In her book Reproducing Jews, anthropologist Susan Kahn submits three main ideas for the reader’s consideration. The first is that in Israeli culture, “…it is considered much worse to be a childless woman than it is to be an unmarried mother” (16). This view of motherhood being accepted as the highest goal to which a woman can attain is something explained and developed in Kahn’s book in tandem with assisted reproductive technology making this goal more and more achievable. The second theme is that of the continuation of the Jewish people; Kahn writes, “Because reproductive technology offers the potential to reproduce more Jews, it is understood to be a positive tool for Jewish survival” (93). There is a deep pull within the collective Jewish consciousness to follow the mandate set forth in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply. The third theme Kahn sets up for the reader is that of the evolving ideas of kinship in Israeli and Jewish culture as a result of assisted reproductive technology becoming more and more widespread. Kahn asks the reader to consider new ideas about paternalistic roles, family units, and individual rights in terms of emerging systems of reproduction, showing how new methods of reproducing Jews have the ability to impact our understanding of reproduction on a global scale.
The first of these three themes that Kahn goes into is shown clearly in the title of the first chapter: “The time arrived but the father didn’t” (9). This effectively captures the feeling of much of Israeli and Jewish culture that Kahn details in the first chapter and throughout the book: women are supposed to be mothers, and they must be allowed to fulfill this role through any means available to them. The new wave of assisted reproductive technology being made available to Jewish women in Israel is a direct result of this deeply-rooted cultural view that women are best suited for motherhood and it is their natural right and directive to have children. In this way, the method of the conception means relatively little in comparison to the actual fact of conception. Kah writes of this phenomenon, “Motherhood itself remains understood as a deeply natural desire and goal, despite the extraordinary technological measures necessary to achieve it” (62). Assisted reproductive technology allows women who are unmarried, barren, homosexual, or in a relationship with an infertile man to have children and fulfill their natural role in motherhood; for this reason, Kahn suggests, the barriers that may be in place elsewhere between women and assisted reproductive technology are not as much of a hurdle for Jewish women in Israel.
The legal hurdles that many women face in using assisted reproductive technology were not uncommon for women in Israel until, Kahn posits, the internationally publicized Nahmani case in which Ruti Nahmani went head to head with her ex-husband to gain custody of the frozen embryos that had been fertilized while they were still married. The details of the case are not as important to Kahn as the public opinion that the case generated in regards to the image of assisted reproductive technology and the attitude towards childless women. Kahn writes, “The public’s sympathy for [Ruti Nahmani] reinforced not only the rights of barren women but also the popular ideology that motherhood is the most important goal in a woman’s life, regardless of her marital status” (69). This case, a landmark case for assisted reproductive technology in itself, achieved something equally important in how it drew attention to the “pitiable state that must be ‘cured’ by any means necessary” that childlessness is seen as in Israeli culture (69). No longer is motherhood reserved for married women with complete health; assisted reproductive technology allows women in any state to have children and fulfill their natural role.
The second theme of Reproducing Jews is the deeply embedded cultural directive of the continuation of the Jewish people. Kahn argues that this desire to fulfill the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28 influences not only religious Jews but their secular counterparts as well. Israeli law is bound up with Jewish religious law and customs, both implicitly and explicitly. Israeli legislation on assisted reproductive technology cannot be created or upheld without some form of input or reaction from Jewish religious law and the rabbis that maintain it. Israeli laws that determine the use of assisted reproductive technology are bolstered by the fact that Jewish people – whether secular or religious – are deeply invested in making more Jewish people.
The state, concretely pronatal, is in agreement with this drive to continue reproducing Jews. Kahn writes of this phenomenon, “…the children conceived via artificial insemination and born to unmarried women inherit the same cultural, religious, and social identity as those born to married women… [artificial insemination] is not a choice that runs contrary to one of the most central goals of the state: the reproduction of Jews” (62). In rabbinic law, children born to unmarried Jewish women enjoy the same rights, status, and privileges of those born to married Jewish women. This further supports the idea that the actual reproduction of children is more important than the way the reproduction occurred. Kahn writes that “since reproduction is not conceptualized as a choice in Jewish law, but as an obligation, the infertile couple’s decision to take advantage of the new reproductive technologies [comes from] compulsion to fulfill a divine commandment” (170). Rabbinic law continues to evolve in reaction to emerging reproductive technologies so that it may, in its own specific and ordered way, facilitate the Halakhic use of these technologies in order to reproduce more Jews.
Jewish religious culture has also influenced public perception of childless women in much the same way as the Nahmani case, allowing it to be more widespread. Kahn writes, “Consent for the new reproductive technologies is all but universal in Israel, a pronatalist state where the despair of the barren woman has deep cultural roots” (70). She goes on to mention how this may even be an appeal to the biblical story of Rachel, a barren woman who cried out to God to give her a son (70). The influence of Jewish religious culture and law on that of secular Israel cannot be disregarded, as it informs the ways in which laws of assisted reproductive technology come about and are integrated into society. Rabbinic law is also informed by this desire to further the Jewish people; Kahn writes that “It is important to point out that a powerful motive behind the creation of new rabbinic rulings regarding reproductive technology is rabbinic concern for the survival of the Jewish people” (93). Assisted reproductive technology allows for more Jewish women to have more Jewish babies, and this is a matter of great importance to the Jewish religious community.
Nevertheless, there does exist a significant amount of discussion and concern over evolving kinship roles as assisted reproductive technology develops in Israel. This is the third point that carries throughout Kahn’s book and one that is the most fraught with disagreement between secular Israeli law and orthodox Jewish culture. There are obvious points of heated debate that emerge in discussions of assisted reproductive technology, be it IVF, artificial insemination, or surrogacy; the most basic of these are those that deal with questions of who the “real” mother or father is, and what roles biological “parents” play in a system where they may have nothing to do with the child who shared their genetic makeup.
Kahn writes strikingly of evolving paternal roles surrounding artificial insemination: “[the state] assumes a paternalistic role, both literally and figuratively. The role of ‘inseminator’ moves laterally between the imagined father and the state… the maintenance and welfare of the child is dependent on the entity that produces sperm for conception, whether that entity is the father or whether it is the state” (29). In this view, the role of “father” goes to the state, both in terms of physical mechanics and the role of provider. This introduces an interesting understanding of the ways in which parental roles can be transferred to entities far removed from the individual, personal father. As Kahn writes, “…Jewish paternity exists along a continuum” (101).
In the same way, the role of motherhood can be similarly understood to be grafted onto the state in situations of surrogacy or egg donation. Kahn writes that “By forcing the biological roles of maternality to fragment into genetic and gestational components, ovum-related technologies force a conceptual fragmentation of maternality as well” (112). These questions of who the “real” mother is are especially important with regards to a system that “determines religious identity matrilineally” (128). Jewish law depends on the identity of the mother to determine Jewish identity, and if the understanding of motherhood is fractured into various aspects, the fracturing of a straightforward understanding of Jewish religious identity is equally present.
Kahn suggests that, in these evolving kinship units forming as a result of assisted reproductive technology, the role of parent and “family” can be transferred not only to the state, but to the staff of the laboratories in which assisted reproductive technology takes place. She writes, “One could argue that the matrix of relationships that exists in these fertility laboratories can be imagined as a fictive kin network, for it is within these relationships that conception occurs” (116). This view sheds light on an incredibly intimate relationship of social and kinship bonds that surround the events, locations, and personnel involved in assisted reproductive technology. The whole network can, in this way, be imagined as a sort of family unit in which conception is achieved, children are born, and families are created. This humanization of assisted reproductive technology is a vastly interesting phenomenon; Kahn calls it the “technological creation of motherhood” (127). This can be applied to fatherhood as well, and it gives readers an insight into the blending worlds of “the medical realm of the operating room and the symbolic realm of kinship” (127) that are emerging from the culture surrounding assisted reproductive technology in Israel.