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Childbirth

שו”תCategory: faithChildbirth
asked 5 years ago

In the SD
What does the Rabbi think about having children? Isn’t there a moral problem in imposing on a person a reality that is not certain to be perfect, to say the least? It would be great if we could guarantee our children a bright future both in this world and in the hereafter. But unfortunately, there are difficulties in education, both spiritually and materially. So then, isn’t there a moral problem in this?
Isn’t giving birth to someone who will endure even one minute of sorrow better than giving birth to them?
I ask all my questions based on the assumption that by procreation we mean “creating” someone from nothing. (Because it is possible that to the extent that it is just a transfer of a soul that exists in other worlds to our world, then it is possible that it is different).


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מיכי Staff answered 5 years ago
I don’t see a problem at all with the question of spirituality. God, the Almighty, commanded in His Torah to have children. If you are speaking morally without regard to religious belief and commitment, that is a more difficult question. I think that overall it is difficult to determine that it is convenient for a person not to come into the world (to the extent that it is even defined. See column 278). But you assume that morality depends on the degree of satisfaction and happiness that the person I created will experience. Think about the value of life. Are they only valuable insofar as they enable us to do things? Does the life of a suffering person have no value? Is it permissible to kill them? If you think (as I do) that it is forbidden, then the value of life is not a function of the happiness that they contain. Hence, even bringing a person into the world should not be measured by the degree of happiness that they will experience, but rather the mere addition of life has value (just as taking a life has negative value). By the way, even if it’s about taking a soul down and not creating it, I don’t see what the difference is. What is the moral justification for taking it down into our cruel world?

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ג' replied 5 years ago

Thank you very much, interesting. I did mean morally. If that's how the value is contained, then the baby could not have been created, so you didn't add or subtract anything from it, but you mean in relation to the whole of creation, which has better things in it?
But how was this value created?

I meant by bringing down a soul, which can be thought of as a “reserve” of souls preparing to descend into the world as some talk about, and then they will descend into the world anyway as they also mention, so when you see the sorrow that sometimes exists in other places, maybe it's better for them to descend here with us 🙂
But I'm really not into theories of bringing down souls, I only heard it once in a while from a few women.

מיכי Staff replied 5 years ago

I don't understand. What does it mean how the value was created?

ג' replied 5 years ago

I may not have fully understood before, your intention can be read in two ways.
You claim that just as a living person has value even if he is not functioning, so too does the addition of life have positive value.
But the addition of something like value belongs only in relation to the world and not in relation to the person because he did not exist before, so there is nothing to add. If this is the case, the addition of value is essentially a judgmental description that the act is good in relation to the world. But it can also be said that a particular person also has value from his own perspective and not only from the environment, if this value is more in the qualitative essence of the person. And if this is the case, it is appropriate to ask how it was created.

מיכי Staff replied 5 years ago

In a similar question, I wrote that I think the added value is for the world and not so much for the individual.

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