by Carol Levithan, delivered at Minyan M'at

Genesis 35:16-19: They set out from Bethel; but when they were still some distance short of Ephrath, Rachel was in childbirth, and she had hard labor. When her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Have no fear, for it is another boy for you. But as she breathed her last – for she was dying – she named him Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin.

Many of you may have read an article in the August 25th New York Times Magazine
entitled “Holding On to Luke”. It was the terrible story of a serious complication in pregnancy that required an emergency Caesarean, the birth of a son born at 27 weeks gestation, weighing 1.1 lbs and his death a few weeks later. The article included some current statistics: 1 in 10 pregnancies end in premature births; 1 out of 4 end in miscarriage. This article triggered some thoughts that have occurred to me from time to time regarding the striking absence of miscarriage, maternal death in childbirth, premature birth and infant mortality in the Biblical text, a text which we regard as compellingly real in its stories of our ancestors.

An October 27 story from Afghanistan simply intensified this train of thought – from 1998 to 2002, about half of the women of childbearing age who died succumbed to complications associated with their pregnancies or childbirth; in Badakshan, the most remote province in northeastern Afghanistan, 54 % of women of reproductive age who died reportedly succumbed to problems associated with pregnancy

In discussing this subject with my son (a student of ancient history) – telling him that maybe, finally, I had something to say to this minyan – he referred to a book, Egypt in Late Antiquity, and told me in the 3rd century CE in Roman Egypt nearly 1/3 of all children died before the age of one and 2/5 by the age of 5. I gleaned a similar statistic from my teacher, David Kraemer, who told me that fewer than 1.2 of all children survived to their 5th birthday in the early Roman Empire

And, finally, from Heather Brumberg, daughter-in-law to Pamela and Stephen, I received a December 2000 article from the journal “Pediatrics” which cited statistics from 1900 indicating that 3 in 100 children died between their first and 20th birthdays; in 1915 approximately 100 white infants per 1000 live births died in the first year of life; the rate for black infants was almost twice as high.

Statistics confirm what we know from the traditional prohibition of mourning practices for a child who dies under the age of 30 days, surely an indication of the frequency of infant mortality. We are familiar with all the superstitions surrounding childbirth – the red ribbons, no baby showers, no baby furniture delivered until the baby arrives, no mentioning the baby boy’s name until the bris. We gingerly respond to the news of a pregnancy with “B’shaah tovah” – May it be at a good time – rather than “Mazal tov.” And new mothers continue to bench gomel even though according to “Pediatrics” there were only 7.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1998.

Infertility is rife in the Bible – Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Hannah, Samson’s mother and the solution is always God’s intervention. In these cases, as we saw in last week’s parashah, God comes to the barren woman’s rescue – “God saw that Leah was unloved and opened her womb.”

Infertility and God’s intervention so that the couple can conceive is a familiar Biblical trope, yet in the Torah Bible there is only the one maternal death we read about in today’s parashah and only one other in Tanach – that of 1 Samuel 4 where the daughter-in-law of the high priest Eli goes into premature labor upon hearing the news of her husband’s death and dies giving birth. In the entire Bible, there is the death of only one child – the firstborn of David and Batsheva; one pregnancy complication brought on by the combat of Jacob and Esau in Rebecca’s womb; and no miscarriages save the one in Exodus 21:22 that is mentioned in the context of assessing legal penalities: if a woman miscarried as the result of two men fighting and accidentally pushing her down, they pay only a fine since the loss of the fetus is not considered the loss of a life.

Given the statistics from the ancient world, the situation in contemporary third world nations, and the complications that attend pregnancy even in our technologically sophisticated society as described in that harrowing piece from August’s New York Times magazine, we have every reason to suppose that the Bible knew about, but simply doesn’t talk about, the infant mortality, difficult pregnancies, miscarriages, and maternal death in childbirth that were commonplace in ancient times. So, why the silence on this very important, very human subject?

When the child of the adulterous liaison between David and Batsheva dies, it is clearly God’s doing, the punishment for their adulterous relationship – or for David’s forcible taking of Batsheva – and it is a horrifying example of God’s power

2 Samuel 14: …the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and it became critically ill…On the seventh day the child died.”

God can cure infertility, that is all about God’s omnipotence; the woman’s womb is closed until God opens it and makes it possible for the woman to conceive.

But for God to empty the womb through miscarriage or for God to be responsible for
maternal death and infant mortality – if such dreaded events in human life were part of the Biblical tale, what would we have to conclude about the cause? That same God who enables Sarah to conceive at the age of 90 would logically also be the agent of the loss of pregnancies, of babies and mothers. If God were responsible, what would this do to the covenant, to our confidence in this God??? In Exodus 23:26, God promises that none will miscarry when the people reach eretz Yisrael – this is the blessing of the promised land.

“No woman in your land shall miscarry or be barren. I will let you enjoy the full count of your days.”

So the Bible knows about miscarriage but not even the tokekhot – the curses of Deuteronomy - threaten miscarriage or infant mortality or maternal death.

On the simplest level, we know that the patriarchal and matriarchal narratives in the Torah are enormously, perhaps obsessively - or even exclusively - concerned with the establishment and continuation of the line of Abraham, God’s chosen. And God’s power in opening the womb of the barren woman is the method, par excellence, of accomplishing this continuity of generations. God chooses Abraham and makes it possible for Sarah to conceive so the line continues. To be sure, these narratives abound with difficulties and complications. Nevertheless, things tend to turn out alright for the patriarchal line – Sarah gets taken into Pharaoh’s house, but she and Abraham leave Egypt with lots of stuff; Isaac and Ishmael reconcile at Abraham’s grave; Jacob and Esau meet later in life without incident; Joseph and his brothers reconcile in Egypt; all the barren women are able to conceive and bear children.

This narrative of reconciliation and amelioration stands in sharp contrast to the polemics of Deuteronomy and the prophetic texts in which we learn over and over and over again that if we sin, we will suffer and if we are suffering we have, by definition, sinned. The zealous God of Deuteronomy and the books of Samuel and Kings and the classical prophets is, when all is said and done, not the God of the Genesis narratives. How can the God that dictates herem – extermination – for the peoples of the land of Canaan or who uses Assyria as the rod of divine anger, destroying the Northern kingdom and scattering the ten tribes – be the same God who clothes Adam and Eve even after they disobey, who shuts the door of the ark, who negotiates with Abraham at Sodom or who enables the matriarchs to conceive and thus allows the line to be perpetuated?

Perhaps the Torah’s silence on the perils of pregnancy, childbirth, infancy and childhood reflects the Torah’s overriding concern with successful pregnancies, with producing the next generation in the line begun with Abraham – something which God unfailingly does. Miscarriage, maternal death and infant mortality are therefore quite purposefully ignored because they do not advance the Torah’s central theme. These complications of pregnancy are simply not germane to the Torah’s concerns; in fact, they run counter to these concerns.

But perhaps the Torah’s silence on these subjects is due not only to the Torah’s intense preoccupation with fertility and generativity. What we may also be seeing is what I’d like to call a felicitous and deliberate diversity of depictions of God: a God who is zealous and uncompromising in theory, but whose bark is much worse than the proverbial bite, at least on the level of the narrative about our ancestors. Perhaps we can tolerate a God who threatens such horrors but not one who actually wreaks such havoc in peoples’ lives. On a communal level the theology of Deuteronomy may be bearable (although it has certainly broken down throughout Jewish history and most strikingly since the Holocaust) but on the individual level, it is simply too awful to contemplate.

Could the God whose omnipotence enables the barren woman to conceive really also be responsible for miscarriages, premature birth, infant or maternal mortality? A God who really controls all events – both wonderful and terrible - would be such a God; a God who opens up closed wombs but also one who empties the womb through miscarriage or takes the life of a mother like Rachel in childbirth. That would be the logical extension of the omnipotent God. But that would be too horrible. It’s all right for the prophets, all right for a theology that explains events on the communal or national level, perhaps, but not all right to believe in when it comes to the destiny of one’s own family.

And the rabbis actually help make this point by the reasons they give for the death of children and for miscarriages. They take the theology of Deuteronomy and apply it to the devastating losses in human life.

Shabbat 32a – There is a difference of opinion between R. Chiya b. Abba and R. Yose; one holds that children die as a punishment for parental neglect of mezuzah; while the other says that is for the neglect of Torah study.

The discussion goes on to present another makloket about why children die, in which R.Meir says it is due to the neglect of mezuzah and R. Yehudah prefers neglect of tzizit as the explanation.

Shabbat 32b - It was taught in a baraita: R. Nechemiah said: As a punishment for a person’s unwarranted hatred there will be a great deal of discord in his house, his wife will miscarry, and his sons and daughters will die young.

For some, this rabbinic theodicy that explains terrible loss as a punishment for neglect of the mitzvoth may work. The application of the Deuteronomic sin-suffering equation by the rabbis to some of life’s terrible losses is theologically neat but deeply problematic and terrifying. And it is not an equation that we find in the Torah text. If this explanation for human loss were suggested by the narratives of the Torah, how could we bear to read this text year after year? The Torah clearly knew about terrible loss associated with pregnancy and childbirth – Rachel was in childbirth, and she had hard labor – but the Torah remains mostly silent about these losses. We can read and mostly tolerate the threats of Deuteronomy (although we do so rapidly and in a soft voice) but we couldn’t tolerate a litany of loss, in which many Rachels died in childbirth; many pregnancies ended in miscarriage; many, many children died before their 5th birthdays. The silence of the narrative text with respect to unmitigated catastrophes reflects a very different perspective than that of Deuteronomy and the prophets. Ironically, while it is Deuteronomy who challenges us to choose life over death; it is Genesis that makes the choice for life on our behalf.

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