Richard Nadler

“Blessed are You O God, who sanctified the embryo in his mother’s womb . . . You clothed him with skin and flesh, and knit him together with nerves and bones.  You provided him with nourishment and life, and You prepared two angels to guard him in his mother’s womb, as it is written, ‘You granted me life and favor, and Your appointed ones watched my spirit’”—From a Ladino prayer offered by a cohen priest at the ceremony of Pidyon HaBen (redemption of the first born).

 

I. Jewish Teaching on Life and Death 

American Jews generally support abortion.  According to the 2000 Zogby Culture Polls, 61% of respondents who identify themselves as Jews are “pro-choice” without exceptions—roughly three times the rate of Christians, and  five times that of Moslems. The same Zogby survey, however, found 10 percent of Jews opposing abortion except to preserve the life of the mother, and  an additional 4 percent opposing it in all circumstances.

While some of these pro-life Jews may have arrived at that position by other routes, it is safe to say that most of them are traditional Jews whose pro-life views are derived from the Old Testament—particularly the Torah, or Five Books of Moses—and the exegetical writings of centuries of Jewish sages. The Orthodox Jew regards these latter writings not as “interpretations,” but as a divinely-guided tradition that forms an authoritative part of Revelation. In fact, the written Torah is considered a subset of the Oral Torah which God gave Moses on Mount Sinai.

The best source of this “guided tradition” in English is the 19-volume MeAm Lo’ez. First published in the 18th century, the MeAm Lo’ez is Orthodox Judaism’s most popular adult education series. Its primary author, Rabbi Yaakov Culi, organized it around the weekly Torah readings of the Jewish liturgy. MeAm Lo’ez summarizes Jewish law, history, philosophy, customs, and mysticism, with a dash of illustrative parable. No other single work synthesizes so much Jewish tradition—Torah and Talmud; Mishnah and Kabala; Tosefoth, Mekhilta, Sifra and Sifri; and all the great orthodox sages, including Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Rambam, Ralbag, Abarbanel, and Josef Caro. The work was originally published in Ladino, a Spanish-Hebrew dialect used by Sephardic Jews. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Rabbi Raphael Yitzchak Yerushalmi translated it into Hebrew, in which form its influence extended to the Ashkenazic Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Starting in 1977, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s English translations, used herein, were issued by Maznaim Publishing Corporation as Yalkut MeAm Lo’ez: The Torah Anthology.

The tradition enshrined in MeAm Lo’ez teaches that God actively creates human life. The material from which that life is crafted, the process by which it is formed, and the soul with which it is endowed are all sanctified; i.e., set aside for God’s special use.

Genesis I:27 states that God made man “in His image.” This applies equally to the soul and to the body. The human form is spiritual as well as physical. Here is how Rabbi Culi describes Adam’s creation:

“When dust was mixed with water to form Adam, even before God gave him a soul, he was already a spiritual being. Since he was God’s own handiwork, even his clay was like a soul. He was not like other creatures, whose elements are purely physical.”

The human being attains this sacred form while still in the womb, directly by God’s hand. MeAm Lo’ez attributes to Moses the following lecture on the subject of God’s creative powers:

“He is the One who spread out the heaven and made the earth firm. His very voice is like fire. He can uproot mountains and split the earth’s crust.  His bow is the clouds and His arrows lightning bolts. He created the mountains and the hills, and covered the plains with grass. He makes the wind blow and the rain fall. He forms the child in the womb, and brings it out into the light of the world. He is the One who crowns kings, and deposes them at his will.”

The stuff of which humanity is composed is sanctified—set aside for God’s use—in the womb, before it is fully formed. Indeed, it is He Who forms it. The MeAm Lo’ez is filled with references to God’s formative involvement at all stages of human pregnancy. God is considered a partner with the mother and father in a child’s creation—but as the senior partner. It is He who endows the child with life.

“When a person was in his mother’s womb,” Rabbi Culi wrote, “he was in a tight, narrow place . . . God cared for him and fed him and prepared everything he needed.”

The fetus is no mere lump of flesh. It exhibits sentience and spirituality.  MeAm Lo’ez quotes Job 10:12: “‘Life and mercy You did with me, and Your Providence watched over my spirit.” This, Rav Culi wrote, describes God’s care of the human form and spirit in the womb. The unborn child receives not only God’s formative care, but special powers of perception, and special learning. In an exposition of the Talmudic passage “Against your will you were born,” Rabbi Culi describes the spiritual life of the pre-born child:  “When a child is in its mother’s womb, it has a lamp over its head, and can see from one end of the world to the other. All through his life, a person will not experience better days than these. Furthermore, during this time, a person is taught the entire Torah.  When the time comes for him to leave the womb, he does not want to go, and he has to be taken by force.”

The human character of the fetus is confirmed in both Midrash (Jewish wisdom writings) and Halakha (Jewish legal literature). Jewish tradition occasionally ascribes to a fetus the essential personality by which that human being will later be known. In one well-known Midrash, Esau and Jacob contend in the womb of Rebecca. “When she entered her seventh month,” Rabbi Culi writes, “the two infants began to show signs of being very different. One appeared to be good, while the other seemed to be bad. [They] seemed to be wrestling with each other, as if one were trying to kill the other . . . Whenever Rebecca walked past the [Torah] academy of Shem and Eber, Jacob would push as if he wanted to come out into the world. When she walked by an idolatrous temple, Esau did the same.”

During the Tenth Plague, Egypt was punished through its children, as every first-born child of an Egyptian died. According to one grim Midrash, this applied to the pre-born as well. “If a woman was pregnant with her first child,” writes Rabbi Culi, “she miscarried.” 

Jewish law (Halakha) confirms the human status of the pre-born. There are few instances when a Jew can violate the Sabbath without incurring dire penalties. But in order to save a human life, acts otherwise forbidden may, indeed must, be performed. Thus, a man can stanch another’s potentially fatal wound, or disarm a felonious assailant, or pull a drowning companion from water.

He can also deliver a human fetus whose mother has died. “If a woman is on the birth stool,” writes Rabbi Culi, “and the birth process has begun, and then the woman dies, we are permitted to violate the Sabbath to save the life of the fetus. One may do everything necessary. One may cut open her belly with a knife to determine if the child is still alive.”

Indeed, Rabbi Culi continues, whenever a pregnant woman dies, whether naturally or by violence, a Jew may, absent evidence that the child is dead, “violate the Sabbath even if the birth process has not yet begun, because it is very possible the child is still alive.”

The sacral identification of the child delivered with the child in utero is elucidated in the Torah: “God spoke to Moses saying: Sanctify to Me every first-born—the initiation of every womb—among both man and beast. It is Mine”—Exodus 13:2. From the time of the Exodus from Egypt, first-born Jewish boys assumed this special status. Having been spared, “passed over,” in the Tenth Plague, they are specially consecrated to God’s service. In the  ceremony quoted from at the beginning of this essay—Pidyon HaBen, the redemption of the first born—pious Jewish parents make a payment to the religious authorities to redeem the first-born child.

 Just as the first-born in the womb were taken by God during the Tenth Plague, so a woman’s first fetus is considered the first born for Pidyon HaBen.  If she miscarries during her first pregnancy, no subsequent child is considered “first-born.” The initiation of the womb begins not at delivery but at conception. Indeed, according to one famous teaching, life begins even before conception. This teaching, contained in the Mishnah, the foundation of the Talmud, takes the form of a conversation between the Roman emperor Antoninus (Marcus Aurelius) and Rabbi Yehudah. Rabbi Culi presents it thus:

“Rabbi Yehudah was also asked, ‘When does the soul enter the body?  Does it do so when it is decreed on high that the mother will conceive, or does it wait until its flesh, bones and nerves develop?’

“Rabbi Yehudah replied, ‘The soul does not come until the embryo is completely developed.’

“Antoninus then declared, ‘How is it possible for the fertilized egg to survive without a soul? We see that if a piece of meat is left for three days without preservation, it spoils and is useless. Therefore, I maintain that when it is decreed for a woman to conceive, the soul enters the fertilized egg.’

“The rabbi agreed with him; when he repeated this, he said, ‘This I learned from Antoninus. The soul is present even before the embryo is formed. He appears to be correct.’”

Jewish pre-conceptionism is sometimes expressed as material potentiality, sometimes as spiritual pre-existence. “In semen is distilled the finest substance in the body,” Rabbi Culi writes, “and this is what makes fertilization possible. This fluid contains the potential for all of man’s 248 limbs.”

Even the association of semen with ritual defilement reflects its potential for human life. MeAm Lo’ez explains the paradox this way: “Human semen has the property of causing ritual defilement, just like a corpse. The mystery of this is because semen is destined to form an embryo, which can accept a divine soul. The unclean forces therefore wish to attach themselves to it, since the nourishment of the Other Side comes only from the Holy.”

The soul is, of course, timeless. How could it be otherwise, given the Eternal Being in Whose image it was created? But so is the form to which it is fitted: “The body,” writes Rabbi Culi, “has 248 limbs and 365 blood vessels . . . The soul has exactly the same number of limbs and blood vessels, but these are spiritual rather than physical. Each part of the soul is in its counterpart in the body, and is strongly bound to it.”

Jewish mysticism takes this a step further and says that the human soul exists before its integument in a body. Referring to this tradition, Rabbi Culi wrote, “At the time of creation, God foresaw that Israel would accept the Torah. He arranged a special place in the highest firmament known as Aravoth. Here were placed all the souls that were destined to be born into our world.  Another place was set aside for all the souls which had already lived in the world, and have returned to their source.”

“The Fifth Chamber,” states MeAm Lo’ez, “is called Love . . . In this Chamber are all the souls which are destined to be born, as well as the form of every future body. Since the world was created, this place of souls has never been empty. When all the souls are used up, the Messiah will come.”

The question “When does human life begin?” makes no sense in traditional Judaism if it focuses on the process of conception, gestation, and birth. The true answer resides in Who created it—the eternal God—and the manner in which He did so—in His image. Complete or incomplete, actual or potential, material or spiritual, human life has a sacral character, set off from the rest of creation by its eternity, derived from its Creator. 

II. Abortion in Practice 

Because of that sacral character, it follows that the deliberate destruction of innocent human life, before or after birth, is sinful. In fact, the practitioners of abortion include many of the most heinous criminals in Jewish history. In the texts of traditional Judaism, it is regularly associated with sexual sin and with murder, self-destruction and, ultimately, genocide.

The Anakim

“All the sages agree,” Rabbi Culi writes, “that the people killed by the Great Flood do not have a portion in the World to Come, and also will not participate in the Resurrection.”

He is referring here to the Anakim, also called Nefaliym—giants, or titans—whose sins brought destruction upon the world. Their souls, states MeAm Lo’ez, will not stand up for judgment in the Future “because they have reached the epitome of sin.”

The generations of that day were blessed in ways that men of our day are not, with long life and excellent health. The Anakim were wealthy, Rabbi Culi relates, and physically powerful. However, their advantages engendered an attitude of self-sufficiency and haughtiness which led them to despise God. The Anakim filled the earth with sin, particularly sexual sin. MeAm Lo’ez specifies the practices which brought God’s wrath upon the world. They included promiscuity, homosexuality, and bestiality. “[The Anakim] would commit such perversions as publicly as a legitimate wedding, “comments Rabbi Culi, “without any shame whatsoever.”

Abortion was also rampant among the generation of Noah. Rabbi Culi derives this from Genesis 6:4:

“The titans were in the earth in those days, and also later, since the sons of the leaders came to the daughters of man, and they fathered them. These were the mightiest ones who ever were, men of name.”

In Jewish tradition the “titans” or “giants” are not a race half-human, half-angelic, but “men of name”—the elite, the renowned. They were also men of destruction: the root of  the word for “name” in Hebrew, Rabbi Culi notes, resembles the root of the word meaning “to destroy.”

They were also abortionists. The written Hebrew of the Torah, lacking vowels, yields alternative readings, just as “H L” might outline “hail,” “heal,” or “hale” in English. Since nothing in Torah, say the Jewish sages, is random or superfluous, these alternative text-based readings must also be studied. In this case, the consonants for “Titans”—N F L Y M —also spell “aborted infants,” or Nefiliym, thus: “The aborted infants were in the earth.”

“The earth was literally filled with them,” Rabbi Culi explained. “When a woman became pregnant through fornication, she was given drugs to induce abortion, that her shame not be known.”

Sodom

 “Sodom,” MeAm Lo’ez tells us, “was a very wealthy city, exporting gold and precious stones. The area had so many resources that its populace had no financial worries. No other city was blessed like Sodom. The people, however, were very wicked.”

The Sodomites, whom God blasted from the earth, were renowned not only for the sin that bears their name, but for their eager embrace of a broad range of crimes. In Sodom, the innocent were victimized for gain and humiliated for pleasure. 

The four sins for which Sodom was destroyed were inhospitality, licentiousness, theft, and murder. But it was inhospitality that best characterized the Sodomite society. Jewish sages relate that it was illegal in Sodom to provide bed and board to a transient, but it was acceptable to steal his goods, to torture him, or even to take his life.

Cruelty and exploitation were socially sanctioned; indeed, they were the basis of Sodomite law. For instance, the poor were forced to perform unpaid public services from which the rich were exempt. Statutes forced citizens to utilize costly monopolies. A thief injured in the commission of a theft could bring judgement against his victim.

“The warped form of justice in these cities,” Rabbi Culi explains, “caused many people to be killed unjustly. In many cases, it appears that the law was written to favor the criminal. If a person beat a pregnant woman and forced her to miscarry, the law would not allow her to prosecute her assailant. If a complaint were lodged, the law required that she live with her assailant until she became pregnant again. This was considered ‘restitution.’”

The Sodomite law was in sharp contrast to the seven Noachide Laws. Judaism teaches that these are universal commandments, generally applicable not only to Jews but to all mankind. Under these decrees of God, men are forbidden to commit murder; to steal; to worship idols; to blaspheme; to have forbidden sexual intercourse; and to eat from a living animal. In addition, there is an affirmative obligation to establish a civil order capable of enforcing these ethical norms.

Under the Noachide code, Rabbi Culi explains, “A gentile is guilty whenever he takes human life. This is true even if he kills an unborn child in its mother’s womb. It is also true when the victim is so sick that he can be considered dead, and is sure to die in any case.” Thus, in His normative code governing human behavior, God bans abortion and euthanasia as forms of murder.

  Pharaoh and the Egyptians

“A seed must be buried in earth before it can grow,” writes Rabbi Culi. “Similarly, the Israelites had to be buried in Egypt before they could grow in faith.”

At first, the Israelites living in Egypt were treated the same as Egyptians. But then, when the old pharoah died, his successor changed that policy. The opposition of the Jews began with acts of civil persecution. MeAm Lo’ez describes how Jews were stripped of rights of citizenship. They were disarmed, overtaxed, and conscripted into the corvee (forced labor). At all stages, the desire of Jews to assimilate into the Egyptian culture facilitated their enslavement. Eventually, they faced extermination.

Pharaoh’s first plan, according to Jewish tradition, was mass abortion.  “Pharaoh did not order a general extermination of the Hebrews, young and old alike, even though it would have been easier,” writes Rabbi Culi. “This would have given him a reputation as a king who kills all immigrants, and it would give his kingdom a bad name. Pharaoh therefore did not dare kill the Israelites openly, but sought ways in which to exterminate them secretly.”

He commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill Jewish males while they were still in the womb. According to Midrash, Pharaoh taught the midwives occult techniques of determining whether a fetus was male or female—arts unnecessary to the modern abortionist. “Pharaoh wanted the midwives to abort the fetuses before they were born,” says MeAm Lo’ez. “No one would then know that the children died because of his decree. The mothers would simply assume that their children had been stillborn. He therefore ordered that the matter be kept top secret, not to be revealed to anyone, Israelite or Egyptian.” 

 The Egyptian’s intent was genocidal. “Pharaoh knew,” Rabbi Culi wrote, “that Esau had once threatened to kill Jacob, and had said, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; I will then kill Jacob’ (Genesis 27:41). Pharaoh’s advisors said that Esau’s plan to annihilate Jacob’s family was deficient. By the time Isaac died, Jacob might already have had many children. He could have left his wives pregnant as well. But if all fetuses are aborted, there will be no children, and the nation will be exterminated.”

But the tactic of secrecy thwarted the strategy of genocide. The midwives continued to deliver Jewish babies:

“The midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had instructed them. They allowed the infant boys to live.”—Exodus 1:17

And they lied about it to Pharaoh:

“The king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the infant boys to live?’ The midwives replied to Pharaoh, ‘The Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They know how to deliver, and give birth before a midwife can even get to them.’”— Exodus 1:18-19

It was the failure of his plan for genocide by abortion that led Pharaoh to issue his famous decree that newborn Jewish males should be cast into the Nile. God’s response was the plagues He inflicted upon Egypt. These plagues  demonstrated His suzerainty over creation; they were designed to edify as well as to punish. Each fresh catastrophe revealed the shallowness of the Egyptians’ control over nature, both animate and inanimate; over their own senses; and indeed, over their own existence. From the Nile of blood to the taking of the first-born, the plagues were God’s most comprehensive repudiation of “humanism” since the Great Flood.

Midrash teaches that an incident of manslaughter/miscarriage sealed God’s resolve to send the tenth plague. “There was a woman.” writes Rabbi Culi, “by the name of Rachel . . . who was in an advanced state of pregnancy. After spending a grueling day in the field gathering straw, she and her husband were kneading clay for bricks in a huge vat. Suddenly her time came, and she miscarried her first-born child into the clay. Before she could even recover her child, the Egyptians drove her and her husband into a new job, and the dead infant was formed into one of the large clay bricks. The archangel Gabriel then descended and snatched up the brick with the dead infant, and presented it before the Throne of Glory. That night, God took counsel with the heavenly tribunal, and it was decreed that all the first-born of Egypt be killed.”

The Jewish Pro-life Tradition

Jewish tradition associates abortion with depravity, murder, sadism, and genocide. The generation of Noah practiced it to hide sexual sin. It was sport for the Sodomites and statecraft for Pharaoh. Its practitioners suffered the most terrible punishments from on high: The Anakim were exterminated in the flood, the Sodomites blasted with fire, and the Egyptians attacked in their possessions and persons by ten horrendous plagues.

The other side of the coin is that those who preserved and protected unborn human life, often under stressful and dangerous circumstances, acquired merit in God’s sight.

Pharaoh’s Decree

Jewish tradition identifies the ringleaders of the midwives who defied Pharaoh’s decree as Yochebed, the mother of Moses, and Miriam, her daughter (and Moses’ sister). The Torah says:

“God was good to the midwives.  The people grew in number and became very numerous. Since the midwives feared God, He made houses for them.” —Exodus 1:20-21

Rabbi Culi lists the benefits God showered on the midwives. He sheltered them from retribution from Pharaoh; He gave them wealth; but above all, He blessed them in their descendants. “Soon after this episode,” Rav Culi writes, “Yochebed gave birth to Moses, through whom the Torah was given . . . Yochebed was thus the mother of Moses, who was the foremost of the Levites, and Aaron, who was the father of the hereditary priesthood.

“Miriam was also rewarded in a similar manner.  One of her grandchildren would be Betzalel, the builder of the Tabernacle, who would be filled with a spirit of wisdom . . . Miriam had David as a descendent, thus giving rise to the royal house of Israel.”

But Israel was the greatest beneficiary of their courage. “It was in the merit of the midwives’ willingness to risk their lives,” writes Rabbi Culi, “and [to] stand up to Pharaoh that the number of children increased even more.”  They had thwarted Pharaoh’s decree, and saved their people.

MeAm Lo’ez describes how Yochebed and Miriam approached the problems of what we today would term “crisis pregnancies.” Sometimes, it seemed likely that a child would enter life deformed. “On many occasions,” Rabbi Culi writes, “women had difficulty in childbirth, and the only way a living child could be delivered was if it were maimed. In such cases the midwives would pray, ‘Lord of the universe. You know that we do not want to follow the instructions of this evil king. We are placing our lives on the line in refusing to obey his command. We therefore pray that You spare this infant, so that people not slander us and say that we maimed the infants because we were trying to kill them.’”

Sometimes, a birth involved mortal danger. “On many occasions,” Rabbi Culi writes, “it seemed certain that either the mother or child would die in childbirth. In such cases, they also fervently prayed that both survive, and God heard their prayers. This is alluded to in the expression, ‘They made the infant boys to live’ (Genesis 1:17).”

Jewish oral tradition also teaches that the midwives performed many of the functions of a present-day “crisis pregnancy center,” providing sustenance for mother and child after birth. The following passage in MeAm Lo’ez illustrates both the teaching and the formal technique by which it is derived: 

“The Talmud notes that the expression, ‘They allowed the infant boys to live,’ is apparently redundant. Since the Torah states that they refused to obey Pharaoh’s instructions, it is understood that they did not kill the young boys.  The Talmud resolves the difficulty by stating that not only did they not kill the infants, but they did everything in their power to assure them a good life. If the parents were poor, the midwives would collect funds for them to raise the child.” In rabbinic exegesis, every phrase of Torah—indeed, every letter—adds meaning.

Lot’s Daughters

In the Jewish tradition, a woman’s intent to give birth is itself sacred. MeAm Lo’ez credits two controversial women with purity of intent on the basis of their refusal to abort children conceived in sinful circumstances. After God blasted Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his surviving daughters fled first to Tzoar, then to a cave in the hills. There, the girls plied Lot with wine, slept with him, and eventually bore him two sons.

Lot’s daughters assumed that the conflagration was universal, as in the time of Noah, and that they were last people left on earth.  “In telling us that they became pregnant,” writes Rabbi Culi, “the Torah is informing us that their motives were pure. If not, they would have aborted the embryos, as prostitutes do. Instead, they gave rise to two famous nations, Ammon and Moab.”

“The girls had the highest motives,” states MeAm Lo’ez, “and they were therefore worthy that the Messiah would be their descendant. The older girl’s son was Moab, and Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David, was a Moabite. As is well known, the Messiah will be a descendant of David.”

The Jews in Egypt

Tradition teaches that the Jews, during their captivity, experienced moral as well as physical degradation. Most of them renounced circumcision, the sign of the Covenant, and many adopted the idolatrous practices of the Egyptians. As a consequence, their redemption—their eventual Exodus—depended on God’s faithfulness and on the virtues of their forefathers. But MeAm Lo’ez records that they retained some slender merit upon which God could act: “Our sages teach that in the merit of four virtues the Israelites were worthy of leaving Egypt: they avoided sexual immorality, they avoided slander, they did not change their names, and they did not change their language.”

As Rabbi Culi amplifies the first of these points, “The first merit of the Israelites was that they avoided sexual immorality. This was true of both the married and the unmarried. The Israelites knew that the Egyptians had very low sexual standards, and avoided them completely . . . The Israelites also did not engage in abortion. When Pharaoh had issued the decree that all male infants be killed, the temptation to abort infants, rather than have them born to certain death, was very strong. Also, the Israelites would have had ample cause to avoid conception. But they had faith, and obeyed God’s commandment to have children, without giving heed to the consequences.”

The Torah treats human procreation not merely as a norm, but as a commandment. The first statement of this decree follows the declaration of man’s sacred origin and precedes the declaration of his suzerainty:

“God created man in His form. In the form of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, fill the earth and conquer it, and dominate the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every beast that creeps on the earth.’”— Genesis 1:27-28

Jewish history is filled with agonizing decisions to bring forth children in an imperfect world. One famous example, taught in MeAm Lo’ez,brings us back to Moses’ parents: Amram, son of Kehath, and Yochebed, daughter of Levi.

“Amram was a leader of the Israelites. When Pharaoh decreed that Hebrew infants should be cast into the Nile, Amram said, ‘The Israelites are having children in vain. The children are being drowned anyway.’  With that he divorced his wife . . .

“Miriam came to her father and said, ‘Father, your decree is worse than that of Pharaoh. Pharaoh only decreed that boys should be killed, while you are decreeing that the Israelites should be bereft of both sons and daughters.  Pharaoh is a wicked man, and it is therefore unlikely that his decree will stand; but you are a saint, and your decree will certainly be carried out . . .  Furthermore, Pharaoh is only doing evil in this world. Even though the infants are murdered, they have a portion in the World to Come. But your decree will even deprive them of the next world. If a child is never born, how can it gain a portion in the Future World?

“‘You must remarry Mother. She is destined to give birth to a son who will set Israel free.’

“Although Miriam was only six years old at the time, her words made a profound impression on Amram. He remarried Yochebed, and was soon emulated by the other Israelites, who also took back their wives.”

Confronted with the choice between a life of suffering and death, the Jew chooses life—but for reasons that are beyond life. To reject that gift is to reject God’s providence, to deny God’s justice, and to annul man’s ethical duty.

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