But of course the only ones to blame for this legislation are the secular people. The Haredim and the Jewish Home do this because they believe in it. The ones who let them do it are the secular people. The secular public is the majority, and if this mattered to them and politicians understood that they wouldn’t get the votes if they legislated such outrageous laws, the laws would not be enacted. But the secular public prefers to let the Haredim do whatever they want and then whine. And so it is with all religious coercion, the Chief Rabbinate, and all the other religious injustices. It’s all the secular public’s fault.

Wow, what a load of nonsense.
The discrimination is not against gays but against men in general, and also against women without a medical problem. The idea behind the restriction is that expanding it could easily lead to harm to women or to agreement to serve as surrogates half-heartedly just for the money (of course, one can think there’s no problem with that). The logic of the restriction in practice is to allow a “substitute womb” for someone who is supposed to have a womb but has a medical problem, not for someone whose problem is of a different kind.
This is not about state funding at all. Nobody gets funding. The issue is who should be allowed access to surrogacy.
But why bother checking before going out to demonstrate? After all, we’re talking here about social issues, and fact-checking in the social sciences is, as is well known, the science of nonsense (for the same reason there’s also no need for empirical evidence for the claim that they are the science of nonsense, because such a claim would itself be nonsense).

It seems the fairest arrangement would be for women to get pregnant for women and men to get pregnant for men 🙂 as it is written: upside down on top of upside down!

Signed, Your Excellency, the rabbi-mixer

Wow, what drivel, and what impressively firm confidence in claiming drivel. But what can you do—confidence is no substitute for arguments and does not cover up stupidity.
There is discrimination here with a capital D, even if it is done under one pretext or another. The desire to provide a substitute for women with a problem is no different from allowing a male couple who have a problem to do the same. A single man (if he is not gay) has no problem, because he can get married. So what they don’t allow him is unrelated to the issue.
As is well known, a male couple also cannot give birth (and also cannot marry), so what is the difference between them and women with a problem? So what if they weren’t born with a womb? And if a woman wasn’t born with a womb, then they wouldn’t allow surrogacy for her? These are silly, disingenuous statements. And if the man undergoes sex reassignment surgery, then they will allow it?
It’s obvious that all this is being done to prevent it for gays. Or do you think the Haredim are fighting for this law simply because it is so important to them specifically to care about women without wombs and not about men, and for some reason the secular people don’t care. Bottom line: according to your view, why is the argument between Haredim and secular people? It’s not connected to the question of gay rights? Interesting correlation, no? Why exactly are the Haredim pressing for this law?
Moreover, the entire debate in the Knesset about this law revolved around gays, and that was the entire discussion. Men were excluded from the law because of gays and for no other reason. Everything else (substitute for women who can’t give birth and the rest of the nonsense you quoted) are excuses that may perhaps work for people in the nonsense-sciences and their limited capacities.

And finally, yes, the question is funding. Because the gays will go do it abroad, and that costs much more money. Beyond the cost of staying there and flights, in Israel there is funding for the medical procedures (apart from payment to the surrogate mother, and even that is supervised). Bottom line, it comes out much cheaper.

And if someone thinks surrogacy is problematic because of exploitation of women, then let him have the decency to ban it completely, and not hide behind that in order to discriminate against gays. “Are not My words like fire.”

Didn’t you recently write about an ethical-aesthetic outlook? Isn’t it reasonable not to fund exposing children to such a lifestyle, which runs counter to an elementary ethical outlook? (And someone who sees it that way does not view it as “pointless discrimination” but as a distorted family.)

Unlike exposure to Sabbath desecration, here we are talking about being raised in a distorted family. Why should the state financially support distorted families?

And beyond the above consideration:
Practically too, a homosexual man can bring a child into the world through shared parenting with a woman (and there is no shortage of such women). Why should the state spend hundreds of thousands of shekels on each same-sex couple who are not disabled and can bring a child into the world through shared parenting with a woman? It would cost the taxpayers a fortune (probably much more than all straight surrogacy), when there is an alternative.
The reason same-sex couples specifically want surrogacy is because it fits better with the family structure they prefer. But the state is not obligated to accept that preference.

If he can find shared parenting, then in any case he’ll do that. We’re talking about someone who can’t manage it.

Not necessarily.
It’s not only about someone who can’t; it’s mainly about someone who doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t want a woman from outside the family involved in the child’s life.

Even if it’s someone who doesn’t want to, it really is unreasonable to give a child split parents.

With God’s help
More power to you, and thank you very much for the quick answer.
Returning to the substance of the question, before the discussion developed over whether there is or isn’t discrimination—the halakhic issue I raised was from the angle of saying “well done” to someone who works the Sabbatical year, which constitutes aiding transgressors even though he will work with or without the “good job” from those who observe Jewish law. It seems to me that you examined participation only from the angle of “do not place a stumbling block,” but aiding is a different problem. Is participating in a demonstration less severe than saying “well done”? In addition, there is the problem of modesty, which, as mentioned, is in a disgraceful state in this community, and that may be another consideration for prohibition, unless we discuss it as a case where there is no other way.

Still, the main point of my argument is the first part. There is no reason for the state to fund the expansion of a distorted family.

*family

As usual, there is absolutely no need to know the facts.
A moment ago you thought this had to do with state funding, but of course now you won’t go check. I would recommend you read the Mor-Yosef Committee report to understand the situation a bit. But there are two arguments against that: first, none of the committee members is named Michael Abraham, so obviously their opinion is complete foolishness. Second, a priori one may assume that the committee members were either doctors, in which case they simply don’t understand the is-ought fallacy, or they come from the nonsense-sciences, in which case they’re just idiots.
And as for reality, let it go jump, of course, because you prefer to make assumptions about it rather than check for yourself. I truly have no interest in continuing an argument being conducted at such an infantile level. Kindly read the committee report (whose members, as is well known, are all Haredim; after all, you explained that this is the only reason for the discrimination), learn the chain of events that followed it, and then you can write a reasoned post. Right now you’re just one more of those people you write columns against regarding the shallowness of media discourse in Israel.

Surrogacy (and especially adoption) is a right that the state chooses to grant to what it defines as a family. If two cats and a cloud demand to adopt children, will you go out and demonstrate for that too?

And by the way, contrary to what you wrote above, this is not Haredim versus secular people, but liberals versus non-liberals.
You can see how strong the reservations are among older immigrants from the former Soviet Union, complete atheists, who were not “privileged” to be overexposed to the steamroller of liberal values.

Why is the Haredim’s motive important? Gay men have an alternative—to have a child with a lesbian woman, as MK Meirav Ben Ari did—unlike a woman with medical problems. In 2014, when there was a vote on surrogacy for men, Shelly Yachimovich and Gal-On abstained; Tamar Rosin from Meretz explained the opposition: (https://twitter.com/YinonMagal/status/1021288384243929088/photo/1). Maybe because the Haredim oppose it, all Haredi-haters support it Pavlov-style?

There’s no point responding again to Yishai’s nonsense. I already explained.

Roni,
I think the definition of a distorted family is a disputed value judgment (which probably also isn’t grounded in facts), and today most of the public does not think that way. Therefore the state cannot impose the minority’s values on the majority. That is unreasonable.

D,
If there is broad public recognition of a family of cats and a cloud (especially if the cats can’t live with each other but only with clouds), maybe I’ll go demonstrate for that too.

Roni,
Your remarks are actually evidence to the contrary. You yourself say this is conservatism versus liberalism and not some substantive concern for sick women but not for men, as was explained here. In other words, this is a value dispute, in which there is a majority in the public that does not agree with this decision. The government is imposing the minority’s opinion on the majority with no justification. The question of who was or was not privileged to be exposed to pure truth is disputed between those same two camps. So there’s no point using this question-begging argument.

Itai,
The motive is evidence that behind the law there is not innocent concern for women but discrimination against gays. And you are mistaken about the Pavlovian response. Quite a few liberals oppose surrogacy in principle because of the exploitation of women. And yet they still protest the discrimination that allows surrogacy for these but not for those. It’s simply two different rulings, something every yeshiva student ought to understand.

Michi,
That is certainly a value judgment, but:
A. Large parts of the public think so. In my opinion, if you take Haredim + many religious people + Arabs + immigrants from the former Soviet Union + conservative traditionalists + other non-liberal secular people, you may discover that in fact the majority opposes funding this surrogacy (I’m not sure of that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case).
B. A very large part of the public is indifferent to it (as shown by the fact that most of Likud gave it up easily in exchange for coalition quiet). If so, then it certainly isn’t critical for the majority to fund this surrogacy.
C. Even if the majority does not support my view (which, as I said, is not clear at all), in the end every political decision is a matter of values, and everyone should try to promote his values as much as possible through politics (should the left, which supports a state of all its citizens and not the nation-state of the Jewish people, give up its political efforts so as not to impose on the majority? Or should it try every possible political deal within democracy?).

Clearly the value-based consideration is the most important one here; the health considerations raised here are only secondary branches (that’s not evidence to the contrary, of course).

There are polls that show otherwise, but it seems to me that this isn’t the core of the debate. Even if the majority thinks it should impose its values on the minority, I oppose that. A democratic state is not supposed to impose values on its citizens, except where the matter harms others.
The public’s indifference is indeed a troubling phenomenon that produces all the religious coercion. Without it there would be no Rabbinate and none of the religious scandals. The majority in the state is secular, and therefore only its indifference is to blame for everything that happens. In religious coercion, the only ones to blame are the secular people. With that I completely agree, and I’ve written it more than once.

A. Very likely those polls are flawed, and you can almost bet that a large part of the respondents didn’t understand the question at all (in my opinion most citizens also don’t really know what the surrogacy law says).
B. The majority did not impose its values; it simply decided not to fund activity contrary to its values. There is a big difference between that and imposing values (and in my opinion that is part of the ambiguity of the polls, and respondents didn’t understand that this was about non-funding and not a sweeping ban on surrogacy. There are also other points of ambiguity. I believe I could easily phrase the question in a way that would yield very different results).
C. Here too the above branches join in: health, the alternative of shared parenting, etc.
D. The child’s welfare too is not to be born into a distorted family (welfare in the value sense), so this is not just interference in the lives of adult people.
E. The indifference of a large part of the public overall just says that despite the liberal steamroller, this value is not all that important to the public. That too is a value position. And overall, if you add those who oppose it and those who are indifferent, there is a large majority that does not see the law as significant harm to a basic value worth fighting for.

You are making here a huge number of tendentious assumptions that fit your basic outlook. Polls showing the opposite are biased. The respondents didn’t understand. The child’s welfare means not living in such a family because it is “distorted” (which, as far as I know, has no indication whatsoever apart from a value assumption). And so on.
As for the majority deciding not to fund, if indeed this is for the child’s welfare, then let them ban it and not merely refuse to fund it. And if the majority decides not to fund Arabs or Haredim, I imagine the Haredim will not support that and will make exactly my arguments.
Well, I think we’ve exhausted this.

A. True. I assume they are biased, and I believe that assumption is correct (and so too, by the way, with most polls in my opinion).
B. I explicitly wrote that the child’s welfare not to be born into a distorted family is welfare in the value sense. That is not an assumption, but a derivative of the value (and intentionally I did not add an empirical indication, because I am speaking here about welfare in the value sense and not welfare in the psychological sense).
C. If indeed this is for the child’s welfare, then let them ban it? First, politics is the art of the possible. There is a majority for non-funding; there is no majority for a sweeping ban. Second, many support non-intervention in parental decisions even if in their view there is some harm to the child (education, circumcision, etc.), but do not support state funding for decisions that harm the child. Freedom of parental decision is also a value position.

Meaning, you are not talking about the child’s welfare, but about value coercion under the false guise of the child’s welfare. Basically, you would ban surrogacy and even ordinary childbirth for secular people, Sabbath desecrators, and slanderers too, except that politics is the art of the possible. Whereas I oppose value coercion by the state even if it is laundered under the lie of “the child’s welfare.” Exactly as I said.

Why a false guise? Where is the lie here? I truly believe that this is the child’s welfare in the value sense (even the very funding of the expansion of a distorted family, regardless of the child’s welfare, is enough for me).
And I would not ban childbirth for slanderers, etc., even if I had the political power. I already clarified that I see a difference between a family whose very structure is distorted and a family that contains sinners. Nor would I ban childbirth in shared parenting, although there too there is distortion (I just would not support funding it from public money. The public is allowed to determine allocation of resources according to its values).
By the way, it would be interesting to hear whether you yourself, personally, see this as a distorted and flawed family in the value sense and simply support funding it despite the distortion, or whether you see no value flaw in it at all, and you are a liberal through and through.

The lie is that you present the argument as if it is about the child’s welfare, when in fact it is about value coercion. “The child’s welfare” is an expression used to say objective things (that the child will grow up healthy and feel well). If you support coercion, then you can also force parents not to act in ways you consider unethical.
As I wrote, the claim that this is a distorted family is, in my view, itself distorted. It is no more distorted than a family of Sabbath desecrators—on the contrary. Sabbath desecrators are far more problematic. I see this as a halakhic prohibition, like Sabbath desecration, and I do not want the state to coerce values, even if I believe in them. Just as I would not want secular people to legislate a law that religious people are forbidden surrogacy because of the child’s welfare, or gays to legislate a law that straight people are forbidden surrogacy because of the child’s welfare. Beyond my opposition to these acts, I will add that in all these cases, the use of the term “the child’s welfare” is a lie, as I explained above.

Roni,
Do a little thought experiment and ask yourself whether you demand from a woman everything you demand from a man:
A. Do you require every woman who undergoes IVF to have a father around as well, or are you willing to make do with someone anonymous from Scotland?
B. Can a woman’s partner not adopt her child even if it is not his biological child?
If you do not require that of a woman, then requiring it of men only because they are homosexual men is a form of discrimination. I agree that the state is not obligated to fund every whim, but it is at least expected that the state explain the logic behind its policy in a way that makes sense to everyone.

But presenting my argument as being about the child’s welfare in the value sense is not a lie. All the cards are on the table; nothing is hidden under a guise or disguise. Apparently you simply oppose considerations of the child’s welfare in the value sense, and I understand the opposition, though I do not identify with it (and I also mentioned that the child’s welfare is not my only consideration in opposing state funding).
In the end, it seems to me that you are right that we have exhausted the matter and clarified the points of disagreement.
If I summarize the disputed points:
1. You do not see such a family structure as a distorted one (unlike a family of Sabbath desecrators), whereas I do see it as distorted and find a major difference between a family of Sabbath desecrators and a distorted same-sex family (what you called an aesthetic value, though I do not call it that). This is probably the deepest point of disagreement, by the way.
2. In your opinion, most citizens oppose the current surrogacy law; I doubt that.
3. In your opinion, the indifferent should not be counted in the tally for and against; in my opinion they should, because this value matters very little to them.
4. In your opinion, the child’s welfare in the value sense is an illegitimate consideration from the standpoint of the state; in my opinion it is a possible consideration, in measure, weight, and moderation. But I agree one must be careful and sparing with it.
5. In your opinion, there is no substantive difference between non-funding and a sweeping ban. If here there is harm to the child—then there too; if here there is a value flaw—then there too. Whereas in my opinion, in the totality of considerations there is a significant difference between denying parental freedom of decision (which is sometimes improper even if it benefits the child) and limiting freedom.
6. In your opinion, the state has no right to determine resource allocation according to the values of the voters if such a determination creates a difference between types of families (even if most citizens do not see one family model as flawed); in my opinion it has both the right and the duty to act according to its citizens’ values in allocating resources.
7. In your opinion, the alternative option is not a consideration because it harms family wholeness and involves intervention by a strange woman in the family; in my opinion this alternative option is indeed an additional consideration.

Y.D.,
Answers to your exercises:
1. A same-sex family is, in my eyes, more distorted than a single-parent family (and I oppose state funding for that too).
2. A woman’s partner can adopt.
3. I didn’t say this isn’t discrimination (that depends on how you define discrimination), but even if it is discrimination, it is justified in my eyes, because not all family models are equally good in my eyes.

Roni,
1. I didn’t ask you about a same-sex family. The question was whether you require connection with a man even in a case where a woman undergoes IVF from sperm donation or not.
2. Meaning, you do not require a biological connection.
3. Fine, but would you forbid a lesbian woman living in a lesbian relationship from undergoing IVF from anonymous sperm donation (or at least not fund it)?

Y.D.,
1. I do require it. The law unfortunately does not (I only noted that it is less severe in my eyes than same-sex surrogacy).
2. I do not require a biological connection. I do not oppose adoption in general.
3. Yes. I oppose state funding of sperm donation for a single mother or for a mother in a lesbian relationship.

With God’s help, 12 Av 5778

It may be that Anonymous holds that although this is a severe Torah prohibition, LGBT people should be allowed to adopt children through surrogacy, just as adoption is not prevented from Sabbath desecrators—so too one should not prevent adoption of a child by other transgressors.

However, one must be aware that most people are not “analytic philosophers.” Anyone who sees an observant Jew at demonstrations like these, and all the more so someone publicly known as a rabbi—his presence is interpreted as support for the LGBT demand to recognize their acts as legitimate and normative, in complete opposition to the Torah.

Moreover, confused young people struggling with this inclination, who see an observant Jew and all the more so a rabbi at such a demonstration, receive a clear impression: “The separatists have permitted the matter,” and there is no point in making an effort to try to escape the temptations of this inclination, and he will sink into the prohibition without hope.

This is one of the goals of the organizers of LGBT demonstrations: to sweep along confused young people, including those whose problem is borderline and easily solvable, in order to increase their public power. Heaven forbid that we assist them and cause confused young people to stumble in a path from which, the more they sink into it, the harder and harder it will be to leave.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

Roni,
Fine, but you see that if someone permits anonymous sperm donation to a woman but prevents anonymous egg donation to a man, he suffers from inconsistency, right?
They turned this into an LGBT protest, liberals, and all the rest of the usual mix, but it seems to me that the main discrimination here operates against men per se. Your position is consistent on a certain level—a couple tried to do it the natural way, failed, and they are given a workaround. The other position is simply inconsistent.

The fact that LGBT people are trying to replicate themselves and recruit young people to join them in order to strengthen their public power has a further aggravating implication for the surrogacy issue itself, which is a serious moral problem in its own right—the exploitation of the distress of women willing to part from their children, making a poor mother miserable in order to bring happiness to the rich.

If this concerns only a limited number of fertility problems—problems that advanced medicine successfully solves—then one may expect that as medicine advances, the need for surrogacy will decrease.

But when it comes to a growing need, with an aspiration to grow tenfold, then accordingly there will be a need to increase the number of surrogates many times over. An “unholy alliance” is being formed between LGBT activists and child traffickers, with a shared goal: to increase the demand and supply of children for sale.

Is this what we should be striving for?

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

And what if it’s just an ordinary single man who didn’t find a woman and now at age 40 wants a child? Why is the state willing to fund a single unmarried woman but not willing to fund a single man?

(Now that I think about it, maybe because with a woman the child will be Jewish, but that’s just a gut feeling.)

Y.D., with that I agree (and as stated, I oppose both things). Though here an incidental consideration may come in: the cost of funding—surrogacy is incomparably more expensive than sperm donation.

Y.D.
The committee’s consideration in discriminating against men was twofold. The committee did not think surrogacy should be denied to them in principle, just as there is no need to deny them egg donation or deny a woman sperm donation. The claim was that recipients of surrogacy services need to be prioritized because it is not readily available (and that is intentional; the law makes surrogacy difficult so that there will be as little exploitation as possible), and within that framework the claim is that women should be preferred over men—since there are not enough surrogates even for women, that means denying it to men and allowing it only to women. That is a completely consistent argument; one may disagree with it, but it is worth knowing it (and for that one needs a tiny bit of effort and the recognition that “I don’t know everything,” and unfortunately some people don’t have that).
However, the committee was consistent with this logic, and its proposal allowed voluntary surrogacy for men since that does not come at women’s expense (though that still requires some thought from me). Although it turns out that this possibility in any event would hardly ever have been realized. The committee’s recommendations were not adopted by German, who wanted men not to be discriminated against and therefore proposed a law in which men would be like women. In the meantime the government fell, Litzman replaced her, and he removed that option. It is certainly plausible that Litzman does not want to give the option to gays, but all in all his “excuse” is entirely reasonable because it relies on the committee’s position.

If I may, let’s return to the substance of the question before the discussion developed over whether there is or isn’t discrimination—the halakhic issue I raised was from the angle of saying “well done” to someone who works the Sabbatical year, which constitutes aiding transgressors even though he will work with and without the “good job” from those who observe Jewish law. It seems to me that you examined participation only from the angle of “do not place a stumbling block,” but aiding is a different problem. Is participating in a demonstration less severe than saying “well done”? In addition, there is the problem of modesty, which, as mentioned, is in a disgraceful state in this community, and that may be another consideration for prohibition, unless we discuss it as a case where there is no other way.

Miki,
If the discrimination here is more general against men, then there is no law of aiding here. I am coming to protest discrimination against men (and here, even if the committee is consistent, de facto men are discriminated against). The fact that there is also a private group of transgressors who are likewise discriminated against by virtue of being men changes nothing. Besides them there are enough men who are not transgressors and are discriminated against.

As for modesty, I haven’t the faintest idea. I assume the Rabbi will say something about the person and the object.

Miki,
I don’t see any saying “well done” here. On the contrary, if people who participated in the demonstration were those who view homosexuality as a transgression and oppose it, and made clear that the demonstration is against discrimination and not in favor of homosexuality, that would reduce the public “well done” that they receive anyway.
As for the modesty problem, it exists on every ordinary street. The difference is only quantitative. I share the unpleasant feeling, but that is not a halakhic problem. Whoever thinks this will arouse forbidden thoughts in him should not go.
The Ritva wrote at the end of tractate Kiddushin:
Everything depends on Heaven’s judgment. And so is the law: everything depends on what a person knows about himself. If he is such that he should distance himself from his inclination, then he should do so, and even looking at the colored garments of a woman is forbidden for him, as stated in tractate Avodah Zarah 20b. But if he knows about himself that his inclination is subdued and subject to him and raises no impurity at all, then he is permitted to look and speak with forbidden women and to inquire after the welfare of a married woman. And this is that case of Rabbi Yohanan in Bava Metzia 84a, who sat at the gates of immersion and was not concerned about the evil inclination; and Rabbi Ami, to whom the maidservants of the emperor would go out; and several rabbis who conversed with those noblewomen; and Rav Adda bar Ahava, of whom they said in Ketubot that he took the bride on his shoulders and danced with her and was not concerned about improper thoughts, for the reason we have stated. However, one should not be lenient in this except for a great pious person who knows his inclination, and not all Torah scholars trust their inclinations, as we see in this discussion from all these incidents that we bring. Happy is he who overcomes his inclination and whose labor and occupation are in Torah, for words of Torah sustain a person in his youth and give him a future and hope in his old age, as it is said: “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and freshness.”