The very first mitzvah to appear in the Torah is the commandment to have children. “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it..”

It appears that in Jewish law a couple has not fulfilled this obligation until they have had two children (preferably a boy and a girl).

My question, therefore, is what is the Judaic status of a couple who cannot bare children? Has this couple failed Hashem? Does such a couple feel ostracized by the Jewish community?

If a Jewish woman cannot be fruitful is it permissible for her to obtain ovum from another woman which will be fertilized by her husband within a laboratory?

If a Jewish man is not potent, or he is unable to obtain arousal, is it permissible for another man to fertilize the woman’s ovum, within a laboratory?

Is adoption equal to procreation for the purpose of fulfilling Hashem’s commandment?

Is adopting a Gentile infant and rearing him/her as a Jew equal to adopting a Jewish infant?

If a couple does not wish to be involved in scientific procreation which would produce a child that will only carry the genes of either the husband or wife, or they do not wish to adopt a child which would not be of their seed have they failed Hashem’s commandment?

Moyshe

Wow Moyshe that's a loaded question!

I wish I could help answer the qestions but I am not an expert in these areas (Baruch Hashem). I do know that a person who is not able to have children is not looked at as failing since it is not his/her fault that he/she can not have children. If a person does something to his/herself in order to make his/herself not be able to have children then that is not right.

Maybe someone else here knows more and can answer you better.

Peakay

Recently, I asked a Rabbi about this mitzva because I am a member of a category of people whose makeup from development in the womb is such that they cannot themselves be fruitful and multiply. I assume that the obligation is personally to conceive children in the context of a marriage. In the event that I have this right, adoption -- though laudable on other grounds -- would not fulfil this particular mitzva, and the use of donated sperm or of both donated sperm and ova would also not be a licit way of fulfilling the mitzva. The use of test-tube technology with both sperm and ova from the husband and the wife themselves -- if I have the logic right, this would be likely to fufil the mitva when  conventional means are not able to work; but this is my guess. It will be interesting to see what those on the forum familiar with responsa concerning this will have to say.

When one is congenitally not able to procreate, how can it fail Hashem, who formed one in one's mother's womb and made one as one is? This was the burden of what the Rabbi to whom I spoke said to me. No capacity to do X, hence no obligation to do X. One's physical makeup from conception in the womb is not something about which one has any choice. Ostracism -- in my personal experience, this can indeed be a consequence of things about one's physical makeup which are not in any way the consequences of one's moral choices and to which no reasonable personal blame could attach. However, this says more about deficiencies and moral failure on the part of those who do the ostracising than on those who are rejected. Those congenitally incapable of procreation are no less created be-tselem elokim, in the image of G-d, than are other human beings, and ostracism because of this is a rejection of the Divine image and a backhanded rejection of Hashem, who makes all manner of creatures: remember the blessing "Baruch ata Hashem, meshaneh ha-beriot", and the unequivocal implication that the diversity and the specific differences all fall under Hashem's hashgacha, under Divine providence.

As I recall, there is an analogy with a relatively rare occurence affecting circumcision, milah. Some babies are such from conception that they lack a foreskin, and in certain other cases milah involves a danger to the life of the baby. I am subject to correction, but seem to remember reading somewhere that in the case of those born without a foreskin, the mitzva does not apply and their rights and obligations are in no way different from those of one who was actually circumcised by a mohel. The logic is clear: where milah is not physically possible, there is no transgression in not doing it. In the case of a danger to life, a different principle applies, of-course: pikuach nefesh, the paramount need to preserve life, supersedes milah. In the case of a conversion, where a ger-to-be was already circumcised (perhaps by cauterisation in hospital as an infant or toddler), I think that drawing a drop of blood suffices -- hatafat brit dam. Again, the principle is that what is not physically possible in a particular case cannot be obligatory in such a case.

 I apologise for going on logic of a kind rather than proof-texts, and wait with interest to see whether my attempt at logic is borne out by the texts and responsa.

Sally