Finished And Hannah Wept: Infertility, Adoption, and the Jewish Couple by Michael Gold. It’s currently out of print, and was first published in 1988… so, the information is a bit dated (IVF was apparently still highly experimental at the time the book was published). I enjoyed and appreciated its expansive breadth of material, but didn’t feel neccesarily as satisfied emotionally reading it.
The book covers halakha (Jewish law) pretty extensively, and how different passages in Torah, Talmud, and Midrash basically permit just about anything when it comes to infertility treatments. Sometimes I felt as though the book got too bogged down into technicality in terms of Jewish law; for the Orthodox couple, I can see the relevance and importance of finely splicing out exact parameters of what is and is not permitted by Jewish law (treatments on the Sabbath, the use of donor eggs or sperm, the acceptability of semen testings, for example). But for the less observant Jew looking to find comfort in her faith, And Hannah Wept delved just a bit too far for my taste.
Is it a good resource? Yes. Do I feel reconnected to my faith? Absolutely. Does it offer the latest information about the latest advances out there? Not so much. But what it does is it contextualizes the experience of infertility through the Jewish perspective in a way that makes the most sense according to Jewish law.
What I most appreciated about this book was that it doesn’t place the burden of fault with the infertile couple, as I’ve encountered in some other Jewish resources. True, 3 of the 4 Matriarchs were infertile, and it was their prayers that were answered by God that ultimately restored their fertility, but Gold acknowledges this is a not a realistic approach to modern issues of infertility. He argues that Judaism teaches couples facing IF to pursue aggressively, in all their power, to be able to fulfil God’s first commandment of “be fruitful and multiply.” This is one of the few Jewish resources on IF where I don’t feel like I brought this on myself, or that God is testing me in some cruel way.
Still nervous as hell about next Friday. Trying to stay positive and keep myself as distracted as possible.
