Judaism does indeed consider procreation a major mitzvah. That’s not the whole story, though it’s an easy assumption to make, especially if you take a trip to some ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Curiously, the size of the average ultra-Orthodox family has declined to 6.1 children from 7.5 over 20 years. Still, that’s a lot of kids.

The Talmud (Yevamot 63b) says that one who refrains from procreation is considered as if they have diminished the divine presence. And Maimonides says that aside from the commandment in Genesis 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply,” there is an additional obligation tacked onto that verse to “fill the world” with people. It’s as if God is commanding us to take up every nook and cranny of the planet with little humans.

Before we start protesting at some divine design for overpopulation, we should add that this commandment was first uttered back when there were fewer people around, so overcrowding was not a concern. Even so, the sages didn’t want people just continually having kids out of a Torah-driven compulsion to fill the world. If that were happening, nothing else would ever get done — important things like milking cows and studying Torah. So they needed to figure out how many children is enough.

In the Talmud (Yevamot 61b), one opinion (the school of Shammai) holds that one may not desist from being fruitful without having at least two boys. Another opinion (the school of Hillel) says at least one boy and one girl. Either way, two kids is enough — a surprisingly low figure for traditional societies, but the rabbis didn’t want to make fulfillment of this commandment onerous. 

As for your concerns about messing up the planet, let’s take a look at the third clause of that same biblical verse, Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth and have sovereignty over it.” What does sovereignty mean? The Hebrew word used here is most often translated as “conquest.” Does that imply that we should all have so many kids that we overwhelm and abuse the earth’s resources? 

Rabbi Shai Held proposes that it means precisely the opposite: As God’s delegated sovereigns of the earth, the ones created in God’s image, we have been given the special responsibility of representing God’s rule in the world. We aren’t conquerors so much as custodians assigned to run the place — and we had best not mess it up.

As God tells Adam and Eve in a famous midrash, “Look at My works. See how beautiful they are, how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world — for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.”

What’s most relevant here is that, using Rabbi Held’s interpretation, the focus on custodianship can be traced back to the very same verse that also commands us to fill the earth with kids. They are part and parcel of the same obligation. Having kids means caring for our precious planet — but only if you are committed to raising caring kids. If you dedicate your parenting toward passing that green torch to your child(ren), you will leave this world a better place than you found it. 

So (deep breath and drumroll) yes, having kids is an ethical choice. But having kids needs to be part of the solution and not the problem. If it is a feasible and safe option for you at this stage in life, I recommend giving it a go.

Things aren’t great now, but in some ways, they were much worse a century ago. I am in awe that so many people who survived the Holocaust chose to have children, despite what they experienced. Without downplaying our serious environmental and geopolitical challenges, believe it or not, the world is vastly safer today than it has been for most of human history. Some estimate that in talmudic times, the mortality rate for infants was as high as 30 percent. Now, it’s 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “Having children is more than a gift. It’s a responsibility. For us as Jews it’s the most sacred responsibility there is. On it depends the future of the Jewish people. For four thousand years our people survived because in every generation, Jews made it their highest priority to hand their faith on to their children.” 

Yes, we are bringing children into an increasingly dangerous world, and they will feel pain at times, as we all do. If pain avoidance were the overriding priority, no one should ever have signed up for this being-a-human thing, climate change or no climate change. But your children will also be touched by love — your love, and the love of friends and neighbors. And who knows, it might be your child who cures cancer, discovers a new source of renewable energy or brings about world peace. That’s one reason why we welcome the prophet Elijah to every brit milah (circumcision). He will be the one to herald the coming of the messiah, and any newborn (not just boys) could be the one who leads us out of this mess. No pressure!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi and Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously. See more of his writing at his Substack page, In This Moment.

The post Ask the Ethicist: Having Kids In a Time of Crisis appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Let’s first clarify that we’re just talking about a guy who is just misguided and not a crook. If the business is shady, a personal boycott is more than warranted. In the Talmud, the rabbis were particularly concerned about price gouging (hafka’at shearim), especially for essential staples and Jewish ritual items. But rather than boycotting an unethical business, the rabbis’ punishment of choice was “flagellation until they are compelled to sell at the market price.” Personally, I’d rather be boycotted.

But it sounds like the issue is simply that you don’t approve of how the restaurant owner is using his money. Here too you’re on solid ground to refuse to give him your business. The Talmud (Avoda Zara 51b) discusses whether a Jew might pay admission to enter a bathhouse owned by a purveyor of idol worship. Interestingly, Jews frequented Roman bathhouses all the time, even if idols were present. However, the commentator Rashi explains that Jews could only enter if the admission was free. If they had to pay, and the profits went to support idolatry, it was forbidden for Jews to go there.

Later rabbinic authorities used this precedent to ban Jews from renting or buying property from churches, considered by many of them to be purveyors of idol worship. Personally, I feel it’s inappropriate to conflate Christianity, or any contemporary world religion, with biblical idol worship, but the point here is that Jewish law takes seriously how the establishments we patronize use the money we pay them. So if you decide not to continue going to the restaurant, you are on solid ethical ground, especially if you consider them to be supporting causes as abhorrent as idol worship was for the rabbis.

Still, there might be better ways to use your time than playing mall cop, dividing our mercantile world into the children of darkness and children of light. Your shakshuka probably isn’t supporting unsavory causes any more than my taxes are supporting any number of policies I abhor — in other words, not a lot. Some of your money likely does some good too, like feeding the owner’s family.

Further, it could become exhausting keeping your enemy list current. If someone who leans socially progressive bases buying choices on a company’s political leanings, they would never eat a Domino’s pizza, shop at Home Depot or fly Delta. Meanwhile, a conservative would never get to enjoy Cherry Garcia ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s has long been a fixture in Israel, but the company’s founders have actively protested Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza. They’ve also had major differences with their parent company over some of these issues. So who is the real voice of Ben and Jerry’s? And when it’s 100 degrees and your kid is crying for an ice cream, does it matter?  

Life can be pretty complicated when we start boycotting businesses based on politics. That’s because like people, companies are rarely perfectly consistent in their views. For example, Disney has presented an impressive array of strong female role models in the years since Ariel got legs and Belle figured out that Gaston was the real beast. But can we ever forgive them for the overt racism of Song of the South? And don’t get me started on the seven dwarfs.

That restaurant owner might support a political candidate you don’t like, but he might also donate heavily to a day school that your kids attend. He has also poured his life into sustaining a kosher restaurant in your community, which is often a precious commodity that needs the support of the populace.

If you really love the place, let me propose engaging in some dialogue about how uncomfortable you are with, say, the news channel that’s always on over the bar.  If you are a frequent customer, hopefully the owner’s customer service switch will be turned on and the political activist muted, and a constructive dialogue might ensue. Unless he is simply rude, there might be an opening for constructive dialogue. On the other hand, if he is rude, you are absolutely free to check out the place down the street, or order kosher online from Goldbelly.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi and Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously. See more of his writing at his Substack page, In This Moment.

The post Ask the Ethicist: Restaurant Politics appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

If you have no reason to suspect him, you in fact would be the one guilty of betraying trust if you read his texts. Better to utilize the communications tools we have, whether cutting-edge or old-school, to enhance trust.

That was the goal of an 11th century sage named Rabbenu Gershom, a guy so respected that he was literally called the “Light of the Diaspora.” He issued an order of excommunication against anyone who opened another person’s mail. “One should not read a friend’s letter,” he wrote, “without their knowledge and permission.” 

We don’t know his precise motivation for issuing this ban, but it’s clear that Gershom was a stickler for personal privacy and public accountability, and that his overarching goal was to build trust. According to Louis Finkelstein, a 20th-century scholar of Jewish history (and chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in his spare time), letters were rarely carried by government agencies in those days, so there was no oversight and nothing preventing curious private messengers from breaking the trust that had been placed in them. For Rabbenu Gershom, it was less a matter of who opened the letter at the receiving end than who might break the chain of privacy and read its contents en route. By issuing his ban, Gershom was able to singlehandedly foster accountability in long-distance communications. And his rulings were so widely respected that an acronym for the Hebrew warning “subject to the ban of Rabbenu Gershom” is placed on sealed envelopes by some observant Jews to this day.

Gershom cared about matters closer to home as well. Among his other ordinances were several aimed at maintaining trust and civility between spouses, including a prohibition on polygamy (which aligned Jewish practice with broader European trends) and another preventing a man from forcing his wife to divorce him. He was an activist against spousal abuse and domestic strife who sought to foster the prime Jewish value of shalom bayit (peace in the home). What links his domestic rulings to the one regarding mail delivery is a need to promote trust everywhere — shalom bayit in both the private and public domains. 

In a strange way, the circumstances of Gershom’s ban mirror our situation with digital communication. Unlike regular mail, but like the missives carried by the unregulated non-governmental messengers of Gershom’s day, email and texts are by their very nature unprotected. That text you send passes throgh many networks and potential sets of unregulated eyes, even when encrypted, before it reaches the recipient. The rule of thumb is to assume that anything you send online could be on the front page of tomorrow’s tabloids. 

Gershom’s ruling is therefore even more relevant in our digital era than in the snail-mail era of our forefathers. With so much communication zipping around the internet today, we need regular reminders of how corrosive an erosion of trust can be to healthy relationships — and a healthy society.

If maintaining trust doesn’t compel you, consider this: Even if your husband were cheating, he’d be an absolute idiot to leave a digital trail that could be so easily exposed. If he’s that reckless, you’ll certainly find other clues to an affair in places that are even less private, like credit card bills and phone records. In the meantime, like Rabbenu Gershom, you can use this challenge as an opportunity to build a higher level of trust and in your relationship and shalom bayit in your home by coming clean, in a loving way, and letting him know about your concerns — and maybe suggesting sending a few old fashioned love letters to one another. Special delivery.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi and Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously. See more of his writing at his Substack page, In This Moment.

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