The Real Mother

Rabbi Melanie Aron

May 8, 2004

Kelly Weisberg, a member of our congregation and a professor at the Hastings law school, is writing a book about surrogacy law in Israel. It seems that Israel was one of the first countries to make the hiring of a surrogate mother legal and is also unusual in that the government is involved in regulating the relationship between the couple and the surrogate mother. After the first few cases, the Israeli commission responsible for creating law for this new area felt it was necessary to protect the interests of the child and of the surrogate mother. Kelly asked me to look over her book with regard to some issues of Jewish practice and custom and we ended up having an interesting conversation on the question of why Israel, which in some ways might seem such a traditionalist society, was the first to venture into this area.

One of our conclusions was that having children was so important in Judaism that this value overrode even the inherent conservatism of the Orthodox rabbinate, which more than the religious leaders of other faiths, have sought to find ways to make surrogate motherhood legal within the system of religious law. After all Jews understand the first commandment given to humankind to be God’s commandment to Adam, “Be fruitful and multiply”. In Biblical times being barren, both for a man and for a woman, was a terrible fate. Rachel weeps that her life is not worth living because she doesn’t have a child, Hannah is so distressed that she appears in the Temple as a mad, drunken woman and even Abraham, thanks God very politely for all of his promises of greatness, but says basically, what use is all of this, in that I am still without a child.

Children in Biblical times assured one’s immortality. That is why the Bible has some strange laws, like the law of chalitzah, where if a man dies without having a child, his brother must marry his widow and their first child, is reckoned to the deceased. In Biblical times to die without leaving children behind is to be cut off from the continuing story of your people.

The rabbis of the Talmud also view children as a great blessing and didn’t understand a person making the decision not to marry, or not to have a family. The stress on having children was so great that in cases where a marriage produced no children after ten years, the couple was supposed to divorce and marry another spouses in the hope that these relationships would be more productive. Of course even as they made this a law, the rabbis understood that marriage was more than procreation. The Talmud encourages people to marry even in circumstances where it was clear that they could not have children, whether because of age or physical incapacity. And the rabbis tell a wonderful story of a woman who outsmarts their law. Given the right to take with her, on being cast out of her husbands house, some one thing, she chose to take, her husband.

While Sarah’s experience with Hagar as surrogate mother was definitely a mixed blessing, the contemporary Orthodox rabbinate has been supportive of surrogacy and also of many new technologies in medical science which enable those who otherwise could not have children to do so.

Yet I wouldn’t want to give the impression that within Judaism it is the physical act of bearing a child that is the only significant aspect of being a parent. Bringing up a child is as important or perhaps even more important than bearing one. For that reason the rabbis extend the mitzvah of honoring parents, to honoring those who teach and bring up a young child.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this principle is the respect extended to Henrietta Szold and the honors she receives on the Israeli version of Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day in Israel is not celebrated in May. Instead it is celebrated on Henrietta Szold’s birthday, the 30th day of Shevat. Henrietta Szold who was born in 1860 and lived until 1943, was the daughter of a Conservative Rabbi in Baltimore and an extraordinarily well educated Jewish woman. Some think that it was because of a disappointment in love, but for whatever reason, Henrietta left the US, went to Israel in the 1920’s she through her considerable energies into improving the health and welfare of the children there. As the Nazi’s rose to power, she also began Youth Aliyah, an effort to save Jewish children by bringing them to Israel, known then as Palestine under the British Mandate. Because the British would not allow their parents to immigrate with them she set up a system of youth villages to house those who were without family in Israel. After World War II this system of youth villages absorbed the many orphans whose parents could not be found. It is estimated that Henrietta Szold saved more than 30,000 children from almost certain death in Europe. Through her work to secure the safety and health of thousands of children, she became known as a “mother in Israel” without having ever born a child herself.

Aaron & Daniel – why am I telling you about Ms. Szold? It’s a nice story for Mother’s Day, but more than that, I thought it could remind us of something very important about Jewish identity.

Just as some are biologically mothers, without being mothers in the fullest sense of the word, there are those born into Jewish families who will be Jewish in name only. Others, whether born as Jews or adopting Judaism, will through the actions they take during their lives, give full meaning to that identity.

We pray that the education you have received at home and in the Jewish schools in our community, will lay the foundation for a meaningful and fulfilling Jewish life.