You make your way to Tifteh Halav, still exhausted from the birth you experienced, your eyes bleary from sleepless nights and full breastfeeding/feeding, and then it comes. A young lactation consultant gently asks you if you "have met with a family planning counselor yet?""
There is nothing more precious to us in the whole world than our children. You would climb Everest for them. You would defeat entire armies to save them. This is the greatest gift God has given you. You watch with pride as they develop, each one giving you a reason to live, and despite the conflicts and struggles, despite the sleepless nights and the pain of childbirth, you will love them forever, just as God loves you and will love you forever.
God brought the gift and also the... pain that came with it. Children are such a precious treasure, worth the pain and effort involved in raising them. Wait, one day with God's help you will become a grandmother, do you know what happiness awaits you?
When David Ben-Gurion visited Kfar Chabad in the 1960s and encountered the "life's work" of his father-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Schneerson, who already had more than one child, he was thrilled and ordered that he be allowed to set up beehives there, as a means of livelihood and to encourage agriculture in Kfar Chabad. Clearly, this was not what encouraged David Moishe and Aunt Ozit to expand the enterprise to two minyanim!
Life's Work - Children
On Shabbat Parshat Nasa 5740, the Lubavitcher Rebbe said the following: "There are parents who 'have mercy' on the Blessed One, who has fed and provided for four billion people, and do not want to bother Him with providing for a few more souls, and therefore are content with a son and a daughter. And what is also explained in the books of Kabbalah that the image of the Name of God is made by a father and a mother and a son and a daughter (father and mother – Y-H, son and daughter – V-H)...
""In past generations, they knew that a large family is the greatest blessing, and only in our generation, because of double and multiplied darkness, do they put darkness on light and light on darkness, claiming that a few children is a blessing, when the truth is that by doing so, they are denying one of the greatest blessings that God bestows upon a person! Parents are denying themselves the greatest blessing and light - children, and many children, until there is a minyan at the table... and they do not want to allow themselves the pleasure of raising these children for Torah, for the wedding, and for good deeds!""
I heard Rabbi Eliezer Melamed's words, in which he tried to carefully examine whether it was not a trend that among the women who lit the torches this year, there was not a mother whose life's work was to establish a family blessed with children. In many circles, especially among those who do not yet observe Torah and mitzvot, such families are called "multiple children" like a centipede... a nickname that belittles and dwarfs the blessing that exists in a family that has received God's blessing.
Unfortunately, the expression has also infiltrated our public, and there are ultra-Orthodox women (?) who use it and even work to reduce the birth rate in our public for a series of reasons that contradict our holy Torah. "A lamb led to the slaughter" - they call a Haredi woman who is happy to fulfill God's will and bring more children into the world. "You're pregnant" - they threaten. "You don't have the money to buy him what he wants" - they think out loud and try to forget the fact that God is the one who breeds and provides for everyone and is the one who commanded us to have children - and lots of them.
Among themselves, and in the presence of people who are not observant, they disdain the Haredi mother who cannot afford to buy her son Adidas or a branded soccer ball, and can only give him a maximum of yellowing Gemara that will turn her into a talisman... and they are not ashamed to call themselves Haredi.
""Your son will be a Maggid shiur in a yeshiva? What will he get out of it?" they ask again and again.
toOut of duty
When the Rebbe said that every Jewish home should have a minyan of children, a young woman stood there and asked herself: "Who is the Rebbe referring to, certainly not me..." She was pregnant with her second child at the time, and today she lives in a Chabad housing complex in Lod, where her husband serves as the community rabbi. How many children does she have? Without the evil eye, 14 children, and many, many grandchildren. I know quite a few women like her from all over the country. All of them are active, all of them are happy, and all of them are physically and spiritually happy.
I will conclude with another reference from the Lubavitcher Rebbe: "One must strive and turn worlds upside down in order to have children. The Torah commands, 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it,' and therefore until one has fulfilled the commandment literally (in the manner of 'subduing it'), even if one has excuses, that one has already fulfilled one's obligation according to the Shulchan Aruch and the like, when one makes a righteous (true) calculation in one's soul, there is no doubt what conclusion one will reach... Certainly one should not calculate that another child will result in additional expenses, because surely God, blessed be He, can nourish and support another Jewish child just as He nourishes and supports the entire world!".
Every other word is unnecessary.
The writer is the owner of "My Choice", an event host, lecturer, and radio broadcaster.
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