Hadassah Magazine

Family Matters

Return of the Midwife by Rahel Musleah

A growing number of practitioners are choosing to help others give birth using a combination of ancient spiritual connections and New Age techniques.

Whatever their personal religious observance, midwives are powered by a profound spirituality and a sense of the sacred. “I’m a partner with God in helping these babies come,” relates Tabas, who is Reform. “There’s got to be a holy connection.” Tabas says it literally hurts her to see women waiting to give birth “watching Jerry Springer on TV,” devoid of any spiritual connection. Many midwives feel that spontaneity, adaptability, respect and sensitivity are important hallmarks of their care...

For her book Expecting Miracles: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Pregnancy Through Judaism (Urim) author Chana Weisberg interviewed 24 religious Jewish mothers in the Jerusalem area to find out about their experiences in pregnancy and childbirth. Weisberg includes an interview with Sarah Landau, a Brooklyn-born mother of eight, who decided at age 40 to go back to school to become a nurse and then a midwife.

For both religious and nonreligious Jewish women in labor, Landau suggests verses to recite, including one about Shifra and Puah. She also tells them about segulot, customs believed to promote Divine blessing for a woman in pregnancy and childbirth. “I’ll tell her the Shekhina stands above her head and that she should daven for different people,” Landau says. “All this sort of gets them out of that pain thing....”

Because the women feel God’s presence, some think about bringing about the redemption of the Jewish people when they push the baby out; some meditate on God’s name; others hold pictures of the Lubavitch Rebbe and ask him to tell Hashem to give them strength.

“With the births it was the closest I ever felt to Hashem,” says Bracha, a 25-year-old mother of three who was interviewed in the book. “I was yelling to God, ‘help me!’ It was really an intense religious experience. I had no control over my body, it was contracting whether I wanted it to or not, and I just couldn’t fight it. I just had to give over myself and my body to God and go with the flow.”