log in | create an account
GET EMAIL UPDATES

Fertility, Pregnancy & Adoption

The longing for children shaped the lives of our matriarchs, and it continues to bring joy and sorrow to the lives of many people today. Medical advances have helped with infertility. However, those undergoing treatment often suffer during the process and crave a spiritual element to counterbalance the arduous clinical procedures. Miscarriages bring their own kind of loss and sorrow. On the other hand, the experience of pregnancy, the drama of giving birth, and the miracle of adoption are occasions for joy and wonder.We offer prayers for those who want to conceive, prayers for childbirth, rituals for parents preparing to adopt, mourning ceremonies for miscarriages and much more.

Photo by Rabbi Roni Handler

Kaddish for the End of Biological Fertility

By Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael | Prayer

A moving prayer in which the author, working off the traditional kaddish, mourns her inability to birth a child. [more]

Found In: Ending Pregnancy

A Longing for Children

By Julie Stockler | Article

This essay on grieving the inability to bear children relates the author's dialogue with her deceased grandmother about whether she has the permission to mourn. [more]

Found In: Infertility

Prayer before an Examination

By Rabbi Michelle Goldsmith | Prayer

This prayer aims to bring a spiritual presence to the potentially sterile and technological experience of a doctor's visit [more]

Found In: Infertility

Prayer for Those Having Difficulty Conceiving

By Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin | Prayer

This prayer, based on the Song of Songs and Psalm 22, for those having difficulty conceiving is phrased in the plural and written in the voice of a married couple. It is easily adaptable for an infertile person to say on her or his own. [more]

Found In: Infertility

Prayers to be Said Before a Procedure, Insemination, and After a Procedure

By Rabbi Diane Cohen | Prayer

Biblical verses used to form three prayers "to be said before a procedure", "Verses to be said upon insemination" and "Verses to be recited upon arising from a procedure." [more]

Found In: Starting a Family, Infertility

Tags: conception

A Tashlich Ritual for Accepting Infertility

By Bonnie and Lawrence Baron | Complete Ceremony

The couple uses the metaphor of tashlich (casting bread upon the water) as renewal to transform their suffering. [more]

Found In: Infertility

Tags: tashlikh

Techina for a Woman Experiencing Infertility

By Renee S. Septimus | Prayer

A prayer, fashioned after traditional techinot, women's prayers, for a child [more]

Found In: Infertility

Tags: tekhine

The Bath

By Lynn E. Levin | Poem

A contemporary poem that addresses "the stain" of blood which, when trying to get pregnant, "becomes a sign of failure, of sadness, of emptiness, of death." [more]

Found In: Infertility

Liberating Reproduction from Despair: A kavanah for conception in the age of infertility

By Allen Selis | Prayer

A brief prayer before undergoing in vitro fertilization [more]

Found In: Infertility

Tags: conception

Blessing to Heal Infertility

By Sarah E.Weiss-Poland | Prayer

Personal blessing that God will hear our prayers to allow us to perform mitzvot. [more]

Found In: Infertility, Healing from Illness