The Jewish Press

The Impact of Women on Jewish History by Professor Livia Bitton-Jackson

The subject of this week's column is Chana Weisberg, author of Expecting Miracles

Expecting Miracles is the title of this remarkable volume published by Urim Publications. The subtitle: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Pregnancy Through Judaism gives you a hint of what the book is all about. But only a hint: the rest of the story is revealed as you immerse yourself in the wondrous world of miracles, of faith, of G-d-intoxication, which Chana Weisberg so subtly and masterfully paints.

Although the book is composed of personal testimonies by women who experience pregnancy and others who participate in the experience as professionals, in essence it is the story of many journeys seen through the perspective of the author’s own tentatively taken steps towards Judaism.

As a number of her subjects have done, Chana Weisberg recognized the full spiritual radiance of Judaism only after she arrived in its embrace. How did it happen that Jenny/Chana Freedman, who was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, receiving her elementary education at “Friends’ School” and her higher education at Bowdoin College in Maine, embarked on a voyage to her Jewish roots?

Quite incredibly, this secular Jewish American student’s journey to Judaism began through an encounter with Muslim young women on a study-abroad program in Indonesia where she was “amazed to see” her Muslim “roommate wake up before dawn in order to pray” and discover that another “wrote poetry about her questions to G-d.”

Israel is an integral aspect of the hut hameshulash, the indivisible “triple cord” -- the Torah, the Land and the People of Israel. As with many others, Jenny’s voyage to the Torah began with a trip to the Land, and it was the impact of Israel’s magic that engendered her slow process of hazara bitshuva (return to the faith) simultaneously with her Aliyah – making her home in Israel.

Now Jenny Freedman is Rabbanit Chana Weisberg, also known as the Jewish Pregnancy Lady for her popular website www.JewishPregnancy.org that is receiving as many as 25,000 visitors a month. She started the website as a young mother, five years after her marriage to Rabbi Joshua Weisberg, director of the Post-High-School program at Nishmat: the Jerusalem Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women. “We met in Jerusalem, and married here as well, in 1996,” Chana relates with a brilliant smile.

Now she is the mother of four daughters: the oldest, seven-year old Hadas is in the first grade, four-year old Hallel is in nursery school, Maayan is two, and the youngest was born last night -- on May 8, 2005!

Expecting Miracles, Chana’s literary baby, is comprised of interviews with twenty-four “traditionally observant Jewish women” living in the Jerusalem area. The book masterfully combines the testimonies of the pregnancy experience of women from six varied backgrounds –those who grew up in observant homes, those who became ba’alot teshuva, “daughters of return” [to the faith]; those from Hassidic and others from anti-Hassidic backgrounds; women from Modern Orthodox lifestyles and others from the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox world.

Biblical and Talmudic sources and the accounts of women who participate in the experience – midwives, Rabbaniot, teachers of Hassidic philosophy and Kabbala -- provide a meaningful professional dimension. Expecting Miracles is a must for every “expectant” mother in her preparation for the miraculous event of childbirth, the most sublime of all experiences.