A Heckscher for Fertility Clinics?
For many couples, keeping the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” doesn’t come easy.
The good news is that, today, those who have trouble becoming pregnant have options that Abraham and Sarah (the Bible’s most famous reproductively challenged couple) never did; the bad news is that halacha or Jewish law — with its set of demands about how a child is to be conceived, and how religious lineage and priestly status is to be passed from generation to generation — can complicate matters of employing reproductive technology.
Those complications are the raisons d’être of the Jerusalem-based Puah Institute. The organization counsels infertile couples, and sends supervisors to fertility clinics around the world to ensure that the business of making babies is done within the confines of Jewish law. The work of the Institute, named for a heroic midwife in the Book of Exodus, is detailed in this enlightening article, published Sunday in Canada’s National Post, and its companion podcast.
As a Puah supervisor told the National Post: “Just like rabbis supervise the production of Kosher food, we supervise the fertility process. It’s not that we don’t trust the labs, but this is the only way this process is Halachically sound.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
