We need to “choose life." Religious progressives can help to steer this ethical / spiritual conversation in a sane direction, and away from JD Vance's snide stereotypes.
Toward a culture of life that is not racist
So many speak about cultivating a “culture of life,” especially voices coming from the right. I wholeheartedly agree and have long felt that political moderates and religious progressive need to take back that language. So today I’d like to explore some ways we can do that - ways that are diametrically opposed to the methodologies of the so-called “pro-life” movement and the current incarnation of the Republican party.
JD Vance’s “thought experiment” about childless cat ladies could not have made me angrier, even though I’m neither a lady, nor childless nor a cat. Aside from being a child-ed dog man, I’m also one of those fortunate people who rarely gets caught up in the right wing media doomscape; but I’ve studied fascism enough to know that wherever there is talk about people needing to have lots more babies, eugenics is usually not far behind. Back in the ‘30s, the Nazi leadership implored German woman to have lots of kids too, and as with Vance, it was not simply to promote an abstract ideal he calls “family.”
The more he talks, the more I understand that this obsession with traditional families having more babies is all about having more white babies, as a means of overcoming the feared replacement by nonwhite (and occasionally Jewish) interlopers. The racist “Great Replacement Theory” which, in the words of political science professor Tatishe Nteta, asserts that “immigrants, Jewish Americans and people of color are seeking to limit the cultural, political and socioeconomic power and status of White Americans with the goal of replacing ‘real Americans,’” has its fingerprints all over the notorious Project 2025 that Vance and Donald Trump absolutely plan to hoist on the American people if they win this election.
Not enough attention is being paid to the Natal Conference that took place in Austin, Texas a few months ago, whose explicit objective was to come up with ways to “explode the population” through the promotion of large traditional families. The agenda was not so hidden. As described in Politico:
Throughout the day, speakers and participants hint at the other aspects of modern life that worried them about future generations in the U.S. and other parts of the West: divorce, gender integration, “wokeness,” declining genetic “quality.” Many of the speakers and attendees see natalism as a way of reversing these changes. As the speakers chart their roadmaps for raising birth rates, it becomes evident that for the most dedicated of them, the mission is to build an army of like-minded people, starting with their own children, who will reject a whole host of changes wrought by liberal democracy and who, perhaps one day, will amount to a population large enough to effect more lasting change.
To no one’s surprise, the Heritage Foundation was at this Natal-Con, carrying with them a host of proposed policies for a potential second Trump administration that would, as Politico summarized it, “promote having children and raising them in nuclear families, including limiting access to contraceptives, banning no-fault divorce and ending policies that subsidize ‘single-motherhood.’”
So that’s one reason, I’m furious about the cat lady thing: It’s a smokescreen for a racist program, whose contours are becoming more evident by the day: Mass deportation, incarceration and decreased support for darker children, combined with huge benefits and incentives to boost the birthrate of the preferred population.
Here’s another.
Toward a Culture of Life that is not speciesist, which includes all creatures, great and small
In true JD style, he managed to denigrate a record number of aggrieved parties with a single comment, a single phrase: 1) people unable to have children, 2) some of whom are seeking IVF treatment, 3) single parents, 4) single people in general, 5) people with disabilities or 6) who have given birth to differently-abled children, 7) along with others who just love cats (and other pets). Throw in 8) a whole slew of empty nesters who now find comfort, or loneliness, in their current life-phase (can Vance not see beyond his own demographic?), 9) people who refuse to bring kids into this world for purely ideological reasons or because it is filled with people like JD Vance, and oh yes, the Duggers, and 10) last but not least, the pets themselves.
I’ve written extensively about how special animals are in the Jewish tradition. There’s even a Jewish new year for animals (this year on Sept. 4), which always falls one month before Rosh Hashanah. The holiday serves as a chance to remind people about the prohibition against unnecessary cruelty to animals. Rosh Hashanah La’Behemot is a perfect day to start conversations about animal welfare — and start taking action to improve the lives of animals around the world.
The mitzvah of kindness to animals is called Tzaar Baalay Hayyim - which literally means "the pain of living creatures." To develop a true, authentic and comprehensive culture of life, we might best begin with animals. If we can treat our pets with dignity, maybe they can teach us how to treat humans that way.
Toward a Culture of Life that promotes societal procreation and collective responsibility for children, without denigrating either personal choices to remain childless or those who are unable to have children.
Here are some of the keys that Jewish tradition gives us to developing an authentic culture of life with regard to having children.
It would seem at first glance that Jewish tradition does advocate people having lots of babies. The very first of the 613 commandments in the Torah is when God tells the first couple at the end of the Creation story, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
What does it mean, to be fruitful? One might think that it means to have a gazillion babies, without regard to, say, the mental or physical wellness of the woman. But the Mishnah was minimalist in coming up with a desired number of progeny.
As usually happens in the Talmud, Hillel wins, and so the rabbinic ideal was not far off from the postwar, suburban ideal here in America, a boy, a girl, and a picket fence.
But why stop at two? Here’s a quick summary of the traditionalist Jewish approach on the matter, from the online Halachipedia.
In case you were wondering, what are those “other values and concerns?” The footnote reads:
As Dick Van Patten would say, “Eight is enough.” Yes, eight kids would definitely have an impact on the education of the other children. I want to resist the temptation to pass judgment on those who choose to have large families. Note, though, that we are far afield from Hillel and Shammai’s minimum of two.
So as you can gather, it becomes complicated from a Jewish perspective to counter the claims of JD Vance and the natalists. Just like many other faith traditions, rabbinic Judaism encourages large families too.
Responding to this traditionalist pressure for big families, Conservative Judaism, in its own responsum on the matter, written in 2007, makes it clear that “there is no obligation to procreate when the couple is unable to have any children or when they cannot have any more children than they have already produced.”
But still, that responsum encourages large families, though not necessarily traditional mommy-daddy-sally-dick-and-jane nuclear ones. Unlike JD and the natalists, Jews have promoted it less out of Biblical obligation than tragic necessity.
Toward a Culture that honors the departed
Jews have many reasons to encourage procreation, not the least of which being that one third of the Jewish people was wiped out in the Holocaust.
But long before that, Jews had a demography problem.
Quoted in the responsum, Rabbi Robert Gordis writes:
The answer lies in the history of the Jewish people, for whom the Middle Ages lasted from the sixth to the eighteenth century and beyond. Over and above the natural calamities of famine and disease to which medieval men generally were exposed, Jews suffered decimation through frequent and violent expulsions, massacres, and forced conversions. The full rigor of the Jewish battle for survival in a hostile world is mirrored in the population statistics already referred to in another connection. In the year 70 the Jewish population of the world is estimated by Adolf Harnack at four and a half million. Eleven hundred years later, in 1170, when Benjamin of Tudela began his travels, there were only 1,500,000 Jews. By 1300 the number had risen to two million, but two hundred years later it had fallen to 1,500,000, where it remained practically constant for 150 years more. The full extent of defection and loss during the Middle Ages may be gauged by the fact that not until 1840 did the figure attain to the level of the year 70, while in the century between 1840 and 1940 the number increased almost fourfold, from four and a half million to sixteen million. German Nazism brutally destroyed six of the seven million Jews in Europe, and thus brought the world Jewish population down to ten million. Faced by these perils, medieval Jewry saw its preservation dependent on a high birth rate without restriction or qualification. The imperious demand for group survival showed no consideration for individual desires or family welfare. Only through children and more children could the Jew hope to overcome the tragic mortality rate. Thus the instinctive wish for progeny was intensified by overpowering religio-national motives.
They are called ‘Mitzvah Babies” - whenever a couple had a third child in order to replenish the lost martyrs. It was a powerful force in postwar Jewish life, a defiance of death that melded well with the optimism of the baby boom era and the pride restored by the establishment of the state of Israel. It was the Jewish version of the Great Replacement - but done in a much more honorable way. We weren’t having babies to keep up with the Joneses (at least not here - Israel is another story), we were having them in memory of Bubbe.
But while the pull of loss was great, a culture of life should not require us to have more kids in order to replenish the loss. Having a child should always be a positive choice. And since the mitzvah of “be fruitful and multiply” falls on men, at least from the traditional perspective, and not women, the woman never loses her power of free choice. Having a child should always be a decision made freely and for positive reasons.
Toward a Culture of Life that embraces science
For Judaism, the mitzvah of procreation encourages the use of modern science, so in-vitro fertilization, donor eggs and all manner of reproductive technology are almost always allowed. The idea is that if people want to bring life into the world, the Torah, which promotes a culture of life, would completely support that. Regarding IVF, J. Silber of the Infertility Center of St. Louis, writes:
According to the Talmud, the soul does not enter the embryo until 40 days after conception. Furthermore, we all have an obligation to have offspring and to “be fruitful and multiply.” IVF is absolutely obligatory when it is medically indicated in order for a couple to have children.
For those who are interested, here are the conclusions of the Rabbinical Assembly responsum (from 1995) on I.V.F and related procedures.
Toward a Culture of Life that protects the life of the mother
The sages did not advocate abortion on demand. They just simply made it clear that when the choice is between saving a real human life, in this case the mother, or a potential human being, the unborn child, the real takes precedence over the potential. The prevailing Jewish view is that a fetus is not a fully realized human being until it is born. Since it is not human at conception or while in utero, a culture of life would imply, from a Jewish perspective, that the focus be on the life of the mother. For many rabbis, that concept extends to less immediate but still perilous threats to her physical and mental health. As long as the fetus remains in her body, it is the mother’s life that matters most.
A Culture of Life that defeats our Culture of Death
Beyond the question of the mitzvah of procreation, there are many other ways to cultivate a culture of life - by defeating the Culture of Death that is so prevalent. We have become numb to instantaneous death, whether on death row in prisons on civilian battlefields effortlessly attacked by remote-controlled drones, in schoolyards and workplaces overflowing with weapons of war, or on street corners and basements overwhelmed by intoxicants and opiods. A culture of life addresses mental illness, loneliness and suicide; bullying and road rage.
Whether it’s simply because we don’t see death the way our ancestors did – back in the day when people didn’t sweep the frail and sick away to die in isolation, as we do today. Or maybe we’ve just gotten numb to seeing wars on TV or in the movies, where you push a button in New Mexico and an unmanned drone kills someone half a world away, where fantasy and reality blend to the point where they are unrecognizable one from the other, where one second an evil killer is massacring people on the streets of Gotham City on the screen and the next, a real life Joker is spraying a movie theater with automatic gunfire, as happened in Aurora.
We need to “choose life,” as Deuteronomy implores us. Life seems very cheap right now, and progressives and moderates can help to steer this ethical / spiritual question in a sane direction. Perhaps conservatives could meet us there and we could discuss real solutions, ones that don’t involve racist eugenics and stirring up resentment against loving, kind people who simply happen to own cats.
A Culture of Life through diversity and collective responsibility
The commandment for humans to “be fruitful and multiply” occurs another time in Genesis, just after the Creation story, and therein lies a clue to getting us beyond JD Vance’s personal dystopia of childless cat ladies in developing a Culture of Life.
It comes after Noah and his family leave the ark, following the flood. God instructs the family.
Here’s a thought provoking commentary by Eitan Cooper of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem. He notes that where God first says “be fruitful and multiply” during the Creation story, it is pronounced as a blessing, not a mitzvah. According to Rashi, only now, this second time the phrase is uttered, to Noah and his family, is it actually a commandment - and in fact this is the first commandment in the Torah.
Here, the commandment states, “Be fruitful, multiply and swarm through the earth - and multiply” Why “swarm” and not simply a repetition of the earlier blessing, “fill the earth and conquer it?” And why repeat the word “multiply on it” (Urvu va)?
Cooper continues:
In his commentary, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch cites a Midrash that celebrates the diverse cultures produced by different climates. He notes that the word “urvu” from the Hebrew root “resh” “bet” “heh” can also mean “diversify.” Our modern Hebrew word for culture “tarbut” is from the same root. God commands diversity. Genetically, socially, politically, healthy cultures are diverse and should celebrate difference. The Tower of Babel tale that follows the Flood story can be understood as the proof text for this. People didn’t swarm and diversify as commanded, and the Tower was only a symptom of the problem: their homogeneity posed a threat to God’s intent for humankind.
So here’s where I’m going with this…
It takes a village to raise a child (to quote Rabbi Hillary Clinton). I take that to mean that procreation is a collective obligation. That’s why the community is invited to a Jewish circumcision. The parents are never alone in assuming this awesome responsibility of raising this child. When my kids were young, I needed all the help I could get, and many single cat-owners were integral to their growth. Yes it is a Mitzvah to have children, but like many Jewish responsibilities, like, say, prayer, the fulfillment of that mitzvah is best accomplished with a minyan, a community. When God is speaking to the first man and woman, God is speaking to all of their descendants collectively, not individually.
Rather than attacking those who are childless, JD might do much better by handing them a bottle or giving them a shopping list with a deep sigh, because, like most parents, he’s plain tucker carlsoned out. And in returned, maybe his neighbor will let the kids have some playtime with the kitties. Pets have so much to teach our kids. They are definitely part of the village.
The commandment to be fruitful and multiply is also a commandment to create a world that is swarming with diversity. Having an extra child for the Holocaust might be meritorious, but so is bringing children into this world with the express goal of teaching them not to hate. The commandment to Noah is an order to integrate schools and neighborhoods, not to insulate children from those who are different. How appropriate that the symbol used to mark this new covenant with Noah, this new beginning, is a rainbow.
So JD, by all means, call for more babies. But let’s also make sure to heap loads of praise on the diversity of family units - including those with pets, those with one parent and two, and those adults with no kids, and those adults with challenged kids and those adults with kids of diverse backgrounds.
Like yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment