A Great Miracle Happened Where?
It was when I was studying with my rabbi for my conversion to Judaism when I first noticed how family oriented it seemed like the holidays were. Especially Hanukkah. My Jewish friends at the time told me that they didn’t really exchange gifts with family members, and that “it’s really a kid’s holiday.” I understood that the holiday was seen as a minor holiday in terms of religious importance but its timing near Christmas made it seem much more important in pop culture. As a child in my small town in New England, it was the Jewish holiday I had heard of.
Fast forward to my first Hanukkah as a student for conversion, single! I bought a basic menorah from Target and didn’t really know what else to do. The decor seemed based for hosting parties (something I didn’t have a reason to do) or was clearly for children. As I studied, took classes, and worked with my rabbi, it was clear to me that holiday observance felt like a group, specifically a traditional family activity. It felt like I was in suspended animation. When I met my now-husband and we celebrated our first Hanukkah as an engaged couple (a few months after my formal conversion), it seemed like all of the holiday cheer I was looking forward to was on hold until we had kids.
This suspended animation feeling grew more intense as years passed and no fun holiday-themed pregnancy announcement came. Years of seeing friends on social media announcing their pregnancies, and then showing the adorable photos of their kids in holiday-themed pajamas and the holiday cards littering the dining room. Best I could do was to send a holiday card with our beagle on it.
This is what I was promised when I converted…where was the adorable family I was going to celebrate Hanukkah with?
After years of trying and failed attempts of low-tech intervention with my OBGYN landed me with a virtual consultation with a fertility clinic in December 2020, my reproductive endocrinologist told me I had an eight percent chance of getting pregnant spontaneously. Eight percent! Looking back now, the irony of being told I had a eight percent chance of getting pregnant with my “unexplained infertility” during Hanukkah was lost on me at the time.
I turned to my Jewish faith during the following years of infertility treatment, which included failed treatment cycles, tens of thousands of dollars, and a pregnancy loss. In the thick of it, I learned that the rates of infertility were significantly higher in the Jewish community.
I had heard infertility rates thrown around in the midst of my googling ranging from 1 in 8 to 1 in 6. Per the CDC as of April 2024, 28% of women aged 35-39 deal with “impaired fecundity”, with the rates increasing to 31% for women aged 40-44 and 34% for women aged 45-49.
In the Jewish community, however, the rates are much higher. Per the Jewish Fertility Foundation, the rates go from 16% from ages 35-37 to 25% from ages 38-40, then spikes to 50% from ages 41-42, and then almost 100 percent for folks 42 and older.
Despite the higher rates of infertility, it was hard to find Jewish resources outside of a few groups, a couple of books, and a few social media folks. A quick search of Etsy for infertility gifts brings you squarely into a very Christian space. Bible quotes and literal paintings of Jesus holding a woman with a negative pregnancy test in her hand greet you. I would have even appreciated some agnostic options! It all felt very Christian, very toxic positivity. Despite the women of the Torah dealing with infertility, the lack of specifically-Jewish resources made me feel even more alone during a pretty alienating time.
For years, it felt like the miracle of becoming a mom was going to be like those words on the dreidel - a great miracle happened there. There. There were other people, other families, anyone but me. I felt like I was failing in my Jewishness as a woman as I wasn’t able to be fruitful and multiply. Finally, after spending years holding my breath, wishing it would be different the next year, it finally was. The miracle finally happened here - as my curious and kind toddler begs me to read “Elmo’s Little Dreidel” for the fifth time in a row.
I hope to explore all of it here - the dynamics of infertility, motherhood, being a woman in this society after all in this post-Roe world - through an intuitive and Jewish lens.
This Hanukkah, I light one candle for the Maccabee children per Peter, Paul, and Mary, as well as all of the Jewish families wanting to have children to light candles.
Jewish Infertility Resources
