Person‐shaped Holes

Abstract

While much Jewish thought, culture, and professional ethics increasingly accommodate a range of gender roles and expressions, sexualities, and family structures, they also remain deeply pronatalist. This overwhelmingly frames reproduction as a core Jewish value and the choice not to bear or raise children as contrary to Jewish values. I argue that Jewish pronatalism masks the true extent to which the whole community must support the care and formation of all its generations. Through a counter‐reading of a passage from the Babylonian Talmud in which three sages neglect their wives and children in various ways that allow a careful reader to notice “person‐shaped holes”—narrative features whose presence implies various people’s nonparental labor—I argue that multiple people in multiple roles within a community make it possible to sustain its continuity in a robust and all‐encompassing way.

Whether and How We Will Continue to Reproduce Ourselves

“…Religious ethicists, including some who have published in previous issues of this journal, have already begun this work. For instance, against “overwhelmingly pronatalist” understandings of Jewish culture and the framing of reproduction as a “core Jewish value” where a decision not to bear or raise children is commonly received as a selfish prioritization of “one's individual desires over and against the welfare of one's community,” Rebecca J. Epstein‐Levi has sought to make a case for “childfree Jews” from “a substantially Jewish perspective” (2021, 226). She has attempted to do this by, among other things, arguing that Jewish continuity is not reducible to “producing children” or even providing care for them and that childfree Jews can satisfy their obligations to “work toward a Jewish community in which all members of all generations can thrive” without themselves undergoing a pregnancy, impregnating someone else, or becoming a parent in still other ways (2021, 238, 242).…”

“…For instance, against “overwhelmingly pronatalist” understandings of Jewish culture and the framing of reproduction as a “core Jewish value” where a decision not to bear or raise children is commonly received as a selfish prioritization of “one's individual desires over and against the welfare of one's community,” Rebecca J. Epstein‐Levi has sought to make a case for “childfree Jews” from “a substantially Jewish perspective” (2021, 226). She has attempted to do this by, among other things, arguing that Jewish continuity is not reducible to “producing children” or even providing care for them and that childfree Jews can satisfy their obligations to “work toward a Jewish community in which all members of all generations can thrive” without themselves undergoing a pregnancy, impregnating someone else, or becoming a parent in still other ways (2021, 238, 242). In a different context, Monique Moultrie, a self‐identified womanist sexual ethicist who uses autoethnography and social scientific methodologies in her research, documents the rise of Black women electing to remain childfree against the backdrop of the ways Black churches nonetheless “provide moral and ethical legitimacy to pronatalist policies” by affording higher status and leadership roles to “those who follow the heteronormative model of becoming a wife and mother” (2021, 315–16, 331).…”

“…She has attempted to do this by, among other things, arguing that Jewish continuity is not reducible to “producing children” or even providing care for them and that childfree Jews can satisfy their obligations to “work toward a Jewish community in which all members of all generations can thrive” without themselves undergoing a pregnancy, impregnating someone else, or becoming a parent in still other ways (2021, 238, 242). In a different context, Monique Moultrie, a self‐identified womanist sexual ethicist who uses autoethnography and social scientific methodologies in her research, documents the rise of Black women electing to remain childfree against the backdrop of the ways Black churches nonetheless “provide moral and ethical legitimacy to pronatalist policies” by affording higher status and leadership roles to “those who follow the heteronormative model of becoming a wife and mother” (2021, 315–16, 331). Moultrie describes how her nine Black childfree Christian women subjects understood the task of nurturing in distinctive ways, had expanded notions of family that included both biological relatives kept at some geographic and emotional distance and ascribed kin, and understood “legacy” in ways beyond bearing progeny.…”