Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
April 4, 2003
When a Woman Gives Birth
Friends, tonight I want to speak about a subject that I know almost nothing about. Cynics might say I do that regularly - but this time it is true. I want to talk to you about what women ought to do - and maybe what men ought to do - in the period after they give birth to a baby. I chose this topic for several reasons.
One is obvious. We have new parents here this evening - Vivian and Paul Nelson - and their family. Sarah Naomi has come to Temple for the first time in her life. She came in order to receive her name, and I want to honor her and her mother through this sermon.
Secondly, this Monday our oldest child will be 33. It is hard to believe that almost one-third of a century has flown by since Nancy and I became parents. Where have the years gone? I think back to the birth day of our children in anticipation of their birthdays. I was privileged, truly blessed, to be present at the birth of each of our children and to assist - a little bit - with that miraculous process. So, maybe I know a little bit about this subject after all.
Finally, there is an ongoing discussion - if not debate - in contemporary business circles about childcare leave, what we used to call maternity leave, and which the British government has now made paternity leave as well. Husbands can take off 13 weeks in Great Britain when their wives give birth, so that they can help and so that they can bond with their children. A growing number of American employers are considering some kind of paternity leave, as well as extending the period of maternity leave, as more and more women participate in our workplace.
Obviously, the final reason I chose this topic is because of the Torah portion which I just read, which deals with the question of what a mother should do after she gives birth to a baby. Let me begin by telling you a story related by Rabbi Jack Riemer. He writes:
"I have a friend in Dayton, Ohio, whose daughter recently graduated from medical school in Columbus. Two days after the graduation, she went into the hospital and gave birth to a child - on a Monday. By Thursday she left the hospital and flew from Columbus to Chicago where, on Friday, she took her State Boards for admission as a doctor. On Saturday, she flew from Chicago to Dayton in order to be there for the bris of her child, which took place on Monday."
Rabbi Riemer says: "I used to tell that story as an example of how different women are today. I used to tell it as proof of how women can have it all - how they can be mothers and doctors and anything else they want to be all at the same time. And I was wrong - I was absolutely wrong.
"I was wrong for two reasons. One is that we now live in an age in which, because of the HMO's, a woman can give birth on a Monday, be released from the hospital on a Tuesday and go to a dinner party on a Thursday. And, if she is Martha Stewart's daughter, she can make the dinner, cook the food and write out the invitations to the dinner in advance and mail them on her way to the hospital.
"I am wrong because we now live in an age where, because of HMO's, a woman will soon drop off the baby at the hospital and keep on going. Where women will soon deliver their babies on an outpatient basis - and I am not sure that is good either for the mother or for the baby."
Friends, did you hear the story about the three doctors who died and came to the pearly gates? The admitting angel said: "What were you?" The first one says: "I was a cardiologist." "Come right in," said the angel. The second one said: "I was a pediatrician." "Come right in," said the angel. The third said, "I worked for an HMO." The angel replied: "You can come in - but only for three days."
And I hope our visiting church group will not be offended but, do you know why Jesus was born in a stable? It was because his parents belonged to an HMO.
Rabbi Riemer continues. "I am no longer as impressed as I used to be with what this woman in Dayton, Ohio, did. I think what she did is the opposite of what the Torah and this week's portion says that women who give birth should do.
"The Torah says isha kee tazria - that when a woman gives birth, she should withdraw from the community. She should stay outside the camp with her child. If she has a boy, for 7 days; and, if she has a girl, for 14 days. Then, and only then, should she re-enter the community. But, when she re-enters, she is still limited in what she is permitted to do for a total of 33 or 66 days. During this month or two, she may not enter the sanctuary or deal with maters of ritual consecration.
Why? Generations of male rabbis and scholars have tried to understand this passage and have not succeeded. Male rabbis and male anthropologists have said it is because she is tamay - she is considered ritually impure since she has been on the threshold between life and death. She has created new life, so she must stay away from the sanctuary until she is ritually pure again.
Maybe that is what it means and, if so, then I think our reaction as modern people has to be - how primitive, how outmoded, how irrelevant such a law is to us today. We no longer take the categories of tamay v'tahor - ritual impurity and purity seriously because, for all practical purposes, these laws disappeared with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
We male rabbis and male commentators look upon this law that a woman must withdraw from the community after giving birth and consider it an outmoded law which has no meaning for our time - which may well demonstrate how little males know about childbirth.
Do you know the story about the man who signs up for Lamaze classes? He attends all the classes with his wife, practices helping her with the exercises, accompanies her into the delivery room and goes through the birthing procedure. Finally the doctor says: "It's a girl!" And the man says: "Thank God, she'll never have to go through the experience I just went through."
I went through those Lamaze classes three times and with all of the shared parenting that we have today, let me tell you - men are still essentially only witnesses, observers, bystanders. We stand on the sidelines, and we do not and cannot ever fully understand what a woman feels or experiences.
So what I want to do this evening is share with you a meditation on the law in this week's Torah portion, a meditation which comes from a female rabbi. Her name is Anne Ebersman, and she served as the family education director at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City. She was on maternity leave from her position when she wrote that even before she became pregnant she dreamed that someday she would study the stories in Genesis along with her child. She looked forward to the day when she and her daughter would open a book of Torah and study together. But she says that what she never expected was that her baby would teach her Torah, and that she would start doing so almost immediately after her birth. But that is what Rabbi Ebersman says has been happening. This new mother provides examples of the Torah she has learned from her four-week old daughter.
There is a passage in Pirke Avot: The Ethics of the Fathers, which I often quote - Ayzeh hu ashir - who is truly rich? Hasameach b'chelko - a person who is satisfied with whatever he or she has.
Rabbi Ebersman says : "I never really understood that passage until my daughter taught me what it meant. Emma does not want anything that she does not need. Unlike me, she is not confused about the difference between something you want and something you need. She does not think that she needs more money so that she can buy more outfits with which to show off her peaches-and-cream complexion. She does not believe that if she does not get a raise, or an "A", or a new car, or a new house, that it will be the end of the world. Her only demands - which she does insist on very vocally - are for food, sustenance, attention and care, which are the things she really needs in order to survive. Otherwise, she is truly sameach b'chelkah - satisfied with what she has. When she cries, it is only in order to let the world know that she is hungry. It is not in order to manipulate, threaten or demand something she does not need."
What would it be like if we all lived that way? What if we kept clear - at all times - the difference between the things we need and the things we would like to have? What if we screamed, yelled, demanded and insisted that we get the things we need, but did not make such a big fuss about the things we would like to have but that we do not really have to have? What if we really were able to accept the fact that things are just fine the way they are?
The Buddhist tradition teaches the idea of non-attachment, which means the ability to say about any given situation - well, this is not what I asked for, but it is what I got; so, OK. And Pirke Avot says the very same thing - that real happiness comes not from acquiring more stuff, but from finding contentment with what you already have. "Now I ask you," says Rabbi Ebersman, "my daughter is less than four weeks old and she already knows what Buddhism and Pirke Avot teaches. Are you impressed?
And then, just in case we were not sufficiently impressed," Rabbi Ebersman says, "my daughter knows the Book of Psalms as well - and she has been teaching it to me." The rabbi explains. "A few days ago, Emma started tracking." You remember what tracking is? Tracking is the ability to follow an object with your eyes, and it is a major milestone in a baby's development.
So, last week, as Emma was on the changing table and her mother was trying to figure out how to get her little arms through the sleeves of the outfit she was putting on her, her mother got the idea of winding up the mobile someone had given her as a gift and which hung above the changing table. The most amazing thing happened. As her eyes started to follow the mobile go round and round and round, her face lit up with such delight that it nearly took her mother's breath away. Emma lay there content for nearly five minutes just watching the thing go round and round with an enormous smile on her face, cooing with joy.
And Rabbi Ebersman says: "One of the central teachings of our faith, a teaching found in the Book of Psalms which we sing regularly here, is ivdu et Hashem b'simcha. We are supposed to serve God with joy and tremble with excitement."
The Hassidim say that depression is not a sin, but depression can drag you down more than all the sins can. Joy, therefore, is not a mitzvah, but joy can raise you up higher than all the mitzvot can. So, according to the Psalmist it is a mitzvah of the highest order to find joy and little Emma Ebersman understands that. At the age of one month, she is capable of joy, and she is capable of trembling with excitement at the wonders in this world, such as a mobile that goes round and round and round. She understands what many of us who are older and supposedly wiser do not understand, which is that you can find joy almost anywhere, provided that you are willing to stop and take the time to let joy in. You can find joy almost anywhere, if only you take the time to look, really look to see what is before your eyes.
Emma is just four weeks old, but she has already taught her parents the meaning of a verse in the Psalms about joy and the meaning of a verse in the Ethics of the Fathers about contentment. Can you imagine how smart she will be when she gets a little older and is able to study Torah?
So let's go back to that strange law in this week's Torah portion with which we began. Now do you understand why the Torah provided that a woman, after she gave birth to a child, had to withdraw from the community for 7 days or for 14 days and restrict her activities for a month or two? I am not sure that it was only because of the laws of purity and impurity. Maybe it was so that these two creatures, one of whom created the other, one of whom lived inside the other for nine months, could bond, could be together, could embrace, could get to know each other, could focus on each other, and could learn to begin to separate from each other.
Birth, in a sense, is the first separation - that which has been inside you is now separate from you. This is only the first of the many future separations that lie ahead. Some day this child will be weaned and will no longer need to drink its mother's milk in order to live. Some day this child will learn how to stand and walk without holding on to us. And then this child will someday go to preschool and then kindergarten and first grade; they will go to overnights at friends' houses and to summer camp without us. And then this child will someday marry a stranger and leave you.
And so for the first week or the first two weeks, let mother and child be together, let them bond. Let them recollect the time they spent together within one body and let them just be grateful.
Male commentators can say if they want to that these laws are old-fashioned, outmoded and primitive; but let women who have given birth be allotted some time in which they are not wives and daughters and sisters and social workers and lawyers and not anything else. There will be time to come back and be all of these things again, later on - but not now. Now at least for the first week or for the first two weeks, and possibly for the first month or two, let her be only a mother. Our Torah gives women permission to withdraw, to rest and just to be with their newborn child and with their God, because God never feels as close as at the moment of birth.
Therefore, our Torah portion permits a woman to withdraw for a while and to bond with her baby and with her God in private, and to say as Jacob did when he woke up from his dream - "achen Adonai bamakom hazeh, behold, God is in this place and I did not realize it;" therefore, I am going to dwell here for a while with my child.
In an age when women can give birth on Monday, go home from the hospital on Tuesday and have a dinner party on Thursday, our Torah gives a woman time, to which men are entitled as well. Time in which to bond and to be. Time in which to be amazed at what we have created and time in which to be grateful to God who makes the miracle of birth possible. And let me add that what I've said about biological parents, I believe holds equally true for adoptive parents.
Perhaps I know a little more about this subject than I let on at the beginning. Our sons are 25 months apart in age. Daniel was born on a Saturday evening. I still remember how that I called the nurse we had lined up to see if she would be able to come the next day to help take care of Aaron while Nancy was in the hospital with the baby. I will never forget the response at the other end of the line: "Oh, Rabbi, I have been meaning to call you but I did not know how to tell you. I hurt my back last week and there is just no way I am going to be able to help you and Mrs. Sherman."
I did something I had never even thought of before. I simply cleared my calendar for the next several days and, assisted by our cleaning lady who gave us a lot more time than usual, we took care of Aaron, prepared the house for when Nancy came home from the hospital with Daniel and, frankly, it was a wonderful father/son bonding period and family bonding time. We never did get a nurse.
I do not know if we are going to successfully get paternity leave as an established entitlement for all employees; but, let me make a suggestion to our congregants. Dads, plan your schedule so that when your wife gives birth, you can take off for at least a week from work. We live in a different world today. It used to be when families lived together in the same city, grandmother or grandmothers took over the household duties and aunts and cousins all chipped in. The new mother was able to concentrate just on taking care of the baby, and the extended family helped with everything else. But we do not live that way anymore today, and sometimes grandmothers can not get away from their jobs so as to fly into Tulsa to be with their daughter or daughter-in-law who has just given birth.
So, let me make a final suggestion to our Sisterhood - that we establish a "Birthing Committee." Sisterhood members who will be ready when a mother gives birth to step in and help dad with whatever needs to be done so that mother and baby have that crucially important bonding time. Frankly, I cannot think of a more important potential project for Sisterhood, and I hope you will consider it carefully.
May those of you who have the privilege and power to become mothers learn to appreciate the wisdom found in this week's Torah portion, and may those of us who are excluded biologically from the experience of childbirth learn to appreciate the feelings and the needs of mothers for peace and quiet and bonding time. May we who become fathers hold them and help them and love them and wait for them, until they are ready to come back and become wives and sisters and friends and co-workers again, as well as mothers.
May new mothers not think that have to be as busy as the woman Rabbi Riemer told us about who bounced from Columbus to Chicago to Dayton, who went from the delivery room to the classroom to the brit room all in one week.
Instead, may we sit still and rest and listen and learn and love for, as we do, birth can teach us where God is and what holiness is. If we really listen to them, our newborn children will teach us what the Psalms really are all about and what the Ethics of the Fathers really is all about. They will teach us to only cry for what we really need and not for what we think we need. They will teach us to live with a sense of wonder and with radical amazement at the way things work. They will teach us to serve God with much joy.
May we take the time to be with our newborn children and to learn these lessons from them. Amen
Once again, I am grateful to rabbi Jack Riemer whose wisdom informs this message.
