Leah Sarna
I. Introduction
There’s a first story about pregnancy: it’s a miracle. Two people engage in the basic human pleasure of sexuality, exchanging biological matter in the process—and then forty weeks later (give or take), a living, breathing, eating human emerges.[1] During gestation, a mother’s body transforms to sustain both the fetus’s life and her own. Her body reorganizes itself, integrating fetal DNA and growing an entire new organ. Unlike the octopus, who starves herself to death, or the spider, whose babies eat her, human pregnancy is designed to allow the mother-to-be to live and see her baby grow to adulthood. Mother and fetus become fast friends as the fetus kicks, hiccups, and responds to stimuli like touch and sound.
There’s also a second story about pregnancy: it’s a body-destroying, mind-altering, life-threatening catastrophe. Even a “healthy” pregnancy may start with weeks of nausea, exhaustion, and weakness. This is followed by joint and back pain as the pelvis starts to split apart in preparation for delivery. Swollen feet and ankles, as well as varicose veins, support the new heft and necessary blood flow. Digestive and respiratory challenges arise as the growing uterus shoves internal organs aside. The bulging belly leads to muscle displacement, causing diastasis recti abdominis. Then there are the “complications” ranging from the survivable (like hyperemesis, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia) to the deadly. And all of that is just the physical elements. We haven’t even gotten to the mind fog, clumsiness, perinatal depression, insomnia, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive behavior. Some of these physical and psychological symptoms never subside. A mother’s body and mind cannot truly return to their pre-pregnancy state.
Story #1 and Story #2 are opposites. They are also both true. How do we make sense of this? How do we hold both wonder and terror with honor to the Giver of Life and with dignity to the suffering and endangered individual?
In this essay, I argue that the Jewish tradition makes space for both of these stories about pregnancy. One, based in Parashat Tazria, addresses pregnancy in the abstract, reflecting on the miracle of how pregnancy is supposed to work in theory. The other, based in Parashat Toldot, addresses pregnancy in the particular, acknowledging the catastrophe of how pregnancy often actually works in practice. This duality models an important and potentially life-saving way of thinking about the experience: in the abstract, we can—and even should—marvel and wonder, but we may not let those assumptions overshadow particular experiences of suffering.
II. Pregnancy in the abstract: The miracle of ishah ki tazria (אשה כי תזריע)
In Parashat Tazria, we meet a woman who gets pregnant: “אשה כי תזריע – If a woman conceives…” (Vayikra 12:2).[2] This woman is a theoretical abstraction. She cannot tell us about her specific emotional struggles or physical pains, for she does not have any. All that matters about this abstract woman is her physiological capability to gestate a child. That may sound flattening and reductive, but since the Torah isn’t speaking of an actual person, that reductiveness is the point. Vayikra is functioning here, as it so often does, as a “purity textbook.” People with these body parts sometimes get pregnant and give birth, and the main concern is what that person is to do about the impurity that results. Three words introduce our abstract woman and her pregnancy. Six and a half verses give a detailed account of her childbirth and the resulting impurity and purification process.
Those three words, אשה כי תזריע—our flattened textbook woman—open a midrashic door for wonder and awe about pregnancy. This is where we can tell Story #1 without hesitation or complication. For example, R. Levi marvels at the whole concept:
In the way of the world, when a person leaves a purse of silver with his friend in private and the friend returns him a pound of gold in public, isn’t he grateful? Just so, when people leave a messy drop with the Holy Blessed One in a private place and the Holy Blessed One returns to them superior, complete souls in public, is this not praiseworthy!? (Vayikra Rabbah 14:2)
An initial read of the midrash suggests a simple wonder: what other cheap investment grows to such value at such a speed? In pregnancy, God is entrusted with a small amount of biological waste. The deposit grows and flourishes into a full-fledged human!
However, further investigation reveals deeper midrashic creativity. The midrash utilizes the language of “מפקיד… אצל חבירו – leaves [something] with his friend,” drawing directly on the mishnah in Bava Metzia 3:1 about guardianship: “הַמַּפְקִיד אֵצֶל חֲבֵרוֹ בְּהֵמָה אוֹ כֵלִים – one who deposits an animal or vessels with another.” What does guardianship have to do with pregnancy? The very same word, פקד (“take note”), appears in the Torah with regard to Sarah’s pregnancy: “וה׳ פקד את שרה… ותהר ותלד שרה – and God took note of Sarah… and Sarah conceived and gave birth” (Bereishit 21:1–2). The midrash takes the פקד of Sarah and connects it to guardianship. But, if this guardianship is what enables the miracle of gestation, then it is far superior to any of the four types of guardianship outlined in Bava Metzia. God’s involvement in pregnancy is the most praiseworthy type of guardianship there ever was.
Building off that very same metaphor of investment, R. Abba bar Kahana praises the physiology of pregnancy:
In the way of the world, if a person takes a purse of money and places the opening downward, does not the money scatter!? And so in the case of a fetus that rests in the womb of its mother, and the Holy Blessed One guards it so it does not fall and die, is this not praiseworthy!? (Vayikra Rabbah 14:3)
Pregnancy seems to defy gravity. Who would ever design a container for the most precious cargo and put its opening at the bottom? Ask any woman who suffers from what in medical terminology is cruelly termed an “incompetent cervix,” and she will tell you that the arrangement makes very little sense. And yet somehow, in most cases, it works.
In the same passage, R. Tahlifa of Caesarea has a further inquiry about physiology:
Normally, when a person fills up on food, the new food pushes the food he ate previously out the other end. But this woman, no matter how much she eats and how much she drinks, it doesn’t push out the fetus!
R. Tahlifa wonders: how does it all fit in there? When a pregnant woman uses the bathroom, how does the baby manage to stay inside? Pregnant women in their third trimester often ask themselves the same question. The wonder is only compounded after delivery, since “pushing” and defecating turn out to use the very same muscles.
The Rabbis ask basic questions of the physics and biology of pregnancy with a refrain: “Is this not praiseworthy!?” When contemplated in the abstract, their perspective is spot on. Their wonder cannot be chalked up to the fact that, compared to us today, the rabbis were limited in their scientific knowledge. Truth be told, the more I myself learn about the biology of pregnancy, the more utterly astonishing and miraculous I find it.
The Rabbis show us great wisdom by choosing Tazria as the locus classicus for their praise and wonder about pregnancy. In the abstract, without an endangered body or soul, pregnancy is indeed miraculous. We can marvel at the beauty of creation and magnificence of the Creator because Tazria’s abstract woman feels no pain; she survives to bring a sacrifice (Vayikra 12:6-8) and to enjoy her growing family.
III.Pregnancy in the particular: Rivkah’s catastrophe
For all the interest that Tazria sparks in pregnancy, it says nothing about the experience itself. In fact, this is surprisingly typical of the Torah. In Bereishit, which features a high concentration of birth narratives, many of the mothers get pregnant and then, as it were, immediately go into labor: ותהר ותלד (“she conceived and gave birth”).[3] Many others never have a pregnancy at all—it just says ותלד (“she gave birth”).[4]
In contrast to all of this abstraction and omission stands Parashat Toldot, which contains the Torah’s only description of pregnancy: Rivkah’s. Here’s how the Torah describes that:
The children ויתרצצו inside of her, and she said, “If so, why am I?” (Bereishit 25:22)
The term ויתרצצו is unusual. Its root, רצץ, appears a dozen or so other times in Tanakh. The major dictionaries of biblical Hebrew suggest a basic meaning of “crush” or “break,” in literal and metaphorical senses.[5] The specific form of רצץ in the story of Rivkah’s pregnancy implies repetition or reciprocity. But what does it actually mean?
Rashi on this verse spells out two key questions:
You must admit that this verse calls out for interpretation since it leaves unexplained what this רציצה is and why it caused her to ask, “if so, why am I?”
Rashi goes on to present two possible understandings of the term רציצה: “running” or “competition.” Both describe physical fetal activity. To his second question, Rashi suggests that Rivkah wonders why she ever desired and prayed for a pregnancy in the first place.[6] Here, he seems to be drawing on a midrash:
“And she said ‘If so, why am I?’”: R. Yitzhak says: “This teaches that our matriarch Rivkah went to the doors of other women and said to them, ‘Did this suffering happen to you in your time [being pregnant]? If so, this is the suffering of children. If only I had not become pregnant!’” (Bereishit Rabbah 63:6)
This midrash describes Rivkah asking other women about her situation, trying to ascertain whether her pregnancy is typical. This speaks to one of the many strange things about pregnancy: “health” feels like illness, making it very difficult to recognize “actual” illness. Bekhor Shor interprets Rivkah as fearing her pain to be miscarriage. Rivkah has no way to know on her own whether her experience is normal. Note also that the onus is on Rivkah to go around and ask other women. Apparently, they weren’t forthcoming in sharing their experiences when they saw her pain; the challenges and anxieties of pregnancy weren’t a common topic of conversation. Amidst Rivkah’s suffering and confusion, she regrets it all: “If only I had not become pregnant!”
Sforno on this same verse takes a slightly different tack, perhaps riffing on that same midrash:
Why did my relatives so desire that it would be me who mothers the seed [of Yitzhak] when they said, “May it be you who will be the source of myriads” (Bereishit 24:60)? Also, why did my husband pray for this for me?
In Sforno’s understanding, Rivkah asks, “Why did my family want this for me? Why did society pressure me into procreation if it is this miserable?” This reading is where we start to see the real danger in only telling Story #1, the miracle. Everyone wanted this for Rivkah. Everyone prayed for her to get pregnant. Everyone told her that pregnancy was a wonder and a miracle. She believed them. But then, when it wasn’t a wonder and a miracle but rather a catastrophe and a curse, she felt abandoned and alone.
Ibn Ezra introduces another element of the story. He too suggests that Rivkah asked around about other women’s pregnancy experiences. However, he adds that through this process, she discovered that her experience was in fact unusually difficult. In response, she complains: “למה זה אנכי בהריון משונה – Why am I going through such a messed up pregnancy?” (Ibn Ezra on Bereishit 25:22). She had been told Story #1, and now not only is she living in Story #2 but, moreover, she is in one of the worst versions of it: a life-threatening, twin pregnancy.
Ramban puts forward the most devastating read:
She said, “If this is what it’s going to be for me, why do I exist in the world? I wish I were dead or that I had never been born.”
Here, Rivkah’s pregnancy is so difficult that she experiences suicidal ideation. She hopes for her own demise.
Having worked our way through the classical mefarshim, we may now return to the definition of רצץ as “crush” with a fuller understanding of its significance in this story. Bible scholar Esther J. Hamori writes on the common mistranslation of this verb: “This word does not mean ‘they struggled,’ as it is frequently rendered; it means ‘they crushed,’ and in no other text do translators habitually soften it so… When the twins are crushing one another within her, [Rivkah] is portrayed as being desolate to the point of having lost the will to live.”[7] The Torah describes Rivkah’s pregnancy as concentric circles of crushing: the boys within her crush each other, she experiences crushing physical pain as a result of their violent activity, and her emotional suffering in response to it all crushes her will to live. This is Story #2. The medieval commentators debate the details and the extent, but they agree that Rivkah’s pregnancy is no physiological wonder—it is a catastrophe.
Unlike most women who experience perinatal mental illness, Rivkah immediately goes to seek help: “ותלך לדרש את ה׳ – She went to inquire of Hashem” (Bereishit 25:22). Hashem responds to Rivkah’s inquiry with a prophecy that explains her children’s violent in-utero behavior and foretells their grand futures.
Ramban on Bereishit 25:23 describes the effect of the prophecy as follows:
He informed her that she should not fear…and now they will rest, and she will find rest and quiet for herself.
By Ramban’s description, prophecy acts as therapy. She hears from Hashem directly about her condition and its causes: “שני גוים בבטנך – two nations are in your womb” (Bereishit 25:23). Her experience is affirmed and explained; the physiological symptoms are addressed (ועתה ינוחו – “and now they will rest”); and then she can find comfort as well (ותמצא מנוח – “and she will find rest”). Hashem listened to Rivkah’s derishah fully and responded by easing both her physical and psychological distress. Rivkah goes on to carry her twins to term in apparent health: “וימלאו ימיה ללדת – her days completed to give birth” (Bereishit 25:24).
There are no stories of pregnancy until Rivkah’s. She came into a world where pregnancy is just a historical footnote, often omitted, never described. When her pregnancy is crushing, she doesn’t even have words for it beyond “Why am I!” So, the midrash tells, she went around to the other women, asking for their stories. Having broken the silence, she learns that she is not the only person ever to struggle with this. Perhaps she finds out that her pregnancy is worse than most (Ibn Ezra), but perhaps she finds out that pregnancy is often actually just this hard (Rashi, Sforno). Story #2 is not unique: it’s just a story that we don’t like to tell. Once Rivkah breaks that silence, however, she can go and seek help.
IV. Balancing the abstract and the particular
The differences between the midrashic discussions about the abstract pregnancy in Tazria versus the commentators’ discussion of Rivkah’s particular pregnancy are instructive. Yes, pregnancy in the abstract is fully a wonder and a miracle. At the same time, the actual lived experience is much more varied—and not infrequently catastrophic. There are appropriate times and spaces to tell both stories.
Rivkah was failed by a world that did not tell true stories about pregnancy. But the way her story has been preserved in our tradition serves as an essential corrective. Now, through her, Story #2 has become Torah. The next time someone suffers in pregnancy, she can read about Rivkah and feel hope that there might be help for her as well.
Importantly, in our interpretive tradition of the Rivkah story, nobody tries to tell her Story #1 in the face of her suffering. God, the midrash, and our traditional commentators do not dismiss or paper over the pain of her experience. Nobody talks down to her. Nobody tells her how beautiful her experience is supposed to be, or marvels that the babies haven’t fallen out, or exclaims about how incredible an investment pregnancy is. The midrash never tells Rivkah, “אין זה שבח – is it not praiseworthy!?,” the refrain from Vayikra Rabbah. Instead, Rivkah merits divine intervention and prophetic care.
Story #1 does have a place, though. Pregnancy, the growth of new human life, is a miracle—and the best place to contemplate that is a biology class or a beit midrash, studying the ishah ki tazria, Vayikra’s abstract woman. Sometimes it happens that the lived experience of pregnancy is in fact idyllic dream fulfillment. The Torah maintains a space for that experience too.
Pregnancy here is a model for just about every human experience. When discussed in the abstract, we can speak statistically, we can theorize, we can make normative statements. But when there’s an actual, real-life person involved, there’s no one way they are “supposed” to feel. A mourner, for example, is “supposed” to feel sad—but sometimes mourners in real life feel relieved or even happy. Graduates are “supposed” to be proud of their accomplishments and excited for their futures—but sometimes their actual experience is terror of the oncoming unknown. A pregnant person might feel like a miraculous partner in creation, or they might feel like death. Or a person might just feel all of it at once. The stories of our lives are messy.
The only way to navigate that messiness is to make space for the particular. Rivkah’s story shows us what is at stake. Finally pregnant after a 20-year struggle with infertility, the prayers of her whole family have been answered, and Rivkah was “supposed” to be overjoyed. But that wasn’t her experience. Instead, her experience was crushing. Rivkah doesn’t keep quiet because she’s “supposed” to be grateful. Instead, she boldly tells her own story. She actively pursues care, and she finds it. If instead she had been met with an insistent “אין זה שבח – is it not praiseworthy!?” then she might not have told her story. Ramban even suggests that the repercussions might have spelled the end of the Jewish people.
The stories we share determine the limits of our ability to see and be seen, to give and receive care. The bottom line is that our stories must be told with sensitivity, in the proper places and times, with room for the miraculous to be catastrophic and the catastrophic to be miraculous.
[1] Even more miraculously, today there are many ways that babies are conceived, and many mothers do not gestate their own babies. Family structures can also look very different today. In this essay, I use female-gendered language for the sake of consistency with the Torah sources that I discuss.
[2] This translation is taken from NRSV (unless otherwise noted, translations in this article are original or adapted from Sefaria). NJPS eliminates pregnancy from the verse and translates the phrase instead as, “When a woman at childbirth…”—though it mentions in a note that the literal meaning is “brings forth seed.” Jacob Milgrom suggests that “the probability rests with the literal translation,”—i.e., referring to conception (Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [New York: Doubleday, 1991], 743). The midrash in Vayikra Rabbah aligns with Milgrom and the NRSV, using these words as an opening for discussing pregnancy. By all accounts, however, the extensive impurity described in Vayikra 12 is exclusively a result of the childbirth (וילדה), not of the pregnancy. In fact, the Rabbinic tradition recognizes the possibility of a chemical pregnancy which would never bring about the impurity of childbirth at all (Yevamot 69b, Mishnah Niddah 3:7). Conception does involve a lesser form of impurity—that caused by contact with semen—but that is discussed elsewhere (Vayikra 15:18).
[3] See Havah; Kayin’s wife; Hagar; Sarah; Lot’s daughters; Leah; Bilhah; Rahel; Bat Shu’a; and Tamar. Sarah urges Avraham to expel Hagar during her pregnancy, but the pregnancy itself is never described directly. We learn only of the effect Hagar’s pregnancy has on Sarah.
[4] See Adah, Lemekh’s wife; Tzillah; Milkah; Re’umah; Keturah; Timna; Oholivamah; Adah, Esav’s wife; Basimat; Zilpah; and Asenat.
[5] For an example of metaphorical usage, see Yeshayahu 58:6: “ושלח רצוצים חפשים – to let the oppressed go free.” For examples of literal usage, see Shoftim 9:53: “ותשלך אשה אחת פלח רכב על־ראש אבימלך ותרץ את־גלגלתו – but a woman dropped an upper millstone on Avimelekh’s head and crushed his skull” or Tehillim 74:14: “אתה רצצת ראשי לויתן – you who crushed the heads of Leviathan.”
[6] Rashi on Bereishit 25:22: “למה זה אנכי. מִתְאַוָּה וּמִתְפַּלֶּלֶת עַל הֵרָיוֹן.”
[7] Esther J. Hamori, Women’s Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 52–53.
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