by Rabbi Avi Billet
A little less than a year ago, the headline read: “Five Fertility Patients awarded $15 million after failure of freezing tank”
This was the follow up to a tragic story from 2018 when an infertility clinic in San Francisco had their freezer (containing thousands of frozen eggs and fertilized embryos) fail, making all of those potential babies no longer viable.
From the article from June 2021:
“Five patients of a California fertility center have been awarded a total of $15m after a freezing tank failed, rendering some of more than 3,500 frozen human embryos and eggs unviable.While the extent of the damage from the accidental thaw is unclear, jurors awarded the sum to clients of the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco after finding that the storage tank maker, Chart Industries, had known about a defect that prevented accurate temperature monitoring and had not warned the center about the problem.The case could have significant consequences for a fertility industry estimated to be worth $37 billion by 2030 and comes amid declining fertility rates and a drop in childbirth, recently described as a Covid baby-bust.” [Regarding that “baby bust,” see here: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/05/the-coming-covid-19-baby-bust-is-here/]
Others settled outside of court. I don’t need to tell you that for people who go this route, there is always a story, whether of rounds and rounds of infertility treatments, of many miscarriages, of taking out healthy eggs before chemo and radiation treatments.
The 5 patients include women who will likely never have their own child now. This is sad for them – and while I am sure the judgment pays them back for much money they laid out in their treatments and their plans, the money will never replace the chance they had, the dream they hoped for.
Our shul is once again participating in the Yesh Tikva Infertility Awareness Shabbos [see more at https://yeshtikva.org/]. We do this because we all know people – for some of us it may be our children or grandchildren – who struggle with infertility. And we also do this to be aware of a sensitivity needed towards those who do not have children – either due to their own struggles with infertility or simply marrying later in life. Yesh Tikva’s goal is to provide resources for those who need help, and also to educate our greater community on how relate to the people who fit either description just mentioned.
Some simple examples:
• Never asking younger people when they are going to start having children, whether they are your children or grandchildren, and especially if they are not your family.
• Never complain about your children to people who only wish for such a reason to complain
• Be sensitive to the reality some people live with – even if they seem OK with it. Don’t say things like “You don’t have children so you don’t really know what I’m talking about.”
What CAN we say or do?
We can be thoughtful and careful in the things we say, and remember to treat all our children the same, and all of our friends the same, when it comes to relating to them – irrespective of their being-parents or not-being-parents status.
We can be sensitive. If they are still in the “parsha” of possibly having children, we can reach out and say “I pray for you all the time.” We can wish people that ה' ימלא כל משאלות לבכם – “that God should fulfill your wishes.”
What does it mean to pray for others? One of the Torah narratives in which prayer for others plays a role is the story of the pre-destruction of Sodom. Rav Moshe Feinstein asked why God found the need to tell Avraham about Sodom? Even if He knew Avraham would pray, He also knew that Avraham's prayer would have no effect. Sodom was doomed, and not even Avraham could save it!
Rav Moshe answers that God wanted Avraham's prayers anyway. Avraham's prayers were powerful and needed to be brought to the earth for a purpose – a purpose and design other than to save the doomed city
Similarly, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 44b) tells us that when Avraham prayed near the city of Ai (Bereshit 12:8), his prayers did nothing at the time, but prevented Yehoshua's army from being routed in the Battle of Ai (Yehoshua 7:5) around 465 years later.
This is one element of prayer that is beyond all of us. We simply do not know what our prayers do, what merit they serve to advocate for in our world.
This is also why we say Tehillim beyond what is in our davening for those who are ill in a state of urgency – whether pre or during surgery, or in an unexplained coma, or whatever the reasons. There is a distinction in Halakha between issuing a זעקה – which is not recommended on Shabbos – and a תפילה – which is absolutely permitted on Shabbos. Praying for others, at any time, is absolutely appropriate.
When it comes to having a child, this lesson of praying for someone is even more profound.
The Talmud tells us in Niddah and Kiddushin that there are three partners in creation: Mother, Father, and God. If the contributing factor of one of these partners doesn’t work right, it seems the Talmud is saying, there will not be a baby. And while with modern medical science we can suggest there is sometimes a 4th partner, medical science doesn’t note when God is not contributing His part. That is where the devout Jew needs to pay careful attention to the Talmud’s 3rd partner.
Towards the opening of our Parsha, Rabbi Yitzchak Caro (in his Toldot Yitzchak) utilizes a Talmudic teaching to explain how an expectant parent must pray for fertilization to take root in the first three days from the act meant to lead to conception, from day 3 to day 40 pray for a male child, (surely that prayer could be for a female child too!) from day 40 to the end of the first trimester pray that it shouldn’t be a miscarriage, from 3 months to 6 months pray that it should not be a stillborn, from 6 months pray that it should be born in peace.
If so, he concludes, it seems that the health of the child and success of the pregnancy is dependent on prayer much more than on nature.
The sex of the child, he claims, is dependent on ואם כן נראה שזה הדבר תלוי בתפילה ולא בטבע - prayer more than a natural outcome. And then while he explains that naturally בטבע - anything might happen, if potential parents specifically want a male or a female, לזה צריך תפילה (prayer is needed). Halevai everyone who wants a child should get to the stage where such an option (prayer) is all they need to worry themselves with.
In our world of science and rationalism, we tend to aim to find explanations for why things go right, and even moreso for when things go wrong. It’s the man, it’s the woman, the doctor’s approach and system of treatment, etc.
But maybe, just maybe, we don’t have all the answers because some causes and cases go beyond the realm of the natural world. An unhealthy woman sometimes gives birth to a completely healthy and normal baby. A healthy woman can’t carry a baby to term. What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s impossible to answer this question. But Toldot Yitzchak’s suggestion is the solution to the role we can all play. There is a need for prayer that goes far beyond our understanding, and enters the realm of the cosmos in terms of where it sits, lies and waits, and then returns to influence the world.
Years ago a colleague shared an essay from a project his shul had in which people wrote of what tefillah means to them. One thought, from a mother of a child-diagnosed-with-cancer, impacted me deeply. She wrote, "You don't know what prayer is until you find out your child will not outlive you." Most helpful, she wrote, was when a person who had gone through a similar trial confided in her saying, "There are times when you will be angry at God. You will not be able to pray. Don't worry. The rest of us will be praying for you."
These are powerful thoughts. It's not just that every individual has the ability to move mountains. It's that we are all in this together, looking out for one another, making a prayer-contribution because somewhere, somehow, it helps all of us, perhaps in ways we could not even consider or imagine. That thought was shared by a mother whose child was not going to live much longer. Perhaps such a sentiment can apply as well to the man and woman who are not yet parents, who are looking at a bleak future, because they have no idea what the future hold for their not-yet-conceived child. Or for their pregnancies that miscarry time after time.
The financial settlements noted at the beginning won’t bring back any lost eggs or embryos. But for those who haven’t given up hope (“Yesh Tikva”) the future is a wide open book of possibility, of realities that haven’t been written yet.
As a mohel I’ve worked with people who have incredible stories: Cancer survivors who had babies, others who through the help of science and medicine had babies after years of tears and infertility, others who after thinking they could only have babies with help were shocked to find a beating heart in a womb they were told couldn’t make it happen alone, surrogates from the most unexpected places, secondary infertility which yielded successful pregnancies, people who were told by physicians they would never have children who defied all the odds and textbooks and built beautiful families.
When we pray for others we indicate that in whatever ether, whatever cosmos that are beyond our understanding, we are trying to have an influence. We are doing what we can, connecting with the Borei Olam, to show HIM that we believe our prayers are what He wants, and that He uses them how He wants to move the mountains that we care about. Sometimes people need a physical healing. Sometimes people need a spiritual healing. Sometimes people need an emotional healing. Sometimes people need to find methods of coping because the challenges life throws their way can be so so so overwhelming. We think of them and pray for them because we care that they can find a way to enjoy life even with the difficulties life may throw their way – and when healing is possible, that it should be achieved with God speed.
We shine our best and most when we do what we can for people – rejoicing with them in good times and being as supportive as we can in rough times. Including the painful struggle of infertility.
The life we live is not one in which we go it alone and don’t care about others. On the contrary, if we don’t care about others, our lives are hardly worth living.
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