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BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY
There's a Yiddish expression, "Kinder un glezer hot men keyn mol nit tsu fil." (There can never be too many drinking glasses or too many children.)
Dr. Ruth Westheimer ("Heavenly Sex") wrote, "In the Bible not only did older people have sex, they were given successful blessings for conception as well."
Of all the 613 mitzvahs in the Torah, the very first one is to be fruitful and multiply. It says, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, that they become one flesh." This mitzvah is primary to any other mitzvah.
Leah (wife of Jacob) was the mother of Reuben, Shimon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zevulun, and Dina. In "Fiddler on the Roo f," Golde and Tevye had five daughters. Molly Goldberg ("The Goldbergs," sitcom), which portrayed a lower-class Jewish family in the Bronx, had two children, Rosalie and Sammy. Golda Meir ("When we love our children more than we hate our enemies, wars will cease") had two children, Sarah and Menahem. Blu Greenberg, founding president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance is the mother of 5, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer has 2 children.
Rose Kennedy had six children. She wrote [1974], "I would much rather be known as the mother of a great son or a great daughter than the author of a great book or the painter of a great masterpiece."
My paternal grandparents, Louis and Clara Gottlieb, had five children: Sally, Bernie, Max, Sammy, and Izzy.
American humorist, Sam Levenson (1911-1980) is credited with many quotes about families:
. "Som ewhere on this globe, every ten seconds there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped."
. "When I got married my husband promised me the world. I now have eleven kids. I'd say he came pretty close."
. "We've named our kids Bulova, Gruen, Waltham, Elgin, and Benrus. They keep coming like clockwork."
. "The advantage of having a large family is that one of the kids may turn out better than the others."
. "My father never took my mother out before they were married, and afterwards only if they were headed for the maternity hospital, which in Mama's case was often enough to give her rosy cheeks."
On a more serious note, the 2000-01 National Jewish P opulation Survey showed that on average, each Jewish woman in the U. S. has 1.9 children, which is below the population replacement rate of 2.1. Yes, while most Jews in America have few children, the Jews of New Square, a small village in Rockland County, New York, have at least six children per woman and possibly even more. Haredim have made it their goal to have as many children as possible. They believe they are called to repopulate the Jewish community.
Billionaire philanthropist, Michael Steinhardt, delivered a speech in 2003 in which he proposed a plan to supply a " newborn gift" (money) to Jewish parents upon the birth of a child.
Rebbetzin Faige Twerski, wrote about " The Joys of a Large Family": "Forty years ago when I first came to Milwaukee, a large family was not a common phenomenon. After having had a number of children, I appeared at an event i n maternity clothes and very obviously pregnant. A woman observed my condition and without a second thought, right there in public, asked, " Didn't you ever hear of birth control?... there was no sensitivity to the fact that (a) this might be a private matter or that (b) even from her frame of reference the right to choose should include the option of a large family."
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach also writes about the contempt shown to parents of large families. When he spoke at the Jericho Jewish Center (Long Island, NY) a few years back, he related a very touching story. As he entered a public bus with his large family, the reaction was "Are they ALL yours?" NOT "Oh, what a lovely family you have."
More recently {2006], when his wife had her 8th child, he was mildly criticized by a Jewish organization which was supposed to be hosting him for a lecture, for havi ng to cancel on them because the lecture clashed with the baby's bris.
In an article for WorldNetDaily.com, Boteach wrote, "Most people get a new car every two or three years, but one or two babies through the life of their marriage is plenty...Indeed, the contempt shown to parents of many children is the last acceptable prejudice in our society. As the father of a large family, I find myself apologizing wherever I go, as if I committed a crime...Having a family with many children implies a backwardness and primitivism that is deemed unbecoming in the developed countries of the West. Large families, it is thought, exist only among religious weirdoes or the teeming hovels of the Third World...Why are people impressed that Jay Leno owns 20 motorcycles, but disgusted that some religious families choose to have 10 children?"
And so, this Mother's Day, let's give thanks t o every mother who says, "Yeder kind trogt zayn eygne brokhe arayn in der velt." (Each child carries his own blessing into the world.)
_____
This column is written in the memory of
Marjorie's dear friends, Sandy and Cynthia Wahl, who were the parents of
six
wonderful children.
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