaningful.
“I suppose you might argue that the nod to Palestinian statehood could be a problem [for Israel], but it’s so general and so distant as to be more or less not terribly relevant,” he said.
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Trump drew Arab leaders into a historic peace agreement. Too bad about the one glaring caveat
It was impressive, no question about that: A sitting American president, flanked by the heads of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar — among dozens of other countries — signing a document that contains all the right words and sentiments needed for achieving Middle East peace.
But Tuesday’s display in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh may be all for naught. For Hamas to disarm and disappear — which is the only way that this two-year nightmare can truly end well — massive, sustained, multi-dimensional and focused pressure will be needed in the days and weeks ahead.
The newly signed so-called Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity is a far-reaching and courageous diplomatic text. It unambiguously denounces radicalization and violent extremism, signalling that the Arab states are no longer willing to indulge militancy as a permanent fact of life — a major move in shifting the balance of the Arab-Israeli conflict away from jihadism. The declaration also does something else extraordinary: it explicitly acknowledges the Jewish historical and spiritual connection to the land of Israel, and insists on “friendly and mutually beneficial relations between Israel and its regional neighbors.”
The text envisions new efforts to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians, on the heels of the Gaza war, not as working toward a reluctant truce, but rather as a civilizational project grounded in tolerance, education, opportunity and shared prosperity. All of this — if it is to be enforced — will represent a moral revolution for a region long trapped in denial, grievance, and violence. It suggests the assembled are truly ready for an end to the cycles of violence.
The symbolism does have meaning. That Qatar and Turkey, both of which have long existed in enmity with Israel, lined up behind a statement calling for peaceful coexistence is no small thing. For a region so long dominated by grievance, that alone suggests a tectonic shift.
But symbolism is not a plan.
The leaders who signed the Tuesday statement know this, and have thrown their weight behind the successful execution of President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which both Israel and Hamas have agreed to. “We acknowledge that the Middle East cannot endure a persistent cycle of prolonged warfare, stalled negotiations, or the fragmentary, incomplete, or selective application of successfully negotiated terms,” they wrote.
Reading between the lines, that’s an acknowledgment that there is one major way in which the plan could fail: If Hamas refuses to disarm and vacate Gaza. That one clause — buried among the 20 points of the deal Trump announced two weeks ago — is the fulcrum on which the entire edifice rests. And the problem is that this “successfully negotiated term” has not been publicly agreed to by Hamas. Trump merely announced that peace had been achieved. And experienced observers of Hamas know that the group will seek any possible out to ensure their own survival.
If they find one, and Trump and his regional collaborators don’t crack down, then the whole thing collapses. The Arab leaders can declare peace, but if Hamas still has weapons, the war is not over. It’s paused.
The early signs are bad, despite Hamas’ release of the 20 remaining living hostages on Monday. Even as Trump and the Arab leaders signed their declaration, reports from Gaza described Hamas commanders consolidating power, executing accused collaborators, and appointing local “emirs” to replace municipal officials. The group is not surrendering; it is reorganizing.
Trump’s triumph is real enough in the short term. But if the deal falters on this front, it will mean disaster for Gaza, where Israel would be within its rights to resume the war to oust Hamas. It could also be a death stroke for the career of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If Hamas doesn’t disarm, and reestablishes power, Netanyahu’s critics will argue correctly that what actually occurred — ending the fighting in exchange for the hostages — was achievable since the very early days of the war, when many more people were still alive. Netanyahu will be accused of having fought, and sacrificed, for nothing — except for, perhaps, the survival of his extremely unpopular far-right coalition.
Though unseemly to admit, some in Israel may be quietly hoping for this outcome: That Hamas, true to form, will make a mockery of the deal, and ensure that Netanyahu cannot escape political judgment for his failures — leading up to the attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and ever since.
I sympathize: Netanyahu is terrible for Israel. But it’s in all our best interests to hope against that result, and for the peace powerfully if vaguely outlined in Tuesday’s agreement. We must hope, too, that Trump resists his habitual pattern of losing interest. His pattern in global affairs — from North Korea to Iran — has been to claim credit and move on, leaving others to clean up the contradictions. If that happens again here, the “Trump Peace Agreement” will join a long list of Trumpian theatrics.
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‘They’re fed up’: Post-ceasefire, Israel faces an enormous political reckoning
My brother-in-law, David Levy, didn’t sleep much the night before the release of the last living hostages. That day, he stayed glued to the family TV — along with what seemed like the entire country.
“You could just see the injection of spirit this has given to Israel,” he said.
“I finally get why Judaism talks so much about ‘the redemption of captives,’” he said, referring to the religious duty to free prisoners. “You see how this has just driven Israelis crazy for the past two years.”
Now, there’s a budding sense of normalcy, he said, and a tentative if clear-eyed hope for the future.
But when I asked David if he thought Palestinians and Israelis would achieve coexistence — the last point on President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war — he broke into a smile.
“Yeah,” he said, “maybe Hamas will ask for the sheet music to ‘HaTikvah.’”
After the hostage release, a reckoning
I called David, my wife’s brother, on Oct. 7, 2023, after news broke of the Hamas attack. He and his wife, Etti, had just endured a two-hour missile barrage at Kibbutz Mishmar HaNegev, where they have lived for 40 years, some 20 minutes by car from the Gaza border. He was seething with anger at how his government could let this happen.
“This is a total f-ed up,” he said at the time. He spent the next several days at funerals, shivas and memorial services for many murdered friends and colleagues.
With the release of the 20 living hostages Monday, in exchange for close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, there’s finally a real chance for the anger he and other Israelis felt that day to have a political impact, David said when we spoke by video app on Monday.
There will likely be an election before fall, David said — elections are mandated in 2026. He expects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to face a reckoning over three primary issues: the cash payments Qatar made to Hamas under his watch, essentially financing the Oct. 7 attack; his refusal to force Haredi men to serve in the army, which has contributed to enormous strains on Israel’s reserve forces amid the war; and his rejection of a government investigation into Israel’s failures on and leading up to Oct. 7.
“As opposed to almost everybody else, he has never said, ‘I’m sorry,’ David said.
The long-running complaint of many Israelis is that the political opposition to Netanyahu has never coalesced around a strong candidate. But David said the past two years may have changed that as well. A new generation of young people became politically engaged because of the attack, the hostage crisis and the war.
“You had guys with jobs and families spending 400, 500, days in the army doing reserve service,” he said. “They’re fed up. All these young, capable people that just went through this war, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re going to get their say and do something.”
‘Israelis are still mourning’
I asked David if that reckoning will include an acknowledgment of Israel’s destructiveness in the war in Gaza. If the ceasefire holds, rebuilding efforts will surely be accompanied by more reports on the death toll and debastation — although international journalists are still being denied entry to the strip.
How will Israelis come to terms with it?
“What did Mosul look like after the Americans left?” he asked. Meaning: American, Iraqi and allied troops destroyed an estimated 60% of the Iraqi city of Mosul in a 2017 effort to rout ISIS fighters, killing an estimated 9,000 civilians. Did Americans ever really confront that harm — or even, as a collective, feel an obligation to?
“I don’t think the mindset was we just turn the place into rubble for the sake of turning it into rubble,” he said.
He has seen the rubble of Gaza himself, during visits to friends in border communities, and said he agrees “the destruction is going to be something that has to be reckoned with,” he said.
“But you know, Israelis are still mourning. That sounds like a cop out, but Israelis have not totally not dealt with the other side.”
The reason, he said, is that two years later, the trauma of Oct. 7 is still fresh.
“The Israeli public has been so devastated,” he said, “we’re wrapped up in ourselves. I don’t know when we’ll get over it. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who’s been affected directly by this war.”
What comes next?
Israel wants its image abroad to improve, David said. Trump’s peace plan, although fragile — already, there are clashes over Hamas’ delay in returning the bodies of slain hostages — offers an opening.
“If there’s peace, and Gaza gets rebuilt properly, so that these people can have a good life instead of just being pawns in this crazy death cult of Hamas, then I’m sure that this will improve Israel’s reputation around the world,” David said. “But will Hamas give up power and disarm?”
That question is central to fears over whether Trump’s plan will be fulfilled. It’s a serious concern. Even as David raised it, I noticed an incoming news alert that Hamas militants had killed at least 33 Gazans whom the group accused of collaborating with Israel.
Yet there are still reasons to be hopeful. After attending a day of memorials on the second anniversary of Oct. 7, David said he was preparing to spend Simchat Torah — the holiday on which the massacre took place in 2023 — at a festive family meal, cooked by his son-in-law, who owns a Jerusalem restaurant.
Is that kind of true celebration a sign the war is really over? I asked.
“I want to hope so,” he said. “I really, really want this to be over.”
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