When it comes to abortion, can’t anyone get Judaism right?
Opinion by Nachama Soloveichik, Washington Examiner, 7/17/22
Mischaracterizations of Judaism abound. From kosher food to the laws of the Sabbath, Jewish ritual often makes its way into popular culture, but the finer details of Jewish law are a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
I can’t tell you how many well-meaning friends want to make their home-cooked meal “kosher” by having a rabbi bless the food. If only it were that easy. Or how many TV shows feature a religious character only to get it all wrong. This Jew found herself yelling at the TV when Grey’s Anatomy featured an Orthodox patient refusing a life-saving pig valve replacement on account of pig being not kosher (“treif”).
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, this often comical mischaracterization has morphed into a dangerous trend. Liberal Jews — with an assist from the media — are presenting themselves as the default experts and spokespeople on what Judaism says about abortion. Their 140-character declarations and absolutist statements are particularly dangerous considering Orthodox Judaism’s position on abortion is, well, complicated. A snarky tweet hardly does thousands of years of rabbinical debate justice.
For example, the Women’s Rabbinic Network issued this statement on the Dobbs decision: “We stand with generations of Jewish scholars who state clearly and unequivocally that abortion access is a Jewish value.” Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, declared, “This egregious decision is a direct violation of both our American values and our Jewish tradition.”
There is a lot to unpack here, starting with these groups’ breathtaking chutzpah. Judaism, like other religions, is made up of different denominations with varying degrees of allegiance to Jewish legal text and historical scholarship. At one end, you have Reform Judaism that has little, if any, allegiance to Jewish law. Much like the liberal justices’ relationship to the Constitution, Reform Judaism sees Jewish law as constantly evolving and shifting with the times. It’s easy to declare abortion a “Jewish value” when you make up the values as you go along.
At the other end, you have Orthodox Judaism, steeped in centuries and layers of Jewish text. Rabbis spend years studying and analyzing these texts and opinions, trying to apply ancient scholarship to new questions and situations. From the Orthodox perspective, there is little elasticity in core Jewish laws.
But even within Orthodoxy, debate and disagreement abound. The Talmud — the most significant text on Jewish law after the Torah — is a series of back-and-forth debates among ancient rabbis. To steal a line from George Bernard Shaw’s pithy take on economists, if all the rabbis were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
It gets more complicated. In today’s day and age, we don’t have a centralized rabbinical authority, like in Catholicism. There is no Jewish or even Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican. We have thousands of rabbis all across the globe who offer rulings and advice based on thousands of years of rabbinic teaching and debate. We have impressive rabbinical figures with official titles and rabbinical organizations that are bestowed a certain amount of authority, but Judaism remains, at its heart, a decentralized system. Individuals seek advice and guidance from their “local Orthodox rabbi.” The truth is, an Orthodox Jew seeking a rabbinical OK on abortion in cases of hardship can find one.
Some areas of Jewish law are explicit, but not so with abortion. There is little direct mention of abortion in the Torah and only limited discussion in the Talmud. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that Jewish scholars began debating abortion, and even then, it wasn’t a pressing topic.
A deep dive into Orthodox Jewish teachings on abortion produces an unsatisfying takeaway: There are fundamental disagreements on the status of the fetus inside the womb, ranging from a potential life to a life. At a minimum, even for those who believe abortion is permitted under certain circumstances, it is never a cause for celebration and is permitted only under hardship.
The Women’s Rabbinic Network could not have been more wrong. Abortion is not a Jewish value. Judaism believes that even a potential life is worthy of respect and protection. That’s why it is permissible to violate the Sabbath to save a fetus’s life. Ending life, even a potential life, is always a tragedy.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are rabbis who believe the fetus is a life from the early stages of pregnancy. This was the position taken by the 12th century scholar Maimonides and Rav Moshe Feinstein, a revered rabbi of the 20th century. They believed the fetus is a “partial life” — a life in all respects except when the mother’s life is in danger.
Finally, Orthodox Judaism differs from the stringent Catholic position in other important respects. Judaism does not view a non-implanted embryo or an embryo in a petri dish as a human life because it is not capable of developing into one absent a mother’s womb. For this reason, IVF is not prohibited. In fact, it is embraced because of the potential for bringing new life into the world.
If there is one thing that is a Jewish value, it’s not ending life or potential life, but saving lives and fostering new ones. There’s a reason Orthodox families tend to have many children (one of seven kids here). There’s a reason Jewish rituals are so family-centric. Human life is created in God’s image. It is precious and holy and comes with great responsibility.
Liberal Jews — like liberals at large — have gone from making abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” per former President Bill Clinton, to declaring abortion on demand an unequivocal right and fundamental Jewish value. As citizens of this great country, they are entitled to their political opinion. But they should not mistake their political mission for a Jewish one, and they certainly should not represent themselves as experts on the range of Jewish opinion on this issue. Abortion is no more a Jewish value than a rabbi’s blessing can magically transform non-kosher food. Just because a myth is popular doesn’t make it true.
Nachama Soloveichik is a partner at ColdSpark.